because only the Sith deal in absolutes...

So I went looking for the origins of this split in the party. I found this:

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

- Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger

Maybe it's about time we started questioning whether we can truly call ourselves "democratic" if some people are going to decide on behalf of the working classes what the working classes can or can't do, what they should or shouldn't do, what they need or don't need.

We need to question this, because it goes too far.

"The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct...."
Margaret Sanger, A Plan for Peace

We need to question this, because people are still doing it. You cannot excuse Sanger on the grounds that this was a long time ago. We are still operating from the belief that the 'right sort' of person gets to make sweeping political decisions on behalf of the paupers and the illiterates, who get no say in what ought to happen to them because they are not qualified to participate in the discussion. Let the grownups deal with the heavy thinking.

There has always been tension between those who would make the world the way they want it vs. those who are the ones who need to be fixed, corrected, or moved in order to make way for this Utopian vision. It is just plain more fun to be the one who gets to play with the toys than it is to be the toy, and that's especially double-super true when we're playing Scientist and doing experiments. Of course, experiments frequently go wrong - look at housing projects and government cheese. And, thanks to Sanger's once-considered-beautiful vision, our nation now has to confront the reality that we deliberately sterilized people without their consent or even their knowledge. And yet, even today, we mock and ridicule conservatives' fixations with trying to figure out where the line is, or should be, between what we can meddle in vs. what we should just leave alone. (We don't need no stinkin' lines. We'll meddle in anything we goddamned well want to meddle in. Got it? Cuz we is making the world better!)

"Iowa will make the difference," Mrs. Obama said. "If Barack doesn't win Iowa, it is just a dream. If we win Iowa, then we can move to the world as it should be."
- CNN

This election has made me keenly interested in learning more about why conservatives hate - and more importantly fear - liberals. I find I disagree utterly with conservative conclusions - but I sympathize more than I ever thought possible with the anxieties about self-proclaimed Master Planners who want to rearrange the universe to fit their whims. These Master Planners do not acknowledge any need for discussion - they just act as if no discussion is needed, because it's just so obvious that all right-minded people share their vision.

Conflict is part of democracy. Checks and balances are part of democracy. Discussion is part of democracy. You cannot omit these things and still have a democracy.

I have been reading about what science fiction authors apparently call "singularity", a left wing version of the far right's Rapture (and favored by the same "technocrat" class that adores Obama). The Singularity will be a time that will be unimaginably superior to today*, because thanks to the miracles of technology, mortal limits will no longer constrain us. Death and conflict and unhappiness will just be gone. What is unnerving in these utopian visions (available in your local science fiction aisle) is that the vision is of a "post-partisan" world - that is, a world where there is no conflict, because there is no dissent.

No explanation is given as to what will happen to all those who refuse to conform to this vision of the (Unity! Hope! and Change!) future. Will they be brainwashed? Killed? Just decide voluntarily to not breed anymore? Will they see the transcendence and realize the follies of their ways? However it happens, somehow only 'our' kind of people are left, living in a Utopian vision. It's a world created by and for the faithful, only the faith is in the ideals and goals of the science and/or technology, rather than God**.

Or, in some versions (slightly more realistic), conservatives are still around - just reduced to a few wingnuts on the sidewalk with protest signs, there apparently to be laughed at.

Or, in the cheesier science fiction, they're the villain - the final threat to be destroyed before this unspeakably perfect vision can come to pass.

Why is it ok to speak of Republicans in the same threatening tones we dislike when Republicans do it to Democrats? Well, because that's different. They're fascists. They're conservatives. They're Republicans. In one essay, the author said, apparently straight-faced, that there are two kinds of people - those who are guilty of dividing the world into us/them, and Democrats (the good guys). (yes, seriously. This was an essay on why Republicans are bad and Democrats are good.)

They're Sith so we can do "dark side" stuff to them. Really. It does too work that way.

Something to keep in mind the next time you hear Republicans complaining about "liberal elites" (or "liberal fascism"): Barack Obama hangs out with today's radicals who, like Sanger, are willing to rule and rearrange the working class the way Austria once ruled and rearranged Hungary. Ayers was even willing to toss bombs - because he, and he alone, had a better vision, and that jsutified whatever had to be done to the lesser beings.

Perhaps that is why Obama feels he can do a better job describing the working class white man's problems than us working class whites can do.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

(emphasis mine)

When Barack Obama presumes to speak about working class issues, he does not speak to the working class. He speaks about us. He speaks to the affluent - the only audience that matters is the audience that gets to participate in decision-making, those who are actually qualified to understand what is going on.

We are not part of the dialogue, but he appropriates our voice, and he talks about us from a viewpoint that claims authority to revise our reality, based on his superior understanding.

And what is worse: he does not appear to be acting in good faith. Either he really didn't do his homework - or he is in fact using this power to usurp our voice unfairly:

He appropriates the right to insert his assumptions as his 'facts': we think our problem involves affirmative action, but really we just don't understand that our problem is the evils of the capitalist system itself.

He appropriates the right to define our motives: whatever we may say about affirmative action, the "reality" is that we just can't stand to see black people having opportunities while our own dreams are "slipping away".

He appropriates the right to decide which evidence should be exhibited: he describes our supposed reaction to outsourcing as the alleged cause of our 'resentment' over affirmative action.

We deserve better than this. We decide for ourselves what we think our problem is, and we deserve a government that will respond to us, not just talk over our heads to the 'elites'.

We don't need that sort of diagnosis. We neither want nor need rearranging. We just want a fair deal. We want to be listened to. We want the right to input into how we are governed. We feel we are as entitled to dignity - to equality under the law - as any other person.

To high-n-mighty elites, that's called "populism", which is considered a dirty word. It is a word that cannot be said without the obligatory derision, sneering laughter, rude comments based on the too-obvious-to-need-stating assumption that there is something inherently absurd about the unwashed masses thinking they ought to have a right to have their own interests addressed by the government. Ha! (Don't they realize it's just obvious (to all thinking people) that no government could ever care about them, and so asking for pandering is like an exercise in futility?) (I don't even know why they still let those people vote, man. - Oh, I know, more than one person has wished it weren't so....)

When liberal elites speak of the importance of economic policies and regressive taxes and other tools of government for weaning people off their bad habits, they use the same tone and the same attitude farmers take when they discuss managing livestock - it's particularly annoying when they're engaging their right wing equals on how we ought to breed***.

But when it comes time for the liberals to actually do something - what do they do? Not much of what we want. Do they make our lives better? They don't even appear interested in trying****. Apparently it's much easier to just rule from on high about what we shouldn't be doing and how we must be punished for continuing to do it anyway. This sort of judgment - it gives the same "I'm so awesome" high as real governance, only without actually requiring anything. (At least not of them.)

Well, to all you lefty leaning latte liberals of the world, I say go unite someone else - the workers of this world need a better deal than you are offering.
________________________________________
*Maybe the Unity optimists believe that technology will end the struggle for resources?

No wonder they think Obama is the messiah. New kind of politics? Post-partisan? Hope? No need to vote anymore - we just do the Unity thing.

Now all that has to happen is everyone has to wish real hard and then the whole world will agree on the one true right way to allocate goods and services, and the losers will come to accept that they just have to take it in good grace. Sorry. Extinction was always rough, but you know how evolution is. Resistance is futile and all that?

** Funny how a different religion brings about the same end vision of perfection. Only our Kabbalah involves calculus and our priests decipher prophets like Einstein, interpreting His remarks to the rest of us. The point at which it goes too far is when we there's no room for conflict. The original Enlightenment thinkers were the first and fiercest proponents of checks and balances, and, no, that has not been replaced by v.2.0.

Also, who wants to live in a world where everything looks like it did in Star Trek?

*** re: peasant breeding habits - the question appears to be: should we be regulated for the health of the herd or should we be exploited as a source of cheap babies?

**** You shouldn't pander to them, dear - it will make them aggressive.