"Being a patriotic American these days is the psychological equivalent of being a battered wife."

[source]

OHollern:

There’s a sentiment I’ve been hearing expressed more and more frequently lately, and it’s coming from solid, patriotic citizens who previously never had an anti-American thought. It goes something like this, “Hey, I’ve got news for you, this country sucks.”

These aren’t pinko ne’er-do-wells like me. These are moderate, middling, ‘vital center’ types who avoid extremism of any kind. They wave the flag and support the troops. They’ve always worked hard and played by the rules. Now they are waking up to a clear, awful, unambiguous, undeniable, inescapable truth: they are being screwed, openly, gleefully and deliberately screwed, and it’s being done to them to the tune of God Bless America.

There’s a deep loss of morale that distinguishes this period from the hard times of the past. My grandmother had horror story after horror story about the Great Depression, but the idea of criticizing this country in any fundamental way would have been unthinkable to her. Same with my grandfather. He possessed an indestructible core of patriotism that was an integral part of his character. It just was. He may not have agreed with this or that political party or this or that president, but his faith in this country, its structure, its laws, its institutions, its essential virtue, was absolute.

I don’t think we have that anymore. There are a lot of theatrical displays of nationalism, a lot of self-congratulatory chest thumping, but very little genuine patriotism, which is a healthy, even generous, frame of mind. The sad thing is that our country doesn’t really deserve it anymore. If America wants to be loved, she must make herself lovable. In general, hyper-militarized kleptocracies don’t inspire much affection. Our business and political elites (redundant?), our “successful’ class, openly flout the elementary rules of good citizenship and common decency. They’re trashing the place and leaving us with the mess. How are we supposed to respond? Just wipe off our chins and recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Being a patriotic American these days is the psychological equivalent of being a battered wife.

"If you want to understand the moral state of a country, you had better check first and see how it deals with its children."

[source]

Mark Edmundson:

Blake suggests that if you want to understand the moral state of a country, you had better check first and see how it deals with its children. Does it treat them with loving kindness, or does it exploit them? Does it look down upon them from the perspective of the greedy and frightened Selfhood, or regard them with the generosity of the enlightened Soul? Blake's verdict on his own nation is not hard to discern. Can our own nation claim to be doing better?

Amid blazing wealth, great numbers of American children do not get enough to eat. Perhaps they are not starving, but they are hungry. The food they do get is overprocessed junk, which will in time make them sick. They live in horrible dwellings, both in the country and in the city. They go to bad schools, where there are few or no books, and where the teachers are overworked and overwhelmed. Many American children are as trapped in their own lives as the poor chimney sweeps were trapped in theirs. There is simply no better place for them to go.

Meanwhile, rich Americans plunder the nation, taking all they can get and then diving in for more. The Selfhood is so scared of the future, so isolated and loveless, that it is constantly grasping for security. Its fear makes it almost entirely without conscience. The only thing that might save the Selfhood is to surrender its aggressive individualism and seek solidarity with others through compassion—but this possibility is one that the Self cannot and will not understand. The Self believes that if it could only get to the next rung of wealth, the next tier of society, the next level of recognition and success, then all would be well.

"I love these back roads of New Hampshire, they twist and wind like a rolling sea."

I learned from a visit to Barry Crimmins' blog that his good friend Bill Morrissey died recently. I'd lost touch with Morrissey's music over the years but I was very glad to be reminded of it - in the early eighties I was very attached to the album Standing Eight. Remember "Handsome Molly"? Here's the lovely "The Driver's Song" from that album. R.I.P. Bill Morrissey.

"There will be a class war, right here in America."

"Consumer spending ... has been extraordinarily weak in recent quarters."

N.Y. Times:

Particularly distressing to economists is that consumer spending — which, alongside housing, usually leads the way in a recovery — has been extraordinarily weak in recent quarters. Inflation-adjusted consumer spending in the second quarter barely budged, increasing just 0.1 percent, the Commerce Department report showed.

Here's a thought: maybe people would be willing to spend a little more if Congress wasn't constantly threatening to cut Social Security and Medicare.

"The doctrine of the malignant state is not quite dead."

John Kenneth Galbraith, from American Capitalism

The doctrine of the malignant state is not quite dead. A modern treatise on the American economy concludes that, through prog ressive income taxation, the government more or less deliberately “deprives its successful citizens of their product and gives it to the less successful; thus it penalizes industry, thrift, competence, and efficiency, and subsidizes the idle, spendthrift, incompetent and inefficient. By despoiling the thrifty it dries up the source of capital, reduces investment and the creation of jobs, slows down industrial prog ress . . .” Not even the intentions of Jackson could have been viewed more dismally by a Boston merchant. But there can be little doubt that this is a minority view. In the United States, as in the parliamentary democracies in general, the great majority of the people have come to regard the government as essentially benevolent. To the extent that the New Deal in the United States had revolutionary significance the revolution was in attitudes of the great masses of the people toward the federal government. Within the span of a few years a comparatively detached and impersonal mechanism, hitherto identified with tariff-making, tax-collecting, prohibition, Farmers’ Bulletins and the National Parks, came to be regarded as a protector and even as a friend of the people at large and their shield against adversity. The actions of the government might not be considered entirely predictable but there was no doubt that its motives were thought good.

"In the United States, as in the parliamentary democracies in general, the great majority of the people have come to regard the government as essentially benevolent."
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Oh, for a return to the days when government was seen "as a protector and even as a friend of the people at large and their shield against adversity"!

"All the Democrats are now are the Republicans' sex toys."

Jodi Dean:

For centuries, aristocrats criticized democracy because their feared the people. The people would redistribute wealth and privilege. The people would act under the banner of equality. The people would eliminate the rich and make everything and everyone the same. Even a hundred years ago conservatives feared that democracy would raise taxes to the extent that the people would eat the social surplus (capital) necessary for future growth and investment. All the people could do was think with their stomachs and, motivated by greed, they would take back the wealth of the few.

Wow. How wrong they were. Democracy is the best system the rich ever had. In a setting where everyone has the right to shout, no one speaks for the poor. In a system where everyone has the right to vote, no one represents the poor.

We are trapped in a nightmare where the rich fight with each other over how best to screw the rest of us, long and hard or fast and violent. My son put it best when he said all the Democrats are now are the Republicans' sex toys.

"Filling the air with toxins day and night."

Michael Yates:

During the past two weeks, we witnessed the most insane household burning we have ever encountered. A man living about a block away from my mother’s house began to burn several times a day. His fires raged, with flames shooting high and dark smoke billowing upward and clouding the sky. At first, he was burning tree and bush limbs, but soon he was adding large planks of wood to the blaze. One night, we saw an enormous bonfire arising from his ash pit, at least ten feet high. People were sitting in chairs around the fire, as if at a high school football rally. Two neighbors complained, one saying that she had a black eye from rubbing it because of smoke irritation and another angry that he could not use his swimming pool. My mother developed a serious rash, and her doctor said it could have been from the burning. However, no one called the municipal authorities.

[...]

The world is in the midst of environmental catastrophe, and matters will continue to get worse. Yet, in the United States, a leader in generating pollution of all kinds, the mantras of economic growth and individualism reign supreme. Coal mining is good, no matter the damage every aspect of it does to the environment. We need the jobs, and it isn’t important what harm these jobs do. And we must have Marcellus shale drilling–for jobs, tax revenues, economic growth—the social costs be damned. What is more, millions of greedy property owners dream of big money from selling their property rights to the gas companies, just as they sold these rights to the coal companies. Even a small amount of money will secure a sale. A relative of mine told me that she was selling her rights to a gas company hustler for a pathetic $600. It apparently didn’t concern her that her neighbors might suffer as a consequence of her decision, much less the larger society. By the same logic, our maniac burner didn’t care that he was filling the air with toxins day and night. He was, in good American fashion, just trying to save a buck. What could be wrong with that?

"He is, in every meaningful sense, Bush's third term."

Stirling Newberry:

Yes, this imaginary crisis that the Republicans and Obama have provoked to force ordinary people to pay for their wars and tax cuts, and bank bail outs and health insurance give aways, is proof that Obama is now an official entrant for Worst. President. Ever. He is, in every meaningful sense, Bush's third term, with a few exceptions that while heartening for those that get them, are not enough to even begin to salvage his term. Remember that George Herbert Walker Bush passed a major piece of civil rights legislation too: the Americans With Disabilities Act, which is, indeed, a humane and important step forward. But it isn't going to wash the stains of his failures.

"Who is Standard & Poor’s to tell America how much debt it has to shed in order to keep its credit rating?"

Robert Reich:

Standard & Poor’s didn’t exactly distinguish itself prior to Wall Street’s financial meltdown in 2007. Until the eve of the collapse it gave triple-A ratings to some of the Street’s riskiest packages of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.

Standard & Poor’s (along with Moody’s and Fitch) bear much of the responsibility for what happened next. Had they done their job and warned investors how much risk Wall Street was taking on, the housing and debt bubbles wouldn’t have become so large – and their bursts wouldn’t have brought down much of the economy.

Had Standard & Poor’s done its job, you and I and other taxpayers wouldn’t have had to bail out Wall Street; millions of Americans would now be working now instead of collecting unemployment insurance; the government wouldn’t have had to inject the economy with a massive stimulus to save millions of other jobs; and far more tax revenue would now be pouring into the Treasury from individuals and businesses doing better than they are now.

In other words, had Standard & Poor’s done its job, today’s budget deficit would be far smaller.

And where was Standard & Poor’s (and the two others) during the George W. Bush administration – when W. turned a $5 trillion budget surplus bequeathed to him by Bill Clinton into a gaping deficit? Standard & Poor didn’t object to Bush’s giant tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor did it raise a warning about his huge Medicare drug benefit (i.e., corporate welfare for Big Pharma), or his decision to fight two expensive wars without paying for them.

Add Bush’s spending splurge and his tax cuts to the expenses brought on by Wall Street’s near collapse – and today’s budget deficit would be tiny.

"It’s come time, perhaps long-since come time, for Obama to take charge."

Elizabeth Drew:

The president reportedly remarked to the House leaders, “Eisenhower wouldn’t have sat here like this.” That’s precisely the point. There comes a moment when his sitting there while the Republican leaders bicker and talk their talking points turns into an outright offense to the Office of the President. It’s up to Obama to set things right.

The president needs to get his dignity back. He’s appeared to let the Republicans lead him around by the nose. Once more, he’s let them set the terms of the debate. His comment in the press room Friday, “I’ve been left at the altar twice,” was pathetic and embarrassing. You wanted to avert your eyes.

It’s come time, perhaps long-since come time, for Obama to take charge, show some strength and commit an act of political jujitsu that will leave the Republicans gasping for air.

"They reap the benefits while you bear the evils."

Robert Blatchford, from Merrie England (1895)

Do you find the champions of the factory system despising nature, and beauty, and art, and health—except in their speeches and lectures to you?

No. You will find these people living as far from the factories as they can get; and you will find them spending their long holidays in the most beautiful parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, or the Continent.

The pleasures they enjoy are denied to you. They preach the advantages of the factory system because they reap the benefits while you bear the evils.

To make wealth for themselves they destroy the beauty and the health of your dwelling-places; and then they sit in their suburban villas, or on the hills and terraces of the lovely southern countries, and sneer at the "sentimentality " of the men who ask you to cherish beauty and to prize health.

Or they point out to you the value of the "wages" which the factory system brings you, reminding you that you have carpets on your floors, and pianos in your parlors, and a week's holiday at Blackpool once a year.

But how much health or pleasure can you get out of a cheap and vulgar carpet? And what is the use of a piano if you have neither leisure nor means to learn to play it? And why should you prize that one week in the crowded, noisy watering-place, if health and fresh air and the great salt sea are mere sentimental follies?

And let me ask you is any carpet so beautiful or so pleasant as a carpet of grass and daisies? Is the fifth-rate music you play upon your cheap pianos as sweet as the songs of the gushing streams and joyous birds? And does a week at a spoiled and vulgar watering-place repay you for fifty-one weeks' toil and smother in a hideous and stinking town?

As a practical man, would you of your own choice convert a healthy and beautiful country like Surrey into an unhealthy and hideous country like Wigan or Cradley, just for the sake of being able once a year to go to Blackpool, and once a night to listen to a cracked piano?

"Surely joy is the condition of life."

Henry David Thoreau, from Natural History of Massachusetts

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the system. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health. To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

[...]

What is any man's discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the attrition is reflected upon the bank.

"People in Washington tell me that they're concerned about your tone."

"What's the point, man? The point of the show was truth-telling."

Obama "cutting the entitlement programmes that have been the defining hallmark of the Democratic party since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal."

Glenn Greenwald:

Wall Street banks, who earlier this year signed an extension of Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and who has escalated America's bankruptcy-inducing posture of Endless War, is now trying to reduce the debt by cutting benefits for America's most vulnerable – at the exact time that economic insecurity and income inequality are at all-time highs.

[...]

Obama has continued Bush/Cheney terrorism policies – once viciously denounced by Democrats – of indefinite detention, renditions, secret prisons by proxy, and sweeping secrecy doctrines.

He has gone further than his predecessor by waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seizing the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process far from any battlefield, massively escalating drone attacks in multiple nations, and asserting the authority to unilaterally prosecute a war (in Libya) even in defiance of a Congressional vote against authorising the war.

And now he is devoting all of his presidential power to cutting the entitlement programmes that have been the defining hallmark of the Democratic party since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The silence from progressive partisans is defeaning – and depressing, though sadly predictable.

They should rename the Democratic Party the Defeatist Party. In Obama, they found the perfect man to crush the last pretenses of party compassion for the poor and solidarity with the middle class.

"Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions."

"That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet 'pauper' is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the 'pauper' - oh, inexpressibly wicked word! - it is the well-to-do, who are the criminal classes."
- Richard Jefferies, from The Story of My Heart (1883)

"Shale gas is simply another Faustian bargain that humanity should not be making."

There's a very good post on fracking over at Automatic Earth.

It is very difficult to argue that fracking, particularly in areas like the Marcellus Shale, makes sense. Unconventional gas is far from being a clean fuel when the whole lifecycle is considered. In fact considering the substantial potential for releases of fugitive methane emissions, one cannot even argue that unconventional gas is an improvement in comparison with burning coal when it comes to climate impact, let alone an improvement on other environmental fronts.

Shale gas is simply another Faustian bargain that humanity should not be making. We run substantial long term risks, which we socialize, for the sake of short term private profits.

This is the typical human modus operandi, but it is high time we learned from our mistakes.

Chained CPI? "It's not as though you can forgo a prescribed heart bypass operation and opt for a cheaper hernia operation instead."

Michael Hiltzik:

Social Security's own actuaries have calculated that pegging cost-of-living increases to the chained CPI would cut seniors' benefits by nearly 10% over any 30-year span, compared with the current formula.

For the average retiree reaching age 85, the change would amount to an annual cut of nearly $1,000; by age 95, the reduction would rise to nearly $1,400. Over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan National Academy of Social Insurance, the change would cut total Social Security benefits by $112 billion.

The idea of using the chained CPI to cut Social Security benefits has built up a dangerous head of steam in Washington. It even came up during President Obama's news conference on Monday, though he nimbly dodged the issue. In the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, it's the flavor of the month in all budget debates.

[...]

It's not at all certain that elderly persons on fixed incomes can make the sort of lifestyle changes contemplated by the chained CPI, or even the standard CPI, as easily as other consumers.

That's because a larger portion of seniors' spending is concentrated in medical goods and services, which aren't as amenable to substitution as, say, oranges for apples; it's not as though you can forgo a prescribed heart bypass operation and opt for a cheaper hernia operation instead.

"If we are ever to win the battle, or even effectively engage it, we must win the words we use to define our struggle."

Rustbelt Radical:

Language is the greatest of all social institutions; it is the medium in which ideas travel and action organized, it is not neutral and our role in the waging of the class war is, in part, to wage a war to (re)appropriate language that elucidates and to expropriate the words that have been made obscure, an obscurity which hides their true history, as they are spoken through the ruling class. In doing so our history is lost, through the words used to understand it, to the whims of the enemy. If we are ever to win the battle, or even effectively engage it, we must win the words we use to define our struggle. It is an essential component in that most precious, for the survival of our species, of processes; that process by which the working class is transformed from a class ‘of itself’ into a class ‘for itself’.

"From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day, the trees, the hills, from my own soul—from these I think."

Richard Jefferies, from The Story of My Heart (1883):

There is so much beyond all that has ever yet been imagined. As I write these words, in the very moment, I feel that the whole air, the sunshine out yonder lighting up the ploughed earth, the distant sky, the circumambient ether, and that far space, is full of soul-secrets, soul-life, things outside the experience of all the ages. The fact of my own existence as I write, as I exist at this second, is so marvellous, so miracle-like, strange, and supernatural to me, that I unhesitatingly conclude I am always on the margin of life illimitable, and that there are higher conditions than existence. Everything around is supernatural; everything so full of unexplained meaning.

[...]

Now, to-day, as I write, I stand in exactly the same position as the Caveman. Written tradition, systems of culture, modes of thought, have for me no existence. If ever they took any hold of my mind it must have been very slight; they have long ago been erased.

From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day, the trees, the hills, from my own soul—from these I think.

And from p. 115:

It is in myself that I desire increase, profit, and exaltation of body, mind, and soul. The surroundings, the clothes, the dwelling, the social status, the circumstances are to me utterly indifferent. Let the floor of the room be bare, let the furniture be a plank table, the bed a mere pallet. Let the house be plain and simple, but in the midst of air and light. These are enough—a cave would be enough; in a warmer climate the open air would suffice. Let me be furnished in myself with health, safety, strength, the perfection of physical existence; let my mind be furnished with highest thoughts of soul-life. Let me be in myself myself fully. The pageantry of power, the still more foolish pageantry of wealth, the senseless precedence of place; I fail words to express my utter contempt for such pleasure or such ambitions. Let me be in myself myself fully, and those I love equally so.

It is enough to lie on the sward in the shadow of green boughs, to listen to the songs of summer, to drink in the sunlight, the air, the flowers, the sky, the beauty of all. Or upon the hill-tops to watch the white clouds rising over the curved hill-lines, their shadows descending the slope. Or on the beach to listen to the sweet sigh as the smooth sea runs up and recedes. It is lying beside the immortals, in-drawing the life of the ocean, the earth, and the sun.

"It is enough to lie on the sward in the shadow of green boughs, to listen to the songs of summer, to drink in the sunlight, the air, the flowers, the sky, the beauty of all."

"Today democracy means submission to our rule. ... Today we'll shake your hand, tomorrow we'll try to kill you."

Check out this Dennis Perrin interview on Diet Soap. Good stuff!

"The dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard ... have most colored his governing style."

Frank Rich:

For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.

He stocked his administration with brilliant personnel linked to the bubble: liberals, and especially Ivy League liberals. Nearly three years on, they have taken a toll both on the White House’s image and its policies. Obama arrives at his reelection campaign not merely with a weak performance on Wall Street crime enforcement and reform but also with a scattershot record (at best) of focusing on the main concern of Main Street: joblessness. One is a consequence of the other. His failure to push back against the financial sector, sparing it any responsibility for the economy it tanked, empowered it to roll over his agenda with its own.

"The claim that social programs are being gutted to benefit the American people and create jobs is a grotesque lie."

Bill Van Auken:

The claim that social programs are being gutted to benefit the American people and create jobs is a grotesque lie. The “pain” will be inflicted upon the working class, the poor, the elderly and the sick by two parties, the Democrats and Republicans, which are equally committed to “doing the right thing” for big business and Wall Street. The plan that is being hashed out behind the backs of the people has no more to do with providing jobs than the bailout of the banks nearly three years ago.

[...]

What is being prepared in the name of reducing the deficit is another gigantic transfer of wealth from the working class to the top 1 percent of American society, with both major parties, the congressional leadership and the Obama White House working together to advance the interests of the banks, the corporations and the financial elite at the expense of the vast majority of the people.

(h/t I Cite)

"We abdicated our public discussion to talking heads, ivy league brats, politicians, and celebrities."

Broadsnark:

Should people really be paid for having an opinion? Everyone has an opinion and everyone’s opinion is important. Why should Maureen Dowd or Matthew Yglesias to get paid for their thoughts? What makes them so special? Their analysis is usually downright sad next to most of yours. And if we professionalize opinionating, where does that leave us? Maybe it is not the loss of newsrooms that is responsible for a “decline in public discourse.” Maybe it is that we abdicated our public discussion to talking heads, ivy league brats, politicians, and celebrities.

"There are no millionaires—no professional, legalized, lifelong kleptomaniacs —among the birds and quadrupeds."

J. Howard Moore (from The Humane Review, 1901):

Instead of the highest, man is in some respects the lowest of the animal kingdom. Man is the most unchaste, the most drunken, the most egoistic, the most miserly, the most hypocritical and the most atrocious of living creatures. No animal, except man, kills for the mere sake of killing. For one being to take the life of another for purposes of selfish utility is bad enough, conscience knows. But the indiscriminate massacre of defenceless victims by armed and organised packs, just for pastime, is beyond characterization. The human species is the only species of animals that plunges to such depths of atrocity. Even vipers and hyenas do not kill for recreation. No animal, except man, habitually seeks wealth purely out of an insane impulse to accumulate. And no animal, except man, gloats over accumulations that are of no possible use to him, that are an injury and an abomination, and in whose acquisition he has committed irreparable crimes upon others. There are no millionaires—no professional, legalized, lifelong kleptomaniacs —among the birds and quadrupeds. No animal except man, spends so large a part of his energies striving for superiority —not superiority in usefulness, but that superiority which consists in simply getting on the heads of one's fellows to crow. And no animal practises common, ordinary morality to the beings of the world in which he lives so little, compared with the amount he preaches it, as man.

“I’ve got mine, who cares what happens to anyone I don’t know?”

Ian Welsh:

The sickness comes from the top, a rotten poison which has altered the character of nations. But it came from the bottom, first. It came from a population who became lazy and complacent and thought they had rights they didn’t have to guard like a dog with a bone; who thought they could just live their lives and leave politics to other people except for pulling a lever or marking a ballot every four years. It came from people who felt “I’ve got mine, who cares what happens to anyone I don’t know?” Unable to see themselves in others for longer than the gossamer blink of an eye, they were also unable to understand that what was done to others would also be done to them.

"They will be forgotten ... and their rights disregarded."

"It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
- Thomas Jefferson

"They still believe..."

[source]

Troutsky:

It is hard to see the way the whole Obama-care battle sapped the optimism out of the progressives, young and old, yet left them still clinging to their threadbare "democratic capitalism" like a leaky raft on the storm-tossed seas. Their old friend Max Baucus throws them bottles of salt water. They still believe health care is a "right" but can't make the link to food and housing and energy and education and everything else that is theirs to control if they had the courage to step up and take it.

They believe "better candidates" will win in the next election, they believe "common sense" will eventually prevail, they believe the uprising in Wisconsin signaled some profound change and that the Vermont model will provide a light through the tunnel. They believe in the Nation magazine and that capitalism can be reformed. I sat the whole two hours without saying a word.