Dateline: Narita International Airport

Blogs and the online world are crazy, a troll's paradise my young adult children tell me, and a place where if you do not learn to troll back, you simply will not survive. In a sense, they are probably quite correct, troll back or do not survive on-line. At times is it so out of control in the larger on-line community, the mob mentality takes over and there are efforts to silence those people who simply live a different reality, who sees things differently. For a very long time it was the wingers, the Beck U attendees, the illiterate right who literally rely upon TV and radio for all their information without ever reading a book, a journal article, anything, and they blurt out what their propagandists tell them to, it is comical enough to watch them wallow in their stupidity.

However, since January 2009, days after the current President took the oath of office; there has been a concerted effort by those passing themselves off as progressive by using the same tactics to build their own echo chamber of hate. On-line bullies, who make a concerted effort to shut down any exchange of ideas, to literally pile on and chase people away who are on the same side of many issues but who believe continued hard work is necessary, and we make change in increments. Certainly, we are not all meant to believe exactly the same thing, we don’t even develop our ideas in the same way, people develop their ideologies through a variety of ways, I’ve been in academics so  long, I generally research issues, and attempt to become somewhat of an expert in any given issue that I have an interest. I also develop my ideologies through my work and my volunteer work.  My political ideologies have also been heavily influenced by my work with the Democratic Party. 

More recently however, the demands of the so-called progressive community, I say so-called because progressives who make concerted efforts to shout down others are no better than the Republicans I have been fighting for some 30 years, I digress. No site is immune from bully pile-on tactics to shut down the exchange of ideas. Bullies are on the move, too.  It is so out of control out in the blog community, it becomes a mob mentality, attacking people who they often agree with, because agreement is not absolute, because some people see a different path to attain the same ends. Never enough, the bully community is on the attack against all democrats who are not Dennis Kucinich/Bernie Sanders type Democrats, who by the way are a very small part of the real Democratic Party. In the zealotry of some, they have begun to feel as though they get to define who is and who is not an actual Democrat. Sigh… I wish these folks would actually show up to our meetings, cause let me just mention this, as someone who attends the monthly meetings of our local district, every month since 1987, I have not seen these folks attend anything. They simply do not participate, so let me put this out there, they have no business attempting to define who is a Democrat and who is not a Democrat. Where are you folks when we have our local organizing meetings?  Yeah, I am talking to all of you right now, and I demand an answer, where the hell are you? Yeah, you showed up for one damn election, but as soon as the election was over you stopped participating and retreated into the mode of constant  bitching and moaning about your damn  sparkle pony and how it is never available to ride. Sigh, it is beyond tiring watching the a concerted efforts by hordes of bullies attack reasonable people who have been working for years to expand the base, and you are scaring away people who would otherwise be democrats.

These same progressives prattle on and on about the greatness of Unions yet seem unbelievably ill-informed about who is running the Democratic Party at the local levels. Let me tell you who they are, who we are, UNION MEMBERS. How would you know who we are, if you do not show up for our monthly meetings? You really do not know who we are. Zealotry and demagoguery is not excusive to tea bags or to extreme conservatives it is alive and well in the progressive community.

So the progressive demagogues are trying now to define what a purist Democrat is, and if you do not fit their definition exactly, they claim you are a Republican, not a Democrat. Huh? I have been a Democrat since 1984, I voted for Mondale, but it was not until 1987 I became a true registered Democrat and began to work with the party as a volunteer.

I remember the first meeting I ever attended, I was the youngest person at the monthly meeting, and we lived in Tacoma, Washington at the time. I was 25, when I showed up there were several people there, almost exclusively union members, the majority were men and we had two minorities.  There were probably 15 people, who attended every meeting, and the long time members ran the meetings. These people would represent the district at the state and national level.  In Tacoma, the Longshoremen ran our local district but we had a number of Teamsters working there as well. Tacoma is a working person’s town, a union town and in the early 1980’s the majority of union members voted for Republicans. In fact, I would surmise that Walker in Wisconsin would still be a county official, if many union members had not voted for him.  You like the blame the Kochs and not doubt they played a big part of funding Walker and getting him to roll back taxes on corporations, but the voters of Wisconsin put him in office, but so did progressives who continue to confuse the situation by continually deriding the one party that does move from the ground up.

Yeah, that is the truth and the truth hurts sometimes. We all know what happened in 1988, our caucus was small, few people attended, and George HW Bush was elected. Really the Republicans had it down, as Democrats turned on Michael Dukakis, there was much infighting in the party, and we began to work hard on attracting a new breed of voters to the party, we needed to attract Union members again and by 1992 that candidate happened to be a young man named Bill Clinton. In the primaries, that year I worked for Jerry Brown until he dropped out, quickly our district began to work on behalf of Bill Clinton. He was much more conservative than we would have liked, but you know what the time was ripe to get a Democratic President and we worked hard to get out the vote. I had never seen lines out of the door in the fire department we went to vote in, yet they were, and we knew at that time because the turnout was so large and Washington State was really beginning to turn deeper blue, that Bill Clinton had a big chance of winning the west coast.

In 1992, universal access to health care was a big issue in our caucus. The referendum Massachusetts had passed in 1986 was beginning to spread across the nation as something in which we should strive harder as a party. If you have followed me at all, you know what a huge issue universal health care is for the Democratic Party and something the nation has been striving for since 1912. A side note, back then in 1988, I was a volunteer as well for planned parenthood, I escorted women into the building at Operation whatever-the-fuck (Rescue - I know what it was) members were everywhere trying to intimidate women who were just trying to get access to health care. 

By 1993 we moved to a different county, no longer was I in Pierce County where Longshoremen ruled the Democratic  Party, I moved to a county  that often verged on red, and it was strong in the  government unions, IFPTE, Machinists, and Shipyard Unions. It was becoming a light blue county but by 2000, the Clinton scandals left the party demoralized.  Gore won Washington State, the party was in a shambles, with the likes of Lieberman, who did his party to play up the Clinton scandals in his own way. Our caucus was small that year, it was obvious Gore would be nominated and the same people attended the caucus who always attended. We all said hi to each other, had some coffee and conducted our monthly meeting, took our vote and left. It was all done in who no democrat really liked, to Nader, who labeled everyone as corrupt and Gore and Bush exactly the same, well the country didn’t really chose a leader, basically it was a draw and the supreme court did what we all witnessed.

Let’s fast forward to 2004; that was the largest turnout to a caucus I’d ever seen, seriously there were more than 100 people in attendance. There were many Dean supporters and many Kerry supporters, but John Kerry won, and in 2004, he also won my county. However, we know what happened in that election as well.

Then came 2008, the biggest caucus of my life, a least two thousand people were crammed into the gym and cars were everywhere. When we broke off into our voting groups the groups were big, 3- and 40 people from each neighborhood. These are people, who had never in their lives attended a caucus meeting! It seemed like GWBush turned all kinds of people into Democrats. (not really, they just hated him, his policies, the people who worked for him, etc) Nevertheless, deep down inside we knew better than to truly believe that. In addition, in the caucus people came to bitch about Bush.

However, right after the election it was back to the regulars again to run the party. The same 10 – 15 people come to the meetings; we are the same people who keep running things when no one else shows up. We are the same people who are going to vote no matter what, and we are the same people who understand the differences we all have.

So for those of you who label this President a Republican because you didn’t get your sparkle  pony, what I have to say to you is, you are merely a fair weather Democrat, you came out when everyone did, and you voted,  and  then you went away. Like you always do, while those of us committed to getting more democrats elected stayed to run the district and to contribute to our parties policies and who will be there whether you decide to vote or not. But the one thing you don’t get to do is throw people out of a party that you really are not a member of, that you don’t care about, because you are too busy being a WIIFM. You know what that is right; they are the "What’s In It For Me" crowd. You don’t get to call this President a republican and be taken seriously by those of us who continue to work to make those small changes that turn into big societal changes. You don’t get to do that.

The fact is,  that you all never show up to help make change, you bitch and moan, you name call and the height of your own hubris is to claim to make the rules about who is and who isn’t a democrat. You don’t get to do that, and the lesson you need to learn from that is, we Democrats are not going to let the purity folk take over our party, you are a minority. In addition, when you don’t show up to help make change, (the election is a very small part of that) you don’t get to stamp your feet and be taken seriously. But hell, if you want to come to the meetings and yell at us and call us names, we will welcome you because at least then we have a starting point. However, you don’t get to control our party, my party, because you aren’t around enough to make a difference.

Bottom line kiddies, until you show up all the time you don’t get to define who is or isn’t a Democrat.  Step up or shut up, show up or shut up, make and effort or STFU. The Democratic Party is not the Republican Party; we don’t bow to the every whim of the loudest craziest voice. When you demand to know whose side we are one, we hear just another GWBush, who said those exact same words, you either are with us or against us, my response,  get bent, you don’t control my party, you cannot even participate long enough to get anything done. I will say this one more time; this is not the Republican Party, where every little whim of each xenophobic, loud, lunatic gets to make the rules.  You don’t show up to help make the rules, to help change policies, to register voters to contribute in some small way or large way, with or without money, you don’t get to scream DINO, because you don’t participate. Democrats are not in business to do your bidding, because you do not show up. To be frank with you, to us, you are nothing more than TBags of the left.

Oh and PS you don't get to use the term massah in the same sentence while referring to this President without the rest of us thinking you are a racist. There I said it.