Thoughts for a Friday
Michelle Neumann
I grew up in a small town in northeastern Ohio, near Cleveland, on a family "compound" of sorts. My grandparents on my mom's side lived next door. Living with them were my Russian-speaking great-grandparents, my great-aunt and various other family members from time to time. When I was very young - early 70s - my great-grandmother's sister, on an extended visit from the Soviet Union, also lived next door. My brother and I called her Teta, the Russian word for aunt.
I used to ask why the rest of Teta's family wasn't with her - doesn't she miss them? I was told that only one family member was allowed to leave at a time. That's how they make sure she goes back. We used to pack boxes of soap, clothes and shoes and send them to Teta's family. I asked why didn't we just send money so they could buy these things? Because there is nothing to buy. If they want bread, they wait in line. That was that person's job for the day - wait in line all day for bread.
Why doesn't someone complain? If they want to complain, they shut all the doors and windows to make sure no one is listening. Otherwise, their neighbors may report them. The government uses the newspapers to lie to the people, and the people don't know what the truth is. Even as a child, this made me angry.
What a horrible place - they must hate it, I would say. I was told that they didn't hate it. They love their country. It is the government that is "bad to the people". That is how it was explained to me when I was 6. Needless to say, that made an impression on me that I would not forget. How did so many people end up trapped by, and powerless against, so few, and forced to live under these conditions?
I'll let wikipedia do the work for me:
The Soviet Union was a single-party state where the Communist Party officially ruled the country according to the Soviet constitution. All key positions in the institutions of the state were occupied by members of the Communist Party. ...The entire population was mobilized in support of the state ideology and policies. Independent political activities were not tolerated, including the involvement of people with free labour unions, private corporations, non-sanctioned churches or opposition political parties.The regime maintained itself in political power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cult, restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics, such as political purges and persecution of specific groups of people. Therefore, the Soviet Union was regarded as a totalitarian state by prominent historians...
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced....Art, literature, education, and science were placed under a strict ideological scrutiny.
...
Free and fair elections existed only in theory, as a part of the Soviet democracy. All candidates had been selected by local Communist party or affiliated organizations, at least before the June 1987 elections.
...
Freedoms of assembly and association did not exist.
...
Emigration and any travel abroad were not allowed without an explicit permission from the government.
I always felt that a system that was so abhorrent and morally corrupt simply could not maintain itself forever. Thankfully that was true. How could so many people end up trapped by, and powerless against, so few?
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Aug 17, '07
One would have thought you would have taken on the really important example of the day:
The Padilla verdict http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/16/padilla/index.html?source=rss
Sorry, but it is too many in the Blue Oregon set who are just playing at political activism that are the biggest enablers in our slide to fascism. When Kari and Jeff and their invited unperceptive contributing whine on about how we should not "scream" and focus on getting to a veto proof majority, rather than working to drive out the Judas's in our own delegation who have been complicit in their timid silence and all-too-frequent sellout votes, they provide a glaring object lesson of what we have learned over the years is the way it really happens.
Where are the hard questions to Merkley and Novick about whether they will get in the face of the betrayers on our side who have not stood up at every opportunity to rail and fight against what is happening? How about even a unambiguous statement criticizing Wyden for practice of chummy appearances with Smith --- their opponent after all --- over the years as both of them cast votes for justices who publicly said as they were testifying that they would gut our Constitution and votes to undermine our habeas corpus and other civil rights in ways big and small?
Selling us out but whining about how we should work for a veto-proof majority composed of quislers and betrayers is not how you fight fascism.
Aug 17, '07
Activism begins with education, and education is something that this country has left by the wayside. Ignorance is not bliss, ignorance breeds fear. It is when people are afraid that they are open to the 'secure' suggestions of a government, whose salary we pay, that knows their populace is ignorant of the truth, whatever truth that may be. Be it the truth about terrorist attacks, the truth behind the Iraqi war, or the truth behind the reason that George "the pube" Bush won an election where he didn't even win the majority of the votes. We need to find ways to educate those whose eyes are still being shaded from whats going on, either from apathy, or from the right wing propaganda machine. I know I'm being vague, but I don't pretend to have all the answers. All I know is that an unbiased, educated populace strikes fear in the heart of the government. An apathetic populace that is more concerned with the results of American Idol are a government's wet dream. Do we pay their salaries or not? If you hired a painter and he only painted half the house and stole your microwave would you pay him? NO! You'd kick him off your property, and you'd send him to court!
Why should we pay these corrupt asses another cent? We've been lied to, let down, and trampled on, and we've payed them to do it to us. Our hard earned money, our future, our past progressive legislation, ALL we've worked so hard for, slowly being flushed down the drain... straight to China.
10:05 a.m.
Aug 17, '07
When Kari and Jeff and their invited unperceptive contributing whine on about how we should not "scream" and focus on getting to a veto proof majority
Please don't put word in my mouth. I absolutely did not say that. In fact, what I said was that I supported impeachment -- I merely asked for suggestions on what concrete steps we could take to actually achieve that result.
I don't believe that screaming at a U.S. Senator accomplishes that -- maybe I'm wrong. But I never said we should ignore what the Bushies have done.
And yes, we should work toward a filibuster-proof majority and a Democratic president - but that's a separate thing from seeking accountability from this president, during this term.
Aug 17, '07
as hard-edged as the first comment is - there is a lot of truth there - I hope we will see a day that is different than today - when our leadership (us) is ethical and takes ethical positions. I agree that Dems and R's have a long way to go to reach that goal.
1:40 p.m.
Aug 17, '07
I wonder what Silence Dogooder has actually done to change the minds of voters to support candidates and positions he espouses. I mean, aside from the easy work of posting anonymous juvenile rants on a liberal website.
How many wavering Democrats has Silence phoned up to get to support his candidate in the primary? How many non-affiliated voters and moderate republicans has Silence tried to persuade, so as to actually get that candidate into office?
My experience is that there are people who work, and people who whine. And most of the people who whine spend most of their time telling themselves and everyone else how much better they are than everybody else, ranting at people they never help to elect, simply because those people act in a civil manner when opposing conservatives.
I'd like to extend an invitation to Silence, Spicey, and anyone else who thinks Ron Wyden is somehow falling down on the job in persuading Senate Conservatives to change their position on the war, to come on a canvass with me in Washington County, and try to convince real live Republicans that we should (in GOP terminology) "surrender". We'll put a nice walking list together, and you can show the good Senator just how it's done! If you're successful, I'll be sure to take notes.
Any takers? Or is it all just... Silence?
2:48 p.m.
Aug 17, '07
What Michelle describes, the reality of her family's experiences in the dystopian Soviet sphere is easy to understand and fear.
It fits well with the books and movies about totalitarian regimes:
Dispirited people with little incentive to produce or consume anything beyond the basic necessities; Crumbling architecture and infrastructure; Scarcity of the most basic food and clothing; No consumer choices, etcetera.
Our road to totalitarianism is paved with bright shiny cars, HD TVs, cheap and plentiful fuel and food, and a broad variety of choices in consumer and travel items.
<hr/>The problem is that V for Vendetta, 1984, and all of the pop-fiction out there get the New and Improved Totalitarianism completely wrong.
No wonder that Steve's GOPers and our own Dem representatives and their Josh Kardons don't seem to understand what we're bitching about.
There is a subset of Lefties that seem to think, as Kari tried to point out, that spraying our putative allies with spittle will have some positive effect. Actually, of course, it validates their feelings that they are being persecuted by fringe lunatics, and allows them to discount these arguments out of hand.
Why do Earl and Ron seem to get a harder time from the Left than do Hooley and Wu, or for that matter Walden and Smith?
I think that we feel particularly betrayed by folks that we imagined to be true Constitutionalists, and we have as hard a time understanding how these allies can sit idly by and ignore the slow evisceration fo the Constitution while they proudly trumpet their sterling efforts to adjust health care, transportation, and recycling.
It's like they are happily sprucing up the paint job on our national house while the power mad termites are turning the foundation into Swiss Cheese.
(No slights intended to the Swiss)
As I've said on this topic before: The future is Singapore. Happy Happy Drones working and consuming with only the oddballs to be slated for disappearance and extraordinary rendition.
3:04 p.m.
Aug 17, '07
William Gibson had some thoughts on this subject.
Aug 17, '07
Russia was always a poor country. The authoritarianism of the Communist Party replaced the authoritarianism of the Czar, and has in turn been replaced by the authoritarianism of President Putin and his resurrected KGB. Life expectancy, at least, went up under the Soviet system, but it is reverting to Czarist levels now.
Pat is correct that we are approaching political tyranny from the fog of consumer addiction, but don't expect our affluence to last. The federal debt, the insolvency of the US dollar, the outsourcing of jobs, peak oil, and global warming will turn most of us into serfs before too long. Without an intact Constitution, we won't even be allowed to complain about it.
3:26 p.m.
Aug 17, '07
The other thing that has concerned me for a long time, and which until very recently got just about zero attention in the MSM, is the collaboration/conspiracy between the "content providers" and the electronics industry to make it more difficult, and often impossible, for us as Americans to exercise our rights to fair use of copyrighted works. If I buy a movie on DVD, I have a legal right to make a copy of that DVD for archival purposes (no laughing matter - my spouse has on more than one occasion left behind on airplanes DVD wallets containing hundreds of dollars' worth of DVD movies!). But the hardware manufacturers have decided in collusion with the networks and movie studios that it should be impossible to copy a DVD, and this technology is given the innocuous sounding name "copy protection." So my legal rights are completely abrogated, without due process or any other legal process of any kind, simply by agreement between two parties who would like to exploit me economically and have the clout to do so. No transparency, no public hearings, no debate about the public policy implications.
I have spent my entire career working for, and asserting the rights of, the owners of very valuable intellectual property of one kind or another. So I am not hostile to those rights. But I am also a citizen and a consumer, and I resent having my rights stripped away by guys in suits at a table where there is no seat for me.
4:28 p.m.
Aug 17, '07
William Gibson had some thoughts on this subject.
Absolutely Stephanie. It was the world of Gibson's Neuromancer and Gibson's comments in a reading at Powell's that really got me looking at Velvet Glove Totalitarianism as the new improved model for the 21st century........
Aug 17, '07
If you had been intellectually honest Kari, and provided the whole statement, it would be clear that if was fair statement of your quisling position of never holding the failed leaders on our side accountable:
When Kari and Jeff and their invited unperceptive contributing whine on about how we should not "scream" and focus on getting to a veto proof majority, rather than working to drive out the Judas's in our own delegation who have been complicit in their timid silence and all-too-frequent sellout votes, they provide a glaring object lesson of what we have learned over the years is the way it really happens.
Aug 17, '07
I can identify with being angry, frustrated and disappointed that Congress, "someone", isn't doing "something". The capitulation on FISA is absolutely sickening. But if it wasn't for Kari - we wouldn't have this forum. No one tasked (yes, borrowing one of Condi's favorite words) him with creating BlueOregon. He and his collaborators took the initiative to create it and have since put untold hours into the effort. Many others have spent time developing this forum into an important place for news and discussion. Certainly it is up to each one of us to "task" ourselves with determining what needs to be done and then doing it. In one of my prior posts, I summarized comments from Joe Trippi about why Gordon Smith is beatable. One of his reasons - this time we have the blogs. I think BO and LO are going to play a huge role in that race. So get frustrated - vent - but then come back because there is work to be done.
Aug 17, '07
I wonder what Silence Dogooder has actually done to change the minds of voters to support candidates and positions he espouses. I mean, aside from the easy work of posting anonymous juvenile rants on a liberal website.
Spoken like a typical Blue Oregon putz. Rather than deal with the substantive content and the deep moral issues it raises, Steven Maurer childishly lashes out wild assertions about me that he has absolutely no way to know anything about. Steven, I am confident the energy and time I spend in real life activism on social justice and political activities far exceeds anything you can imagine.
And get one point clear you submental punk: Successfully working across the aisle starts with and depends on clear and unwavering moral convictions coupled with the integrity to never back down in defense of them. We have reached this point:
The Real Verdict on Jose Padilla http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/16/AR2007081601771.html?hpid=opinionsbox2
mainly because we got arrogant and lazy. We failed to elect Democrats who stood for Democratic values and have not held accountable broken down sellouts like Wyden. People like you who make apologies for that utter breakdown of moral and character integrity on our side are disgusting.
Aug 17, '07
There is a subset of Lefties that seem to think, as Kari tried to point out, that spraying our putative allies with spittle will have some positive effect. Actually, of course, it validates their feelings that they are being persecuted by fringe lunatics, and allows them to discount these arguments out of hand.
Why do Earl and Ron seem to get a harder time from the Left than do Hooley and Wu, or for that matter Walden and Smith?
Unfortunately Pat, you hopelessly and utterly misperceive the situation. The fact is, none of the thoughtful critics I know of the character defects and failures of those who claim to be on our side have the slightest belief or intent they can effect the actions or thinking of electeds like those you mention. Instead, they know that except for relatively few but refreshing exceptions, most of the egotistical but incompetent types who become pols gradually but inevitably abandon any semblence of principled leadership and instead focus on keeping their privileged positions. Most of the folks who spout here are hacks and flaks under the egotistical delusion they somehow are players inside the bubble of power around these electeds (most of them are wrong, of course, and are nothing but tools to those electeds, but that is another issue entirely).
As the Founders argued most vigorously, we are morally obligated to constantly call our elected representatives and their quisling flaks to account so the voters on the whole are provided with the facts and perspective which explains why the vague sense of fundamental betrayal they feel from these electeds and their hacks is real and justified. The real job is to empower voters to responsibly use their authority to electorally "term limit" failed leaders out of office once they have lost their integrity and betray the fundamental values they were sent to defend.
Aug 17, '07
Something else in the news that I think illustrates the points I've been making and the crisis of character, leadership, and integrity we face in the PDX/Oregon "progressive" community in flaking for those on our side rather making them shape up or getting rid of them:
ACLU Targeting Pelosi/Reid http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=832
I think over the last several years the ACLU has more than adequately demonstrated principled activism we are talking about here. As just another example in today's press:
Secret spy court orders Bush to respond to request for information on secret ruling http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Secret_spy_court_orders_Bush_to_0817.html
(The request in question here is by the ACLU.)
So Kari, you want to know what we should be doing? It's holding our side to account first so that we are in a position of strength to take on the neofascists. That starts with the hard questions to Merkley and Novick, but Merkley specifically since he is the DSCC's boy.
10:10 a.m.
Aug 18, '07
Wow, Mr. Doogooder, I must have struck a nerve, judging by the invective you're now using.
But it's crystal clear you have no answer to my question about what you've ever done to persuade anyone to support progressive causes - because you never have. All you can do is continue expressing your political alienation, and declare that all politics and politicians are corrupt, at least compared to you.
Believe it or not, this isn't an original idea.
Silence, being obnoxious to friends and people you're trying to persuade doesn't actually work. Further, your insistence that others don't understand morality like you do is juvenile at best, dangerous at worst. It's a short step from where you are now to dehumanizing people you disagree with, which leads some to actions you'd never normally take against a fellow human being.
So do us all a favor, and take a hard concrete look at what you've actually accomplished. If you truly believe that all our Democratic representatives are both corrupt and can't be persuaded, then why are you trying (in your own counterproductive way) to persuade them? If you truly think that representatives should hold 100% of the positions that you do, why don't you run yourself? (That's the only guarantee.) Above all, give us one positive reason why an anonymous poster who starts off this thread posting offensive characterizations of the Oregon progressive community should have legitimacy with us.
Or, if you can't do these things, then stop "helping" us. Because your current "help" hurts just about everything you say you believe in.
Aug 18, '07
Steven Maurer - responding in the smarmy way that you do, complete with misrepresentations of my positions and statements about things you have no earthly way of knowing well illustrates the arrogant, pathological character of a tragically large and counterproductive contingent of those who claim to be working for progressive causes. Your pathological narcissism Or, if you can't do these things, then stop "helping" us. Because your current "help" hurts just about everything you say you believe in. say all that needs to be said. Who is the "us" to which you refer? And what vote or expression of support from "us" can you point to that entitles you to claim to speak for "us"?
Believe me, you have demonstrated you are an example of those who claim to be "progressive", but who are something quite different. You are not someone who I would waste my time try to convince of anything, much less call my friend. You seem to be way too content to be the kind of "progressive" that I re-assure the people I deal with in my political activities that doesn't speak for "us". They always seem genuinely grateful and heartened by that.
Although I've always rejected the idea in the past, obnoxious narcissists like you provide me more reason to believe the future may lie in form a real progressive third party in Oregon that will get on with the business of fighting for equity and justice for working people and the less fortunate. The people like you who claim to speak for the progressive community, and who regrettably have rendered the Democratic Party offensive to so many who have well-rooted progressive values and beliefs have become an embarrassing impediment.
4:51 p.m.
Aug 18, '07
You know what. This kind of verbal violence from some anonymous lefty troll pretty clearly indicates cowardice.
Me and Steve Maurer have gone a couple of rounds in various comment threads here, and it wasn't all that gentlemanly either.
However, at least we know where to find each other should we feel like it. After all, he's Steve and I'm Pat, and we both have the stones to say both what we mean and who we are
S-D on the other hand, seems to have crawled out from under some rock just so he can puke on everyone.
So, Silence, either put your real self out here or shut the hell up, per your pseudonym......Even if sabotage is your intention, it ain't working.
5:06 p.m.
Aug 18, '07
In Oregon's future, a progressive third party may form? Less willing to make the compromises necessary to govern, you say? My goodness, what an entirely original thought! In fact, I'd suggest you get that third party to run a spoiler Presidential candidate, so as to drain off votes to make the Republican win. That will wake the Democrats up! (And not really hurt the country since, as you say, there really is absolutely no difference at all between Democrats and Republicans.) Hmmm... Who's available? Hey! Have you tried Ralph Nader?
It's so sad, all you can do is laugh.
As far as you are concerned, Silence, it's plainly obvious that you and the vast majority of Blue Oregonians have nothing to talk about - and won't until you grow up, mentally if not physically.
Aug 19, '07
Ms. Neumann, your comparison of the Soviet Union to the U.S. today is, to put it bluntly, ludicrous. The nonensical nature of your comparison is best pointed out by the fact that the country has turned against the Bush administration and its failed policies with a vengeance, and all of the executive power and media collusion available to it has been powerless to stop this negative avalanche.
Your post itself shows how different the situations are. I
Aug 19, '07
No one I know gives a rip who you are Ryan or Maurer, or braggadocio about how smart or important you think you are. They care what you have to say about the issues.
So I'm interested if either of you have anything remotely substantive to say about this: It is increasingly clear that there is a consensus forming amongst those who watch and report that this psychotic adminstration is going to attack Iran as soon as they can get away with it, and that there actually are a lot of Democratic electeds who deep down really aren't that opposed to it.
It is equally clear that only thing that can stop the adminstration is a warning from the American people that we will not tolerate an attack and we will hold them criminally accountable if they do. Up to this point, Ron Wyden has not made any forceful statement, much less introduce legislation, taking anything close to that kind of position. In fact, Wyden plays a game of mewling ineffectually about how "unhelpful" a war would be, while introducing and actively working to pass belligerent legislation that stirs the pot. So what is he doing while he is here in Oregon to actually organize the people into a force that draws a line against the adminstration on this or anything else?
Aug 19, '07
My oh my the little trolls get angry don't they?
Must be nice spouting invective and acting holier than thou while cloaked in anonymity. Still never letting anyone know what YOU have done to make things better.
And let's elect the GOP by forming a purer than thou party to split the anti-GOP vote. What then storm off in a huff the minute they take position you don't like?
Oh well we have all been called worse things by better people...
Aug 19, '07
Mike - another typical whining child who has nothing to offer anyone, much less voters, than the smug arrogance of "vote for us because you've got nobody else".
So how do you like this: Progressives with guts and brains play hardball and tell the hollow soul faction of the party you, Ryan, Maurer, and Wyden represent that either you stand up for what is right to get our votes, or you lose your power? I think we see the truth: That putrified segment of the Democratic Party is composed of people like you who are so arrogant, so selfish, so lacking in anything resembling moral character, and have such disregard for the people, that they will throw away everything rather than step up and do the right thing.
Why don't you answer the question: "So what are Democrats you apparently support like Wyden doing while he is here in Oregon to actually organize the people into a force that draws a line against an adminstration military attack on Iran, or their attack on civil and constitutional rights?"
Aug 20, '07
"That putrified segment of the Democratic Party is composed of people like you who are so arrogant, so selfish, so lacking in anything resembling moral character, and have such disregard for the people, that they will throw away everything rather than step up and do the right thing."
Silence er... Befactual
(looks like you have added sock puppetry to your repertoire)
It seems you like engaging in measures that won't help our cause (here that being ending the John Wayne foreign policy and Stalinesque policy on civil rights): -Impeachment: We don't have 67 votes in the Senate sure we might get 218 votes in the House-what will that do? Send a message? -Form a 3rd party? great see what that did in 2000 -Basically scream at those you disagree with? Oh yeah that'll work.
"So what are Democrats you apparently support like Wyden doing while he is here in Oregon to actually organize the people into a force that draws a line against an adminstration military attack on Iran, or their attack on civil and constitutional rights?"
So what the people are so weak they need Wyden etc to organize them? I thought true movements come from the ground up.
If Wyden and our members in the House are so bad where were the progressive primary/3rd party general election challengers in 2004 and 2006? Where were YOU?
I think that's what gets the spittle flying-the fact that most democrats back Wyden et al. They aren't perfect; I wasn't happy with the crawldown over FISA or Alito.
But I also don't think interparty fratricide will help us.
<hr/>