Liberalism Resurgent

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

7/9/01

From about 1980 to 1995, it wasn’t much fun being a liberal.

There was Reagan, and his teflon popularity. How could a guy sell arms to terrorists, get over 200 of our marines blown up in an incredible act of reckless stupidity, blow apart a five year old girl to make political points, pressure NASA into an ill advised shuttle launch that caused the death of seven astronauts, turn into a drooling idiot during his second term, and still be so popular? It didn’t make sense.

Of course, the term "astroturf" meant fake grass in stadiums, and didn’t apply to phony political movements created out of thin air by corporations, and well-heeled think-tanks that fronted for anything from the tobacco industry to lunatic-fringe but wealthy crackpot religious movements. We didn’t understand that the media was already dominated by the right, from the heavily subsidized Washington Times to the heavily promoted Rush Limbaugh. Back when we still thought the media was at least trying to be unbiased, the chorus that liberalism was wrong caused us to wonder if there really was something wrong with liberalism.

We expected truths and were told lies: that Ollie North was a patriot, that Kissinger was wise, that Democrats caused the national debt because they put all the black people on welfare so they could count on the black vote.

Limbaugh and other commentators used the word liberal, as they do today, the same way Hitler used the word "Jew", stopping just short of the suggestion that a mass extermination was in order. They made it clear that no liberal could ever be of any social use, but didn’t suggest anything more drastic. After all, they took considerable pride in the ability of their listeners to figure things out for themselves.

The liberal movement in America was emotionally and politically unprepared for this, and by the mid-eighties, it was a running joke that a politician would do anything to avoid being labeled a liberal. A popular comic strip of the time, "Bloom County", had a series on a hunter seeking the "nearly extinct" American liberal, who once existed in "vast herds" around the country.

There was a brief moment of hope in 1992, when Clinton was elected, but that was quickly extinguished the next year, as it became apparent that the new Administration could only lurch from one fiasco to the next, and the scandals seemed endless. (The fiascos were real; the scandals all turned out to be Republican astroturf).

When the GOP unexpectedly took the House in 1994, it was widely assumed that liberalism was dead, Clinton "irrelevant", and the GOP and their minions triumphant.

But as the old saying has it, "Victors are by victory undone". Newt and his crowd had the reins, and everyone started watching them a lot more closely. They obliged everyone with a protracted series of screwups, ranging from Newt’s venality and dishonesty to the ever-more blatant role of the media as a cheerleader for the right wing.

Clinton prevailed, and in so doing stopped the right wing from taking over the country entirely. They spent hundreds of millions trying to destroy him, and in the end, wound up with an enormously popular two-term president, and steadily eroding influence in Congress.

Yes, they got Putsch in the White House, but they had to spend hundreds of millions more on propaganda, and in the end, had to suborn the Supreme Court and steal the election – and worst of all, the voters NOTICED.

In other words, since 1995, it’s become better and better to be a liberal. The Revolution of ‘94 is deader than Newt’s political career, and people, more and more, are realizing that much of the attitudes and opinions they see in the mass media are not the give and take of opinion among a free people, but carefully scripted and analyzed propaganda from well-heeled entities inimical to actual American freedom.

More and more people have realized over the past six years that many of the shibboleths of the right are purest fabrications. The free market not only fails to provide the most efficient answer in all circumstances, but is actually anti-competitive and not interested in the well-being of the average citizen. California is a model to the world of what happens when you let a vital social service fall into the greedy paws of the private sector. The fact that the power blackouts suddenly STOPPED when Jeffords switched parties and the Senate started investigating the power companies was not lost on most Californians, and nor was the astrotruf crap from the right wing assuring Californians that it was all their fault that there was a sudden power crisis to begin with.

The Christian Coalition not only doesn’t represent America, it doesn’t even represent Christianity. Few American Christians believe, as the central power player in the Coalition does, that Jesus was a failed prophet and that he, Sun Myung Moon, is the true Messiah.

Economic booms and surpluses occur, not under the "fiscally responsible" Republicans, but under the "tax and spend" Democrats. Not only are Democrats not pro-"big government", but it is the Republicans who insist on rigid and authoritarian structures such as mandatory sentencing and limited appeals, forced prayer, bans on abortion, limits on legal redress against corporations, and "zero tolerance."

Democrats were called the party of weasel words, but it was the Republicans who gave us such linguistic abominations as "pro life", and "faith-based". What’s wrong with plain, simple talk? Say "anti-abortion" and "religious"!

Even though Putsch is in the White House, it appears that the wave of neo-fascism is finally breaking in earnest. There were two items today, each minor in and of itself, but together, and combined with a plethora of stories detailing the Putsch administration setbacks in environment, the economy, foreign relations and pushing religion at us, are significant.

First, there was an online poll that wasn’t flooded with rightwing multiple votes. Netscape asked people to grade El Presidente, A to F. Over half (55%) of the tens of thousands of respondents in the unscientific poll gave him a "D" or an "F". No word on where Free Republic was with their vaunted "freeping" of such polls. Maybe they are still licking their wounds after being stiffed by Judge Sauls and Katherine Harris at their catastrophic convention last month.

The web used to be the home of "conservatives" – usually right wing crackpots who raved about the UN and Vince Foster – and "libertarians" – usually corporate shills using the language of the Founders to make America the land of Corporations. As late as 1996, liberals were few and far between on the web, and often shouted down. Back then, Steve Kangas’ site was extraordinary because it was so rare. Now there are thousands that emulate it, and dozens that match it. Now there are tens of thousands of liberal sites on the web, and Americans, for the first time in years, are hearing a response from the left to the endless GOP spin. The internet is now the home to the American Left, which is, once again, a viable political movement.

The second article, in today’s Washington Post, contained the remarkable admission from a GOP media consultant, Alex Castellanos, that the so-called Reagan Coalition had basically fallen apart. The article, by Thomas B. Edsall, begins with the startling statement, "Republican strategists, examining new census data and recent election returns, are warning that the electorate is moving steadily to the left and that the party needs to adopt new rhetoric and tactics to attract the growing number of working women, Hispanics, secular voters and socially tolerant, well-educated professionals."

Yes, the country is moving steadily to the left. The GOP has lost ground in congress in each of the past three elections, despite all the phony scandals they charged against Clinton, and despite the billions spent by both Republicans and the well-heeled and motivated outside interests such as Sun Myung Moon to tinge everything we see or hear in the mass media. The only reason they got the White House was by stealing it, and they dealt themselves a massive blow by doing so.

Putsch is now less popular at this point than Clinton was after six months as president–a point regarded as his low-water mark. But Clinton had intelligence, personal courage, and strength. Does Putsch? I think not.

We’re moving to the left, folks. We’re going to take America back, and make it a free country once again, where no-one need live in fear of multinational corporations or weird foreign religious demagogues.

Stop and savor that for a minute. Then get back to work. There’s much yet to be done!