Reply #60: Thank you so much for getting it. [View All]

[Political Heretic]

I was shocked, in my obvious naivety, at the silliness of so many of the responses.

But then, white privilege is a strong, covert force.

Did you get a chance to see the Pew Research survey on this PH? As the general public moves to the Left and toward greater tolerance, liberals and progressives are moving the opposite direction. The public has overwhelmingly rejected and repudiated the religious right and Reaganomics, and Pew survey taken shortly before the election shows that. Yet liberals and progressives are moving to the right, as they now catch a whiff of power and start strutting an bullying and seeing themselves as "winners" and looking at the people, and those speaking out for the suffering and abused among us, with contempt and derision.

Incidentally, this is exactly what happened (part of what happened) in the 1960s that marked the beginning of the collapse of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Initially, there was broad liberal/progressive/democrat (whatever label you choose) support for the War on Poverty. Liberals liked the "idea" of empowering people in poverty. Until poor people began to take them seriously, and tack the design of Community Action Agencies and Programs (CAP / CAA) seriously. The got on the boards, they began to organize - and pretty soon Democratic Mayors of local cities were clamoring to Party insiders that their power was being coopted, they threatened to be less supportive of Democratic Congressional races and Presidential bids and as a result, a Democratic Congress passed revisions which made it impossible for ordinary citicizens to control the boards of CAPS -- they required that only three seats be filled by community members and the rest be filled by party representatives and people appointed by people in power.

The point of this story? Democrats are like any other group when it comes to power. They like the idea of helping others, but only as long as those "others" stay other. They like the idea of a group of people who will quietly take whatever help is offered them - they do not like the idea of people who become awakened and empowered to advocate for themselves and organize.

It's so fascinating to study the history of Johnson and the Great Society. It seems fairly clear that he sincerely had a dream of seriously tackling poverty, but it was a depersonalized issue to him. As long as power remained in its traditional places, he loved the idea of "giving" aid to a quiet anonymous mass of people who would take it and stay silent. When poor began to access new capacities for empowerment and began to enter into the political process as an actual political force.... it became a problem for all the traditional power brokers, and things began to unravel.

It's always best for those with power when those without it just stay asleep...

EDIT - also, TA can you link me to this study because I'm very interested in it.