alternet | And then those legislatures redrew the lines from the census, and
made more safe districts for hardcore right-wingers, and protected their
incumbents. Unpleasant, huh? The same situation will present itself in
2020. Will there be more powerful liberal and progressive groups in
place in all those states and others? If not, the road to progressive
oblivion will be further greased. For those who are electorally
oriented, the next six years are very important if we are able to make
headway electorally, which sadly is not going to happen in 2014, with a
few notable exceptions.
In a recent AlterNet article by Amanda Marcotte, I was struck by this statistic about the extent of steady polarization going on in the country: "Previous Pew research shows
the percentage of Americans who are ‘mostly’ or ‘consistently’
conservative has grown 50 percent from 18 percent in 2004 to 27 percent
in 2014, while the number of people considered liberal has remained the
same."
The conservative propaganda apparatus is changing minds,
convincing people that climate change is not a problem, that government
is the problem, and motivating them to vote for increasingly
extreme candidates in very red districts that are committed to
paralyzing our government. For them it is a war; and they are not
interested in compromise.
Most progressives are not prepared for a
future where politics is even more dicey and dangerous than it is now.
So we have to stop going through the motions of not producing change and
get down to the basics where and when we can make a difference.
Let's
do more political action with friends and colleagues. Let's agree that a
higher level of popular political education and self-reflection is
necessary. Let's build up ways in our neighborhoods, cities and towns,
where progress can be made to protect ourselves from hostilities and
repression from the hugely militarized police and the massive network of
spying on us. More repression is bound to come.
It is time to
take a hard look at why and how we have failed. And we need to rethink
pretty much everything, along the way. As Robert Jensen writes in his mini book and on AlterNet, "We are all apocalyptic now."
