Post Election Blues
Starhawk posted some suggestions of what we need to fight for to start changing the system:
- Invest in life, not death
- Make the rich pay their fair share
- Hold the real criminals accountable
- Get big money out of our elections
She ends her post with these encouragements:
Don’t be complacent, but don’t despair. All around us are allies working for more justice, more freedom, more ecological balance, more peace. This is not a time to fall back, but to step up, to be bolder, braver, louder, funnier, more inventive, more outrageous, more committed. Political winds blow back and forth—hold to your deepest values, and we’ll stay the course.
But the winds never really blew in the progressive direction. This might be a backlash – the question is to what, though?
Then Credo has also made a list of 10 things we need to do now:
- Commit to Taking Down FOX News
- Tell the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act during the lame duck session
- Keep fighting to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans
- Sign up for the fight for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United
- Tell the FCC to use its existing authority to establish and defend net neutrality
- Investigate Karl Rove’s election money laundring scheme
- Defend the EPA from castration by pro-coal interests in Congress
- Ask the administration to stop deferring making changes to DOMA, Don’t Ask
- End the seniority system
- Let people register to vote when they register their cars
Like Starhawk’s list, these are great suggestions. But, again, I am not exactly sure how we’re actually going to do all this. I think one thing that this election made clear: You cannot change the system from within the system. People who benefit greatly from corporate campaign contributions will not enact legislation that curb those contributions, for example. Credo has lots of petition links in their list but signing petitions is not enough.
The election results are a convincing example of system justification that John Jost and others are investigating: People support the status quo even if that status quo is not in their best interest. We get manipulated way too easily into believing that the tea partiers are on our side – when in reality, they are corporately funded. Instead of learning to think critically, we learn to memorize slogans.
What are the leverage points in this system? How can we shift the current paradigms? How do we break through system justification and help people realize that this system is in desperate need of changing in so many ways?
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I too have the post-election blues. I am glad that Maryland (the state I live in) has kept its democratic governor, but the county I live in went entirely tea party. The new tea party county commissioners are very pro-development and have said that they are going to repeal the development restrictions enacted by the previous commissioners. This of course means more roads, schools and other such services. I am really confused. I thought the tea partiers were against increased government spending!!!
Why the backlash? I am not sure what the conservative tea partiers want. I asked a co-worker, who is an extreme conservative, what all the fuss was about. She blamed the poor economy on the Obama Administration. When I pointed out to her that he has only been in office a few years and that the US has been sliding downhill for the past 30 years, she had no comment.
I am wondering if the system is so broken that nobody can fix it. I think that the teabaggers might realize this a few years down the road. But I am afraid that for the rest of us we need to keep a level head and try to make happen the items that you listed above. In the words of Betty Davis in “All About Eve,” “Fasten you seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”