{"id":21724,"date":"2010-01-29T14:30:45","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T19:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=21724"},"modified":"2010-01-31T19:14:03","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T00:14:03","slug":"democratic-republican-party-fractures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/democratic-republican-party-fractures\/","title":{"rendered":"Lemmings in the Lake of Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.”
\n— <\/em>Pres. Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 2010<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There seems to be a lot of heat under America, particularly America’s virtual political nation — its progressive blogs, websites and online magazines. In the days of the long drawn out battle over health care reform, progressives feel Democrats are not doing enough, fast enough.<\/p>\n

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At sites like Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and Huffington Post, progressive bloggers ranging from Alec Baldwin to everyday Janes and Joes like you and I have been literally screaming disapproval at the President, Democrats in Congress and each other.<\/p>\n

Never a political party to let unity ruin a good argument, diaries and threads on these sites\u00a0were devoted to:\u00a0 telling Obama what to do;\u00a0 telling Obama to fire Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Treasury Secretary\u00a0Tim Gethner (which I think he should anyway);\u00a0telling Obama he’s a sellout and a traitor to the left; telling other progressive blogs that THEY are traitors to the left. Not only that, but accusations flew about special SWAT teams of bloggers from radical progressive (Neo-liberal) sites allegedly disrupting the blog discussions of other progressive sites with opposing views about current events.<\/p>\n

In a 24 hour news cycle, a story that captivates mainstream media for more than a few days means it has ‘legs’. When bad news with ‘legs’ happens to Democrats it appears that in political blogs, Democrats panic quite openly. And when they panic, all the news watches.\u00a0 After the Massachusetts election where Republicans were crowing the loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to Republican Scott Brown for hours on end and into the week, one would think after visiting their political websites that\u00a0progressives, moderate and neo,\u00a0had literally lost their bleeping minds.<\/p>\n

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Blogs are 21st century (virtual) town halls,\u00a0providing instantaneous news reaction and opinion on an hour-by-hour basis. Political blogs, Daily Kos, for instance, are a unique and highly effective news feedback loop, taking in tidbits of political import like a homeopathic tincture, and letting that information generate debate for a readership of over 375,000 per day–and that’s a slow news day. During campaign season, Daily Kos can generate up to a million hits a day. You can understand how valuable that is to major news organizations. You can get a snapshot of the American political psyche with a mouse click. All you\u00a0 have to do is open up Huffington Post or Daily Kos and like a basal thermometer, get a read on who’s ripe, who’s hot, and when are things ready to pop.<\/p>\n

The nation is itching to restore the economy demolished by Wall Street, secure affordable health care, and bring jobs back to ravaged cities across the US. Things are popping. Where is the recovery? Where’s health care reform? Are we there yet? Why aren’t we? Faster! Faster! More! More!! All a news reporter has to do is\u00a0click on their bookmarked\u00a0progressive blog and report back with this headline: “Democrats in disarray”.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Democrats aren’t the only ones in the throes of fury. Republicans, even the neocons of the Bush Administration are being pushed aside for news attention by the Teabag Nation, formed as a response to the Obama Administration. They represent not just Republicans but Libertarians and Independents. Currently, the Teabaggers are having a time of it not getting ripped off by Republican consulting firms<\/a> set up to make money by exploiting Teabagger activist anger. The first National Teabag convention, slated for early February, is falling apart at the seams because of infighting over profiteering.<\/a><\/p>\n

Everyone is openly acting out anger in the hopes of getting attention. In a way, its similar to most two year olds finding their voice, unhappily realizing that the world has limits, and like it or not, learning to have to live with them. Progressives are shouting to their Democratic President and the government that he and it need to live up to his campaign promises. Conservatives are shouting at the President and government in general because its taking away their freedoms. Like lemmings, we’re following our political kindred over the edge into the lake, biting and chewing at each other and burning up. All the while, the major networks and news industry chuckle, take notes and bank the check from their next commercial sponsor.<\/p>\n

Look forward to\u00a0the\u00a0days,\u00a0weeks and months of\u00a0 battle\u00a0between and amongst our polar opposites and\u00a0our friends\u00a0on which way the country must go and whose voice will screech the loudest to get heard.\u00a0This is not going away. Not for a while. At least not until we feel recognized and its evident that someone is listening. Like any toddler tantrum. Democrats and Republicans, the two major national parties in America, seem to be splintering at the moment. That’s what happens when Saturn and Pluto in cardinal signs literally square off.<\/p>\n

The way through this is patience, and prying our hands off our eyes–once we’ve gotten past the anger and denial. But it does not mean passivity, because there are still way too many interests keeping everyday citizens of all stripes away from having a government they deserve: one that has their best interests at heart and acts on that. The anger out there is really justified.<\/p>\n

Reading the quote at the top of this article, its very funny, ironic even, that the one person who seems to be the locus of this national shouting match made the case for the very show we’ve got. I’m glad he appreciates it. He’s going to need all the big mental berth he can get to handle it.\u00a0 Me, I’m just putting my hands on my hips and wondering with horror and a wry smile about how strange the ways nations are born and how they grow up.<\/p>\n

Yours and truly,<\/p>\n

Fe Bongolan<\/strong>
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.” — Pres. Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 2010 There seems to be a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1788,52,1054],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}