Monday, January 30, 2006

We are not tilting at windmills

I'm not sure who decided that the Kerry-led filibuster had to be called quixotic. I'd suspect it was a Republican talking point if I believed that the Republicans would ever put out talking points involving the word "quixotic". Have you ever been to the GOP website and seen how their action alerts are full of bold type, underlining, and all caps? No, don't go now, it's vomit-inducing.

In any case, whatever it was, it was not quixotic. Don Quixote was delusional. He tilted at windmills because he thought they were giants. The ordinary world was too complex and not romantic enough for him. He wanted simplicity and dreamed up a world in which he could pursue his pure and noble ideals unburdened by reality.

I suppose what people mean when they say Kerry's filibuster attempt was quixotic is that because they believed it was doomed to fail, it was entirely unrealistic. Actually, what most people meant was that Kerry, in a cheap publicity stunt, used the quixotic idealism of the netroots to launch a filibuster he knew was doomed to fail, without any regard for the harm he might do to the Dems in the process.

Well, the filibuster failed. I don't know Kerry's reasons for taking on the cause. Time will tell if he's had a genuine change of heart and injection of courage, or wanted netroots cred for 2008.

But our quest was not quixotic.* What we see before us are not windmills. We are not delusional, foolishly idealistic, or simple-minded. We do not shun complexity. It is just this: We see.

We are watching as our nation turns to fascism. We try to stop it any way we can. Sometimes our letters and our phone calls seem to make a difference (remember Sinclair Broadcasting?). And sometimes, we put our hearts into something, like a filibuster, and we lose the fight. Whatever was said about the fight beforehand, it was not doomed to fail. It was not a minor issue. Alito, like everything else this President has done, will be, I do not doubt, a disaster for our country. (And if he is not, then I will eat my words, with gratitude. Who would be pleased to be right about such a thing?)

My first reaction to the cloture vote results (73 for, 25 against) was disappointment. Our side lost. Again. Why do we suck so much? There's that terrible feeling of letdown, which is actually just our testosterone levels sinking. That's biology. We were the losers, so next time we should be good little socially subordinate citizens and not challenge the biggest baddest monkeys around.

That's what our brains think is going on, and that's why we feel the way we do right now. But our brains are wrong.

"We" are not "the Democrats". The Democratic Party is the only instrument that we have, right now, to stand up for us in Congress. It's not much. It's rusty. It's got a broken handle. It's not even made to do what we want it to do. It malfunctions. It's held together with duct tape and gum. We didn't make it, we don't have the instructions, there's no warranty, and the manufacturer is unhelpful. But it's all we have to use in that arena, so we do our best with it. It's a lot like javascript, come to think of it. Whatever we manage to get done using the DNC -- or any elected person with a D after their name -- is gravy. We managed to get a single Senator to say the word filibuster? Gravy. We got 25 Senators to vote to filibuster? Double-plus gravy. We lost, you say? "We" didn't lose anything -- last I checked, we had nothing to lose. I daresay not a single person reading this post cast a vote on the Senate floor today, or ever will.

It's not that I believe that we shouldn't bother to try to get politicians to do our will. We ought to believe we can get them to do our will, just as we ought to believe that we can get javascript code to do our will. But when they don't, or do so only partially, or crash and burn, we don't need to fall with them. We are not The Party. We are not even The Netroots.

We are just people who see.

You can tell us and tell us that the giants we see are really only windmills, that things are not as bad as they seem, but we know better. You can say we're not torturing people, not spying on innocents, not bombing civilians, not destroying the earth or the constitution, but we know better. It's a burden to see these things. It is such an enormous burden, and it is so ugly, what we see, and so hopeless, and everything we do seems so pathetically doomed to failure, that it is a miracle that we bother to continue to see.

We are not tilting at windmills. We are riding a skinny horse, yes, and we carry a rusty sword. But the giant is real, and that makes what we do the very antithesis of quixotic. It makes it noble. Let the alpha monkeys gibber and gloat. Let the timid ones shake their fingers at us for the foolish risk we took. We've lost nothing. We had nothing to begin with. We fight not because we have the power to win, but because acting on the truth has a power in itself. It is how we disenthrall ourselves, day after day, so that we can help our fellow citizens to do the same.

Our fellow citizens are dreaming. They are under a terrible enchantment, and they need us now to wake them up.

*Running Ed Kennedy for President and Barney Frank as veep -- now, that would be quixotic.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home