Ya know, I've listened to several members of this forum go on and on about "the damned Democrats", but all of the Democrats I know are not anything like the Democrats AFW whines about at every opportunity. Many of the members of this forum have long complained about the Democratic party. However, the Democrats I know tend to be quite liberal, meaning left of center, (some are very left of center) and are just as angry about todays most important political events are you and I are.

So when some of the forum members curse the fucking democrats, I tend to take issue. Because there is NOTHING WRONG with "The Democrats", and the only real issue with the entire Democratic Party is that the Leadership has it's collective head up it's singular ass!

The Democratic party is not broken!

The Democratic party is you and me and everybody else that has traditionally, usually voted Democrat AND or who considers themselves to be left of center, or a "Liberal. You see, for most Americans there is no DLC or DNC. They have little idea that a Libertarian Republican is at all different than any other Republican. What the vast majority of Americans understand is that Republican = Conservative and Democrat = Liberal. It is this single fact that the Republicans have for decades now taken advantage of to paint ALL Democrats and Liberals as communist instruments of the devil himself. They have said the same things for so long that people tend to take it as truth, even though many have very liberal values, but can't deal with being labeled "Liberal". (Propel the Propaganda!)

The Democratic party is not broken. The Democratic Party lacks leadership that represents a majority of Americans who call them selves either a Democrat, or a Liberal (or both). The leadership of the Democratic party has been under assault from the corporate Republicans for decades, those who in recent times have been represented by the Neo-cons. Although the Neo-con ideology is not new. It's just got a modern coat of paint and a new name is all.

The Democratic party is nothing but people. Average, normal, everyday people. Some of us would even call some of them sheeple, which is entirely unfair. The problem in the Democratic party is people. The percentage of people in the Democratic party that are the problem is a very, very small percentage. That small percentage is almost entirely in the leadership of the party, and not in the people that make up the party. And it is the people that make up the party, that is the Democratic party, and not just the leadership that has failed to represent the people of the party.

This is why I state that the Democratic party is not broken. It simply needs to be tuned and tweaked so it runs smooth again. (if any political union ever has) By contrast the Republican party, is broken. It's clearly been taken to a place in which those who call themselves Republican or Conservative have pretty much followed lockstep in behind the party leaders. Certainly not all Conservatives are bad people. We have a few on this forum that have effectively demonstrated that they are not all brown shirts and that even among conservatives, there is reason for hope.


The Democratic Party is not broken. WE THE PEOPLE, that are the very fiber of what it is to be American, have the responsibility and the duty to be involved in our political system. (even if that's only 3 out of 10)

The Democratic Party is not broken. Not as long as people like you and me are informed, are involved, and who make any effort at all to help pull this potentially great country back to the left, to it's natural roots.



The Democratic Cheerleader has spoken.

Nope.



It's fixed.

If millions of Democrats can count you among them, then yes it sure is!

Surely, if the leadership (those with a voice, clout, control over direction) is out of touch and out of tune with the members (the vast majority who shall remain voiceless, clout-less and misdirected) then something isn't quite working as it should be?

OK, so it's not beyond repair, but it is, to all intents and purposes, at this moment in time, broken, in that it needs fixing.

The leadership of the party need to either start paying heed to the membership OR they need to be replaced. When that happens it will no longer be broken, but will, in fact, be fixed!

The problem is just that. Replacing the dead wood and corrupted roots that are ensconced in the party heirachy.
These weasels have wiggled their way into the positions of power and influence, sold their souls for connivance and influence, and are damned hard to replace, because to replace them you need people with the vision, drive, energy and scope to convince the voters to support them, the savvy to use the press and mass-media without it being apparent that they are bending it to their will, and the courage and immense rock-solid conviction and pure armor of moral and ethical superiority to resist the insiduous sleeze of the military/industrial complex...
You also need the support and strength of sharp and sage advisors, the wisdom, calm and level-headed clarity of a deep ocean racer, and the spirit of an eagle, able to soar high and see the whole picture without resorting to John Asscroft type stupidity...and the balls (and it's feminin equivalent..) to be able to say "No."

This, sadly, is why we are led by moral and ethical pygmies. Stunted parasites that have the time and greed neccessary to sell themselves to Mamon and drive the whole race into a spiritual and ethical cul-de-sac.

The few good women and men are marginalised and ridiculed, ignored and pushed aside in the braying mass of sycophants and fools that follow the stooge with the best hair and whitest teeth as they sweep past the outstretched hands and fold their stretched egos into the equally stretched limos that whisk them away to another round of drumming up oodles of spon for the campaign chest in some obscene perversity of Democracy-through-bigger-spending-than-the-other-contenders....

Look at Pelosi, at Reid, at half the silent, stumbling, lost souls that waffle and flutter like dim butterflies under the avaristic searchlight beam of greed blazed on them from the neocon-hijacked Conservative benches full of leering, pouting, puffed up fools but who have the conviction of the desperate, the certitude of the ignorant, and the power of deception and ammorality on their side.
These people have been co-opted by the very menace that disposed of the few true Conservatives left standing in the sombre halls of the GOP, and there isn't a blind thing you can do, except strain your lungs and wave your flags. Who here, and elsewhere, has the time and sacrifice neccessary to devote themselves to fighting the machine ? How many Cindy Sheehan's will it take to gut the rotting carcasse of the Democratic Party giant, dragging out the leeches and vipers, and replacing them with REAL Americans who resist the slither of the Beast ?
And at what cost ?


I'm a little lost...

It has been broken for quite a while.

When was the last time you could vote in a General Election and trust that the Candidate would do what they said.

How many people voted the Dems in 2006 only to have them pussy out on the Iraq issue?

There's only a couple I see with guts, but they don't have a chance of being elected.

Patience and persistance. If enough people want to make change, then depending on the size of what gets the change, slowly it will happen.


If we bash our head against the wall like this, do you know what you get?
That's right, a sore head. And no matter how many times you bash your head on that wall, it never moves.

But, if you were to lean on that wall, to apply steady, even and consistant pressure on the wall, eventually it will crack.
Ever see a retaining wall that wqas unable to hold back the soil behind it?
Ever see a dandylion weed grow in a crack in the side walk, and eventually the side walk had to be replaced?

I personally don't wanna hurt my head, and get no where.
So, I won't go for the immediate gratification of having to see the changes happen before my eyes.
I will instead plant many seeds knowing that some won't, but some will grow. And that possibly a few of these seeds will one day grow up to be massive shade trees.

I've gotta go with karen on this...



if a car's computer is shot, then nothing works properly. It's broken... what's worse, If you try to drive a broken car, it tends to get even more broken, to the point where it cant be repaired. sure, you can slavage some wiring, and the windshield wipers, but the car is most definately broken.

The issue there is there are many Democrats wanting to change the direction of the war, but not enough to make up a 2/3 majority, so to blame the whole party is missing the mark.

The whole car is not broken.
Just the brain is defective.
Replace that and all is well again with the car.

The Democratic Party is very definately broken, and its much more than just the leadership that is at fault. It is a majority of the Democrats who hold national office. I am not a Democrat. I am a progressive. My values are progressive. What I see in the national Democratic Party is anything but progressive, although they do have their moments (which is something you can never say about the Republicans, who are never progressive). But to suggest that the Democratic Party is not broken for progressives and progressive values is a lie. I think people on this forum are smart enough to know that.

The issue is that the millions of people just like me who think the direction taken concerning many issues,
not the least of which is the war, has not represented my views, or that of the largest majority of American liberals.

I am the Democratic party, me and the millions of Average Americans just like me who call them selves liberal or Democrat or both.

The Party is NOT those leaders we elected to represent us, who it seems have chosen to NOT represent us.
We hired a boss to run this hot dog stand that seems to refuse to sell hot dogs!
And if that is the case, then it is up to the Democratic party, (Democratic party = Millions of Americans just like me) to fire these defective leaders and try a new batch in their positions!

sky, would you consider the party too be a living being?

I'm curious, Highstreet. Why are you using a slang word for female genitalia to illustrate cowardice?

Do you find female genitalia particularly cowardly?

Why is it that for some men, slang terms for women's body parts are the worst insults they can think of?

Well to call someone a D*** is offensive as well, people are just afraid of genitalia references in general.

The brain is not replaceable. When attempts are made to replace the brain, the progressive replacement parts are infected and become as sick as the rest of the brain.

I don't have 100 years to wait for the kind of tiny incremental changes that make sky happy. I want to see REAL change in my lifetime, not the kind of piddling crap that is put out to us as a sign of progress.

I'm not willing to keep on investing in the Model T. I want a state of the art Prius.

The question is, how is this end achieved? The leaders of the party seem pretty firmly ensconced to me, and if they're not, I'm willing to bet there's quite a few, just like them, ready to take the helm. -Maybe I'm being slightly pessimistic here, but that just seems to be the case from my POV.
I'm tempted to go back t an argument I've made here several imes before - that it's the system that's broke, but I'll hold off and see how this develops.

It is,but not as ofencive as calling someone a c***, and I believe that's Maxanne's point.

and why do women consider telling men too suck their d***s such a radical statement? We're a screwed up bunch people that lack vocabulary, and the ability too use truely cutting comments tailor made for the specific person. Trust me, if you do a little research into your target, you'll pull off insults more effectively, even without vulgarity.

I'm not sure why you're telling me this.

Women's body parts are slandered a lot more than men's. We may call Dick Cheney a "prick" but there's a grudging sort of respect in "prick" - unlike "pussy" which is used as a slang term for coward.

Whenever locker room boyz want to insult each other they use terms like "pussy" and "c*unt" - or "you hit like a girl" or "you run like a girl". Clearly in the machismo male world, being called a girl (or a girl's vagina) is the worst thing you can be or say.

women's body parts are slandered more than men's? when was the last time we had a self serving arrogant asshole subjecting the country to their will and profit by the name of "pussy?"
Tricky Dick
Dick Cheney
Dick Armitage...

the list goes on and on

The same way anything is achieved!

We want to fight global warming, and dammit, we're gonna. But the money people don't want us to even know about climate change let alone fight it.

So what we we gonna do?





We're gonna do what ever it is that we can do. Our american society is roughly 300 million people.
If only 20% do anything at all, the result would be astounding!
If only 3% do anything at all, the results would still be significant!

If instead enough people say we can't do anything about it, nothing will ever change and we deserve what they give us.

climate change can'tt be oovershadowed by propaganda and political mooney strangleholds. There are studies, and scientists that will proove its cosequence. you can't equate the issue with the democratic party. People don't realize they're getting hit with a shitsorm of a bunch of elitists that own the media... they realize when they get hit by a tornado.

We were talking about the brain of the car. Your use of the analogy in this way is disingenious.

The Political Brain of the Democratic Party, Hell of the entire Unites States,
Isd ONLY, (No more and no less) than what we the people make it to be, or allow to to be.


The choice really is ours to make.
Not yours, not mine, not TJ's. The decision is a collective one.
The ant colony can do without a single ant. But the ant colony is nothing but a large collection of single ants.




The car is not broken. When the fuel pump in my truck quit, did I throw it away?
I don't think so Harriot. I replaced the proken part even though it took a fair amount of my effort, (I am not a mechanic, the fuel pump is located in the gas tank) and a fair amount of my income to accomplish the task. I had no choice. I need my transportation, so I had to either fix it or walk 10 miles to work. Once the pump was replaced and everything back together, though the truck is warn, has over 200,000 miles on it and isn't a flashy new model, it still performs the required task.

The truck was not broken. The party is not broken.
The question is, do you, (every American) has the gumption to do what needs to be done to save your country?

Or shall we instead whine about how we can't do that?

If they were listening to the 70% + of Americans who want it to end, and the 60% who want us out within a year, they would get some guts and vote down the funding.

They don't need some false 2/3 majority to do it. They have a majority, they just need to vote against the funding bills. Those who keep voting for funding bills only show their true allegiance to Halliburton, Blackwater, the Carlyle Group, KBR and others of the Military Industrial Complex.

We need real leadership by someone who has consistently voted against the war in the face of adversity.

I should have used "whimps".

The idea that all men are woman haters is getting a little out of hand. Chill out, it is just a slang term. No offense intended.

Much of the system is broken, I agree. Biased towards those who pander to lobbyists, special interests, and Corporations.

It helps if we put leaders in who have a proven track record, so we know they won't just lie to us and do the opposite when they get in office.

Aha!
... So, when 'Pussy' rises in common usage to become a given name we'll have achieved equality!

Don't tell me what to think, Mr. Man.

You may not have intended offense - but you are using offensive terminology. It's up to YOU to think about the words you use, and what they mean.

Go ahead - tell me I'm wrong about the way slang terms for women's genitals are used as an insult by men. Prove me wrong - I'm waiting.

You can't. And every time you, or some other guy uses that kind of terminology, you perpetuate the kind of crass, insulting view of women that a lot of young guys are growing up with. You perpetuate the bitches and ho's mentality. That language perpetuates a certain kind of image and thought process that I believe encourages violence against women. If all women are is body parts, it makes hurting or killing us a lot easier. In fact, you are using language that contributes to the oppression of my gender.

And then you have the audacity to tell me to chill?

Ain't the patriarchy grand.

High you should just call people A$$holes and then we can all be equal.

Damn, sometimes you progressives are hard to follow. We went from the Democratic party being broken to body parts. Perosnally, I hold great reverance to such body parts as being discussed. And the party....well, fucked up as a soup sandwich comes to mind. Course the GOP...installed screen doors on its submarine some time ago.

Damn....Im a simple thinker arent I?

That's certainly easier than having an honest discussion about the language we use, isn't it? Makes you kind of uncomfortable to address male privilege, doesn't it?

No. I find it sad that some people are so hyper sensitive that they feel the need to hijack a thread because their feelings got hurt. You certainly don't seem to be shy about insulting people. I'm so tired of the PC brigade in this country that I could puke.

Yeah, it was so much better when you could call a broad a broad and a nigger a nigger.

My feelings aren't hurt, dickbreath. I'm pointing out something very real in the language men use.

Instead of trying to dismiss it as some sort of PC - why not prove me wrong? Prove to me that I'm wrong about the terms men use to insult each other.

dp

We have to rebuild the party from the foundation up.
Get new people into politics. Start at the beginning. Rebuild from the foundation up.


Look. If the Neo-cons can take over and hijack the Republican party,
I see qabsolutely NO REASON why the Progressives can't take over and hijack the Democratic party.


Get new people involved at the local level.
Start at the beginning and include the grass roots.
Rebuild from the foundation on up.





So, why not start a new party? Why not just dump the democrats all together?
Because, as always, most people won't be involved, and quite a few will be very uninformed.
However, most people, even the uninformed understand that the Democratic party is the liberal party.
If you build a new party you have an entirely unknown entity.

The name recognition is a very large part of the national infractructue the Democratic party already has.
If Starting a whole brand new party were such a great idea, why did the Neo-cons swipe the Republican party?


The entity that is the Democratic party is not broken. It's leadership has lost touch with We The People that are the Democrats. It's not broken, but because of the leadership it's not doing what it's supposed to do.

Then it's time for new leadership.

I agree with Maxanne.
Just because YOU don't think it was offensive, doesn't mean it was not offensive.


Personally I think I'm all that and a bag of chips too!
Fortunately I'm about the only one who agrees with me on that!

To continue the OT bit of this post just a fraction longer, just before I applaud your statement, Sky, ( because YOU are exactly what the Dems need to kickstart the meandering machine...) concerning the words that Maxanne, quite rightly, finds derogatory.
This is a deliberate and subtle ploy to undermine and divide, and it's been used ever since Women actually started to think about "equality", because the first step to destroying or subjugating your "enemy" is to dehumanise them, or bring them down to a level of simple beasts to be culled or herded at will.
Language and the choice of vocabulary are weapons every bit as devastating as an atomic bomb, and their results can last almost as long, and be just as insiduous as radiation. Sound crazy and far fetched ? Think about it.

I'm personally aghast at the current crop of video and role-playing games with the underlying messages, and the choice of toys and stuff for kids, plus the misogynist attitudes so frequent in the pimped-up 'gangsta-rap', 'neo-porno' or 'neo-nazi" style cultures, amongst others, and the subliminal messages received by so many young people who blur the line between fantasy and reality. The choice of words reflects this. As thinking adults, we may think we are free and able to differentiate between fact and fantasy, but our conditioning often tells others that this is not so in what we say and how we say it. Weighing up words is a real task, and this is possibly why wise people often say little....

Here's a fascinating article by Orwell about the way words become weapons, and mould thought processes and aid as props for ideology, not because they contain neccessarily "bad language", but by their structure and the way the mind assimilates the sometimes unworded but clearly expressed meaning of the writer.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

As an aside, I have no hesitation calling someone like John Boltin' an asshole, because I truly believe that he's full of shit. I don't think I have many "issues" with my body's waste-disposal system, so associating it to a neocon feels somehow apt, to me.
The tingly, exciting bits of a Woman, though, well, I have a hard time linking them to a cowardly chicken part of the Democratic Party, and I don't think the chicken would mind being used in that context....


Oh yeah, Sky...

Good answer!

Thank you Rou! Very well put; very well thought out! (Including the bit about Sky!)

What do you suggest? that we discontinue the use of genitalia related insults? does it stop there, or would you endorse the removal of gender specific pronouns, too? Just flat out remove gender from our everyday conversation? I'm not trying to exaggerate, I've actually heard this POV espoused a few times. What lengths should our society go to to create a more equal environment?

You're doing a good job of illustrating what happens when male privilege is questioned or threatened. Instead of saying, "gee, wow, maybe we should be concerned about the language we use when it comes to women," you go right to suggesting I'm advocating some kind of dramatic moral language cleansing.

A brief and incomplete look at history:

Women in this country were the property of men until late in the 1800's. Women belonged first to their fathers, or brothers, then to husbands. They were property. They could not own anything, they could not sign legal contracts, they could not have their own money. They had no legal say about their children. Women had no legal rights at all. We were the property of men. We were just called "daughter", "sister," or "wife" instead of SLAVE - but slave is what we were.

This began to slowly change in the late 1800's, thanks to the suffragette movement. It's still slowly changing. Women in this country, and in most of the rest of the world are still not regarded as equals.

After decades of fighting hard, women finally won the right to vote in 1921. I suggest watching the HBO film "Iron Jawed Angels" for a look at what the last part of that fight looked like. Suffragettes were beaten on the streets by men who were reluctant to give up their male privilege. They were sent to prison and tortured. Alice Paul was waterboarded by male jailers.

I grew up hearing in the 60's and 70's that if women wanted equal rights they had to "earn" them. Girls were not allowed to take certain classes at my high school because they were for boys.

The sexual double standard I grew up with - "good girls don't" but "boys will be boys" is alive and well in the United States in the year 2007.

Women still earn less money than men. Women are still beaten, raped, and killed with little consequence unless they are photogenic blondes. Women run from their lives every year from violent men - because our justice system (developed by and run by men) doesn't care about women's lives - not really. Our reproductive choices are decided for us by powerful white men who hate and fear us.

So - do try to understand what I'm talking about when I bring up the use of language. You wouldn't use derogatory racist terms to describe African Americans, Latinos, Jews, or a person of any other ethnic minority - BUT - you don't think twice about using terms that are derogatory and insulting to women. You wouldn't say insulting things to people who have slavery in their background - not slavery of the African American variety. Women were never actually given the title of slave - even though we were slaves. That's male privilege. When this is dismissed as "PC" or "whining" you are using your privilege as the dominent, privileged gender to continue to insult, demean, and harass the women of the world.

What do I want? I want men to think about what they do and say, and think about how it affects WOMEN. I want men to develop some awareness and sensitivity.

It's not impossible - you've seen Rousseau's post - he gets it. Based on past conversations with Abell and Jubal, I know they get it, too. If right leaning guys can get it, surely so can "libruls."

It sounds really simple for men to be able to step back and look at ourselves critically, but it's probably one of the hardest things to do, because our entire Western culture is against us, regardless of the glorious dreaming of the utopists...

There is nothing "Politically correct" at all, gkh6 and Seuss, in Maxanne's statement. The subject has nothing to do with "political correctness", but it has everything to do with simple, pure, unadulterated respect.

We seem to be missing that a lot, these dark days.

Wrap your mind around this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis

As an aside, on the "language as a weapon" theme, Ian M Banks wrote a blindingly good book with this as a sub-theme, called "The player of games." It explores a possible future and a non-gender specific language called Marain, which is universal and vehicules the value of the Culture by it's inoffensiveness. It's eye and mind-opening stuff. And a ripping good read, curled up in front of a crackling log fire with a foot or two of snow outside...

( Rousseau scrambles to the top of his book heap and brandishes the well dog-eared novel in the face of grim gutter-slang slings and arrows...... )

I was asking a question, not being critical

fair enough.

I'm genuinely curious as to how some think this can be achieved. i don't believe i said anything about p.c., and I understand the sexism that exists in the society in which we live. I don't run around calling women bitches or ho's, unless they're acting like them. I believe that their may be some underpinng of sexism in my subconcious that i have yet to work on. I was raised in a cloistered elitist family, that feared anything different. recognising this, I've done my best to cleanse my perspective of fear toward people of color, gay people, and blind devotion to government. I've done well with that (I believe,) but the sexism thing seems a bit more insideous, as, to a certain extent, it's accepted. Not just by the old boys club in their ivory tower, but by the men and women i see everywhere on a daily basis. The days of bra burnerning seem to have withered into the days of trying to figure out just how far (the majority of) women can go to make themselves into sex objects. max, you've got to see this too - without a re-birth of women's lib in the minds of society, how would you expect those being given the power to give it up? in fact from what I've seen, it's the power of sex that many women have grasped as their great equalizer. Hell... a women being able to dress the way they do has somehow been perverted by the media that talks about how horrible it is that women are being forced to wear burkas in islamic countries... not that that's right, but its not right that objectifying oneself has become an expression of freedom...
I believe a woman should dress however the hell she wants to, but the fashion choices today are indicative of both men AND women accepting sexism as an institutionalized perspective.

I will also never endorse the removal of the concept of sex in general - the removal of gender specific terms is negating to the inherant beautiful qualities in the differences between the sexes. We are different - one sex is no better than another, but there are differences, not just on a physical level.

Hence the reason why derogatory terms linked to Female sexuality are used as abuse by men, whether consciously or unconsciously.
It's a reflection of our upbringing, and accepting it and understanding it (MOST important..) are steps toward becoming a far better person.

The whole concept of "politically correct" has been swung around and used as a battering ram by people who WANT the type of verbal denigration so ingrained by the shadow-players to continue to function.

It's actually a really simple thing to do. Thinking before speaking....hence it's danger to the Powers That Be.

You're on the right track, Seuss.

I also don't do PC.
I quite literally follow the golden rule.

That said....


As I would wish to be respected, I shall respect others.