dagblog - Comments for "God...in Pencil"

Thanks, Canuck; I really did

we are stardust — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:55:14 +0000

Thanks, Canuck; I really did hope for conversation. I know that that three-letter word can be daunting, but we need to do better as Progressives or Liberals or Dems promoting worthy policy, and the Social Gospel of the '60s had a lot of visionary directives for economic justice, which is, IMO, at the core of ALL justice.

Your post was read and

acanuck — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:59:32 +0000

In reply to I'm very grateful that you

Your post was read and appreciated, stardust, even if it didn't provoke the volume of discussion you'd hoped. That's just the way it happens sometimes, when people don't have anything meaningful to add. Dreamer obviously did.

I'm very grateful that you

we are stardust — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:39:31 +0000

In reply to King certainly continues to

I'm very grateful that you did, Dreamer. It was a passionate and well-constructed comment, and I highly recommend it. Part of the reason I posted it was because a number of Lefties here who are dismayed by what the Dems on the whole have come to represent said that they were working on manifests to effect change within the party.

I know that's a tall order; but I really do believe that for right now it's more possible than starting or massively joining forces with a third party, though I could be very wrong. I am working on a post just now, and will come back later to re-read your good remarks, possibly comment more. I did end up posting this at FDL where it got a little more attention. ;o)

King certainly continues to

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 15:55:06 +0000

In reply to God...in Pencil

King certainly continues to inspire this dagblogian. James Washington pulled together many of King's writings into one volume, which he called A Testament of Hope. I have it next to my bed. I am not a Bible reader. Having King's writings close at hand is, I suppose, the closest I have come in my life to leaning on a written text for moral and emotional support. A not very observant Jew looks to a dead evangelical Christian minister for inspiration and spiritual sustenance.

One of the favorite books I identified for my old cafe profile was Michael Honey's wonderful account of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike, Going Down Jericho Road. It captures the grit and turmoil and despair that went into that noble campaign.

King's spirit is present around us, if we look. Unfortunately we don't have a public figure who embodies it in anything like the compelling way that he did. My own view is that, for many Democrats and lefties, the biggest deficit is not in a lack of passion. I do sometimes observe a troubling, and disempowering, fatalism.

Many progressives who've been at this awhile, me included sometimes, feel so beaten down and discouraged that we seem afraid or embarrassed to aspire to anything really worthwhile and responsive to the problems of our day. Instead, the response seems to be to immediately explain why something can't happen.

A large green infrastucture public jobs program? Can't happen. The Blue Dog Dems will never support it.

Effective financial reform? Nope. Can't happen. Wall Street owns Congress and the White House and we just have to accept that and go about forming a third party.

And so on.

I think there remains, however, plenty of passion on the progressive side, King's side. Hope springs eternal in the human heart. Some of it is dormant, waiting to be tapped.

But passion requires organization and staying power to have a chance of yielding results. Bill Bradley, in his NYT op-ed a few years ago, is as relevant as ever on this point. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30bradley.html?_r=1 (free subscription may be required)

I think many active Democrats have come to this conclusion. There have been some significant steps taken in recent years to try to close the gap in the enormous institutional advantage the Right has built up over 3 decades. Matt Bai wrote about some of these efforts in The Argument. One's assessment of the effectiveness and potential of these particular initiatives to move us in the direction Dr. King wanted us to move in is an open question. Many here would question whether the net effect of these efforts is progressive enough, or perhaps even progressive at all. If those aren't the kinds of institutions and initiatives that are going to get it done, the question remains: what are? Or, if they are helpful to some degree but there are important gaps on which only some progress has been made, what are those key gaps that need to be addressed?

I am like many issue-oriented progressives. I am driven to learn about and think about and want to discuss issues and policy responses. I haven't spent the time I need to to check around and make some more thoughtful decisions about which efforts to build progressive, forward-looking institutional strength I am going to support. So I find myself now sending money to the DCCC, trying to salvage as many Dem House seats as possible. Even though I know some of them are Blue Dogs who almost surely will not vote for the agenda I think the country desperately needs right now.

I have become painfully aware, in recent days and as a result of discussions here at dagblog, of this way in which I share responsibility for the situation that we are seeing play out now.

Was I paying attention a year or year and a half ago when there might have been something I could have done to support some organization that was trying to recruit and support promising progressive potential primary challengers in supposedly Blue Dog-only territory? I was not.

I wanted to believe that this White House and this Congress would be committed to pressing what I see as common sense policies on key issues that I had thought would have very broad public appeal in the current context. That simply has not happened as I see it. Nancy Pelosi's House, the federal government institution that has been, by far, the most responsive to the issues of our day, may be about to pay the price for the utter failure of the Democratic party to harness the intense popular anger to progressive purposes. This federal government is not seen as the friend of the ordinary person. The field has been temporarily forfeited and so, whereas FDR picked up Congressional seats two years in, our side is going to lose a lot, number to be determined.

So I already know one change I am going to make going forward after the election. I am going to look into which organizations are out there in the trenches trying to recruit candidates saying sensible, electable progressive things, to run in Democratic primaries in areas lazily, I believe, assumed or concluded to be Blue Dog-only territory. And see where that leads me.

Passion, not terribly effectively channeled, can only take those who remain deeply drawn to Dr. King's vision so far. Dr. King fully understood this, and acted accordingly, in ways that were easy to observe at the time.

Thanks for your post, we are stardust. The thread looked as though it was not getting much attention so I took the liberty of an extended, tag-end comment here.

It was an odd claim of the

we are stardust — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:49:20 +0000

In reply to Perhaps we're not the most

It was an odd claim of the Frontline programs; I looked at the website, and they say Pew Research helped. This is one of their pages on demographics:

http://religions.pewforum.org/comparisons#

It does make you shake your head in wonder, doesn't it? What messages do many people hear in church, or from reading their Bibles or other texts? I haven't peeked yet at the tab concerning people's beliefs that their way is the True Way; I anticipate that I won't care for the numbers so much. ;o)

Thought: can't we be both self-identified religious nation and the most hypocritical at the same time? (It's not hard to doubt that we even ARE the most religious, but I suppose they may know the numbers around the world...)

The percentages of blacks who consider religion central to their lives was highest, I think. I wish their social gospel seemed more inclusive these days; not so much for homosexuals, I think; at least in California.

Good to see you, Miguel.

Perhaps we're not the most

miguelitoh2o — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:51:18 +0000

In reply to God...in Pencil

Perhaps we're not the most religious nation on Earth, but the most hypocritical. King is and was very inspiring for us to transcend our baser selves.

Thanks, Duck, for your '09

we are stardust — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:24:39 +0000

In reply to You asked a very pertinent

Thanks, Duck, for your '09 blog link. And for the resounding 'Yes' to the question of American arrogance and decline. Can I ask another question? Why is this blog relatively Untouchable? I have some theories, but I don't like what any of them portend. ;o)

You asked a very pertinent

oldenGoldenDecoy — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:13:15 +0000

In reply to God...in Pencil

You asked a very pertinent question . . .

Are we living his prophecy concerning American arrogance in his anti-Viet Nam War speech?

Yes!

And here is a blog post you may find of interest from the old Cafe that I posted back in early 2009

The comments are spot on . . .

Even the second to last one from a person who has ears but could not hear.

~OGD~

That's a pisser, even if

we are stardust — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:41:18 +0000

In reply to This just in. More of the

That's a pisser, even if expected. Obama's DOJ is a nightmare: DADT may be Constitutional, but claims the right to refuse to tell the attorneys for many Gitmo detainees whether or not their communications with their clients were monitored.

Well, what more? Emptywheel's reading makes sense to me in terms of Obama's real thinking on the matter. Thanks for the alert, Watt. What disappointiing news.

This just in. More of the

Watt Childress — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:33:29 +0000

In reply to I love it, Watt! Thanks. It

This just in. More of the same, with minor adjustments.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/10/20/obama-doj-moves-the-9th-cir...