Saturday, November 06, 2004
(11:12 AM) | Anonymous:
A De Facto Guest Post
But as participation by any bloggers other than Adam, Robb, and Anthony is spotty at best, I suppose I shouldn't feel too bad about my inability to post regularly.Adam's commented on this several times, more eloquently than i'm going to, but really, can't we just put to bed the idea that there's not all that much difference between the Republican and Democratic parties? On social issues I don't think anyone would argue there's any comparison, Kerry's goofy having-it-both-ways position on gay marriage notwithstanding. As for the war in Iraq, does anyone really think we'd be there right now if -any- Democrat were in office? That so many congressional Democrats voted to give the president the authority to wage war is a black mark on the party, certainly, but arguing about why the Democrats failed to put up more opposition and painting them with the same militarist brush as the Republicans seem like two different things.
That leaves economic issues, which are more problematic. That the Republicans' loony economic ideas have become part of the conventional wisdom in the last 20 years is a disaster for the country, and the world. That the Democrats have failed to mount much intellectual opposition to the ideas of a party that often seems to long for the halcyon days leading up to the Great Depression is tragic. Tax cuts are the -only- way to grow an economy? What? Democrats are the ones responsible for huge deficits? (Who are these deficit-loving Democratic presidents? When were they in office?)
But anger at the Democrats seems to run deeper than this, more for their inability to put forth a radically progresseive reworking of our economy. I'm all for that, but the only time there's been any sort of consensus for such measures was following the Great Depression, an economic cataclysm which no one in our generation can even imagine, and then World War II, which left most of the industrialized world in ruins. For me, at least, all the impetus for things like broadly progressive tax codes, a generous welfare state, universal healthcare, and the like, stem from these two events. Even European social welfare states seem to owe far more to the devastation from the Depression and World War II than from any deep-seated historical antecedents (how could they? Germany and Italy, to name two, didn't even exist in their present forms until the 19th century.)
All of this adds up to some pretty mushy conclusions: Democrats are -not- Republicans, and while there's infinitely more the Democrats could be doing, I wonder if there's not still a ceiling to what they can achieve. Mostly, I just find some of the conclusions we seem to be drawing on this blog pretty unsatisfying--"Fuck this, both parties are worthless"; "When the revolution comes in 50 years, it's going to be pretty sweet"; and maybe worst of all, "Things could be worse/both parties are the same, that's ok".
so now everyone can be irritated with me.
