Letters to the Editor
Valkyrie607
Published Letters: 144 Editor's Choice: 3
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Regarding the Power of Anger
[Read the article: Clinton endorses Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]AKA Smith: "Women should not be soothed by the cries for party unity. Right now women have the power of their anger as they have never had in my lifetime. It is the best and truest female emotion to be experienced (collectively) in years. In anger, there is tremendous power. Women absolutely should not squander this anger."
Interestingly, I recently attended a commencement ceremony that had as the keynote speaker Madeleine Kunin, former governor of Vermont and one of the first woman governors in the nation.
She called on the graduates, especially women, blacks, Hispanics, LGBT folks, and other "voices from the outside," as she called them, to go into politics, and bring their heretofore outside perspective to the "inside" of politics. Our experiences are different from those of the dominant demographic (straight white males) thus our perspectives are different. Until our voices are fully represented in the halls of power we will continue to have unbalanced politics.
Kunin urged the graduates to hold onto their anger; not to let it dominate them, but to hold onto it in a way that they did not become overly polite, domesticated or corrupted by power. Yet, she said, it doesn't help to have that anger animate your actions. It's not effective.
AKA Smith, I recognize and share your anger about the way Hillary has been treated during the election. I don't want you to let it go or bury it. But I believe your are misdirecting it. Barack Obama is not your enemy. He is not perfect, but he is not a perpetrator.
If you can, I recommend harnessing your anger towards the true enemies of women's interests: neoconservatives with their endless bellicosity, snake-oil religious right operatives with their antipathy to women's right to choose, not to mention their hatred of gay and lesbian folks, who upset their rigid definitions of male and female. McCain represents these people. His presidency would be horrible for women. Not to mention the constitution, and all the rest of it.
To Meta-whoever: chill the fuck out. There are, actually, a few stone racists on these boards. AKA Smith isn't one of them. She may say racist things at times, but then, so have most people. So have I. You're using the word "racist" as a conversation-stopper, an epithet intended to totally discredit and render invisible whoever you're accusing. I disagree with AKA Smith about many things, but I recognize that she actually thinks about the things she says, and isn't just trying to be obnoxiously contrarian. You, on the other hand, are a prime example of why the vaunted "national conversation about race" hasn't really gotten off the ground thus far: tossing the epithet "racist" around without a good reason cheapens the word and stifles conversation.
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Uh huh.
[Read the article: Relax, liberals. You've already won]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Color me skeptical, but liberal haven't won. The only thing liberals have right now is a chance to win.
Call me when we have a single payer health care system, and all reproductive services for women are covered, including abortion, ALL forms of birth control, and the morning-after pill.
Let me know when we spend, perhaps, slightly less on our military than all the other nations combined spend on theirs. Heck, maybe we could aim for half of what rest of the world, combined, spends on their militaries.
I'd love to hear about it when Bush, Cheney, et al, face criminal investigations for breaking the law on multiple fronts: torture, habeas corpus, warrantless wiretapping, political firings, etc.
Call me when inner city schools get funding, teaching staff, and curricula equivalent to the wealthy suburban schools, and when textbooks no longer lie by omission about American history.
Give me a ring when media consolidation is thing of the past and the airwaves belong to the people again.
Call me when international trade agreements include, by default, fair environmental and trade regulations, and tariffs are imposed on products from countries that seek success by exploiting their people's poverty.
Last but not least, let me know when we switch from an economy based on growth, measured by GDP, that can hum along nicely while our global ecosystems get trashed, to a steady-state economy that seeks improvements in quality, not quantity, and includes what economists call "externalities" (frivolous things like clean air, healthy soil, uncontaminated food, our children's health and happiness) in its measures of success.
THEN, I would say, yeah. The liberals have won.
But right now?
The only way the author could seriously propose this is if he has a seriously distorted idea of what liberalism really is. This is pretty common now that 95% of major media outlets toe the conservative line. But to go ahead and write a whole article based on that lame understanding of liberalism? For shame. Shame on Salon, too.
This article should be a wake-up call for liberals: We must define our platform and define our mission. The conservatives got so power-drunk they forgot to do this. That's why they're fucking up so much right now. It's essential that we take care as we go into the next political cycle (which I agree is swinging to the left) to keep our eye on the ball and not forget what we came here for.