Progressives and liberals – DFH’s for short – are emulating battered wives: “I should leave him but he’s so sexy when he talks like that and promises me next time will be different.” But then there’s just another punch and “where’s my dinner and did you re-elect me yet?”
I mean, sure the Republicans are worse but but if you never stop and build that social democrat party, you’ll always be going to the elections with that neolib party you wish you’d the courage to dump. Husbands of battered wives usually tell those wives how much worse off they’d be without them too.
DFH’s (Dirty Fucking Hippies, as some in the liberal blogosphere fancy themselves) sure seem to persist in the illusion that Obama is somehow one of them, don’t they? No matter how many times they get betrayed, lied to, and insulted, they just keep coming back to Obama. Surely this time will be different. Besides, the evil Republicans are so much worse. After all, they’ve given the banksters hundreds of billions, ignored Main Street, started a war without ok from Congress, continued torture and assassination, and tried to shred civil liberties.
Oh wait, that was Obama who did that, wasn’t it?
Wake up, DFH’s! Â Letting yourself get punched is no way to bring about change. Here’s an example of what I mean. The Agonist continues to be puzzled by Obama’s inaction in spanking the banksters.
It does puzzle me, and Obama ought to be called to account for this, why no one has gone to jail over the wild speculation and gambling that created the economic collapse of 2008. Even the junk bond fiasco of the 80s and the S&L bailout of the 90s saw SOMEone suffer consequences.
Maybe this is because the banksters backed Obama early and with huge amounts of money? That he’s always been just fine with their agenda and hired the same people who created the mess to pretend to clean it up? That he is Bought and Paid For?
But no doubt Agonist and others will, like battered spouses, continue to delude themselves into thinking Obama is somehow one of them, if only they could convince him of that. Good luck with that.
BTW, I was a hippie. There were plenty of factions of hippiedom back then (Yippie, David Peel, the politicos), who if kicked in the groin, would kick back, actions which current day DFHs seem unable to comprehend.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Ha. Just the other day, I wrote a post at Poli-Tea entitled “Hippie Punching and Battered Spouse Syndrome in the Democratic Party.”
Will link to it tomorrow!
Balloon Juice posted a couple of months ago: “The only analogy that springs to mind when I look at the Republicans’ recent behavior is a bad divorce. Think of a situation where Lisa and Bob are getting a divorce, and Bob is so hell-bent on hurting Lisa that he doesn’t care about their kids or their bank account. Bob will deploy a hundred variations on the same tactic: put the Lisa in a bind where she has to choose between damaging the children and losing money. Lisa will lose money almost every time in order to save the children.
[…] capitulation is inevitable, the only question is what form it will take.”