Table Scraps
I want to quote a very perceptive comment from Americablog:
This leads me to something that I have been thinking about, but am almost afraid to say out loud: Gay marriage is our abortion. There's a difference, of course- I support gay marriage, and don't support bans on abortion. What I mean is that, like the recent flurry of State laws aimed at stopping abortion, gay marriage is the bone that our "leaders" throw us to get us to forgive them for not dealing honestly with the real issues facing all of us. Obama is selling down the river everything it is supposed to mean to be a Democrat, and thereby helping the Republicans cause a new depression, but it's all okay, because he is going to let gay people get married. That's the idea, anyway.
Well, it's not okay with me. I want to live in a country with the standard of living provided by other rich industrialized countries, not in a newly-created third world hellhole. That is the real choice facing this country, and pandering to the base with marginal social issues is going to do no more to solve that problem than teaching creationism or preaching about meaningless "family values."
"But right now Progressives are the Table Scraps Wing of the NeoLiberal Party, and a little conflicted about staying there. Or, as Sam Seder noted on his Majority Report program today (paraphrasing): It's odd how the Obama administration starts showing up on one of the progressive social issues, just when it's screwing them on an economic one. "
This leads me to something that I have been thinking about, but am almost afraid to say out loud: Gay marriage is our abortion. There's a difference, of course- I support gay marriage, and don't support bans on abortion. What I mean is that, like the recent flurry of State laws aimed at stopping abortion, gay marriage is the bone that our "leaders" throw us to get us to forgive them for not dealing honestly with the real issues facing all of us. Obama is selling down the river everything it is supposed to mean to be a Democrat, and thereby helping the Republicans cause a new depression, but it's all okay, because he is going to let gay people get married. That's the idea, anyway.
Well, it's not okay with me. I want to live in a country with the standard of living provided by other rich industrialized countries, not in a newly-created third world hellhole. That is the real choice facing this country, and pandering to the base with marginal social issues is going to do no more to solve that problem than teaching creationism or preaching about meaningless "family values."
Comments
It is indeed a ‘marginal social issue’. It doesn’t divert you from a feeling of betrayal on economic issues which are of incalculably greater impact.
Ergo… why would they do it? other than because ‘you’ want it anyway and can be done and should be done?
“Gay marriage is our abortion”…
I’m not sure I’d go with that equivalence, because it accedes a vulnerability to manipulation regarding moral issues that is on a par with religious fundamentalists, which I don’t think is true.
As I said.. it doesn’t divert you.
As I tried to make clear, I am in no way comparing the issues themselves. Obviously, I believe these left wing causes are justified, and the right wing ones are motivated by the basest sort of human emotions.
That still doesn't change my view (at least today- prove me wrong, Barack) that he is trying to manipulate us through issues that are totally tangential to the real problems facing our country, while capitulating to the rich, just like a Republican, on all of the actions that might really get us out of the economic problems that affect all of us.
I like the guy, I suspect you do too, but he has to stand up to the people who would rob the world blind without compunction, and then call themselves moral.