Dr. Tom says: there can be a new morning dawning

Dr. Tom has moved from here to here (to be closer to me, no doubt :-). In one his last posts at the old site he writes a gem -- an assessment of the political present and the potential of its immediate future. He explores what it takes to turn the possible into the probable: our becomng engaged in the political process. Here's a sample:

It's become a cliche to say that the Democrats have been a lousy minority party--it's also true. But Republicans (and Conservatism in general) are naturally built to be a minority party. You can't spend forty years genetically engineering that chip they all have on their shoulders without it meaning something--Republicans are always oppressed, they are the downtrodden, they are the "quiet ones," the silent Heartland majority that the big-city bi-coastal media Jews never pay any attention to, they're the last bastion of common sense in a world gone mad, they stand for traditional values that are under constant attack, they're the ones who want your little children to be able to pray in school and who want the nation's little fetuses to have a fighting chance and they're the ones who think that you ought to be able to have a manger scene on the courthouse lawn, and they won't let gay people get married and they'll keep the niggers in line. The contemporary Republican Party doesn't know how to govern, but they sure know how to create controversy, and the most important factor in their success, the single thing that has enabled them to hold together their disparate coalition of Christocrats, Big Business, stockholders and rural voters is that the Republican Party always gives them something to fear.

Liberals, with their faith in government and their big, slow, long-term ideas--they're made to govern, not to oppose, and they'd just as soon not have any opposition, because other people's ideas tend to gum up the elegant graphs and charts and white papers that so obviously show how brilliantly these ideas would work if only they could be implemented under perfect, laboratory-like conditions. Democrats, who still, yes, maintain some vestiges of the Liberal spirit, even if most of them would rather be accused of being Klan members than of being Liberals, are built for the stately and moderate tempo that Plato said was necessary for real authority.

The danger here is that the Democrats, after retaking the House and Senate in 2006--which they will do--will govern as they ran: cautiously, simperingly, anonymously, vaguely. And then in 2008, when the stakes are really high, they'll be right back where they started--always responding, always reacting, always up against this bold new Republican Agenda.

[...]

We have a lot of work to do to transform the Democratic Party from an organization that's happy just to win an occasional election into an organization capable of giving America the kind of government it needs.

Yes, needs--as opposed to the old line about how Democracies give the people the government they deserve.

For--hell, I don't know--45 years or so at least--we've gotten exactly the kind of government we deserve. We aren't better than our politicians--our politicians are an extension, a symptom, of us. But it's possible--I fervently hope--that George W. Bush will be seen as the ultimate symptom, a hideous, hairy, pus-filled tumor we have to cut out, and that this time we'll keep the promises we make to God and our children that if once, just this once, the thing will be benign, we'll clean up our acts and take our lives and the life of our nation more seriously.

Until politicians see themselves being held accountable by the people, we're going to keep being sick. Now, it may not be acute--it may be more of a dull languor than a sharp pain, but you'll still feel it: the vague fever of uninvolvement, the chills of regret, the queasy feeling that someone else is in charge of your life. We--the voters, the voices, the people--because of new technology, emerging political paradigms and coalitions, and the unaccustomed weirdness of the current political arena, we have the chance, more than ever before in the history of this nation or any other, to demand the kind of government we want, to influence it, to make it. But that doesn't happen by sitting around watching The Amazing Race.

And it doesn't happen--merely--by writing or reading blogs, either. It happens when a significant portion of a whole generation comes to realize that its promise and the promise of its nation is slipping away, and then does something about it. We have that chance, right now. And we won't be able to call our Democratic leaders cowards, pussies, and wimps if we don't take that chance.

They are an extension of us, just like the nation's bedwetters and victims are an extension of the Republican Party's doctrine of fear. We can be better, and we can make our party better, and our country better, if we tell our leaders, in clear and serious terms, what we expect them to do and who we expect them to be.