I’ve been reading the progressive Web since it was born. I think I’m UID #16 on Daily Kos almost by accident, but I’ve been around at least that long—I was reading Kos before the Scoop site started. The first post on here I can identify as progressive is #19, from November 11, 2001, long before I even had categories or anything like that.

I’ve been paying closer attention to politics since (surprise) the 2000 Presidential election, because it suddenly seemed like “Rule of law! Rule of law!” was defined as “whatever Republicans say it is,” and of course, that’s what happened for eight years. On top of one national atrocity after another (whoever placed a bet at Lloyd’s of London in 1999 that said “Torture becomes official U.S. policy before end of decade” has won a bunch of money), the craziness here in Oklahoma was getting crazier and crazier. I was watching to make sure they didn’t pass a law that says “gay people can’t live within 50 yards of indoor plumbing, with 10 years imprisonment upon first offense,” because you know it’s the kind of stuff they want to pass. Sally Kern has made no bones about her agenda.

But other than offer my voice, there is little I can do about any of it. I am not and never will be a viable candidate for any political office. (If nominated, I would not run, etc.) I do not aspire to be a “pundit” of any kind, not even really about the Macintosh or Apple. (People shouldn’t believe anything I say just because I say it. They should look it up and decide for themselves.) All I can do is keep up with the news, offer opinions on the subject, and hope that in some small way they shape opinion somewhere, and something gets done.

I no longer believe that has any quantifiable chance of happening.

• Despite clear evidence that Sen. James Mountain Inhofe is not only incompetent but dangerous and driven by hate and spite, Oklahomans re-elected him one year ago by a huge margin. He’s since spent the past year making the state into a further laughingstock, promoting policies that hurt Oklahomans and the planet, while sanctimonously issuing spittle-flecked hatred that it’s his opponents who want to kill everyone.

  The other senator, Tom Coburn, is just as bad. He says that providing people with health insurance will kill them. He says Nelson’s extortion to keep women from having a legal medical procedure that he himself has performed numerous times (including the time he went beyond the patient’s wishes and sterlized her without her consent) is “throwing unborn babies under the bus,” presuming by ripping them out of the mothers who want them (and don’t have healthcare), or something. He’s obstructed and blocked at every opportunity, including delaying key funds for the troops he allegedly supports.

• And he will probably cruise to re-election victory next year because none of this gets reported in OKC or Tulsa. It just disappears down the memory hole. Inhofe, Coburn, Kern, and other dangerously radical John Birch conservatives pull stuff like this every day, and it never ever makes the local news, nor does it make the newspaper unless it’s excused in some fashion. Again, for those who don’t remember, I’ll remind you that the previous Democratic governor of Oklahoma was attacked by the same media for imagined offenses from day one, to the point of driving his son to suicide.

  I’ve pointed out many times that there will be no progress in Oklahoma until there are progressive voices heard in Oklahoma, but I’m pissing into the wind. Those who have the ability do not have the energy or the resources; those who might have the resources are incapable or unwilling to use them. There is no pushback against the Oklahoma media with any traction, and so Inhofe and Coburn are hailed are responsible politicians and 90% of Oklahomans will never know any different. Not even the Oklahoma Democratic Party will attack these America-haters, and if they do speak out against them, their tone is barely confrontational and almost apologetic at times. If Oklahomans like one thing, it’s someone who fights. Oklahoma Democrats don’t fight.

• On the national scene, we’ve been told that nothing good can happen until Democrats controlled Congress. That came to pass in January 2007, and nothing happened, so we were told Democrats needed the White House and not just a House majority but a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That came to pass in 2009, and…nothing happened. Instead, as you know, the history of health care reform in the Senate has been for the Democrats to start with their compromise position and then give all of that away to preening assholes like Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson. The result from the Senate is a bill that is so watered down that I am not convinced it will deliver any of the reforms it promises. It does not “provide health care” to 30 million uninsured people. It requires them to purchase that insurance, from private companies, with no cost controls, and without subsidies to cover them. It’s like forcing every renter to have renter’s insurance without making sure affordable insurance is available.

  At this point, I can’t see any evidence that it matters whether the Democratic leadership is unable or unwilling to maintain party discipline. The result is the same—they told us they’d deliver initiatives if we gave them the most incredible majorities of five decades. We did that, and they not only didn’t deliver, they’re mad at us for expecting them to deliver on it.

I’d love to fix this, but I can’t. Even when I’m absolutely sure of what would work better than the status quo, I have only the most marginal of voices that gets no attention. It doesn’t bother me that this blog gets no traffic (the server doesn’t need the strain). When these topics (especially about Oklahoma) have come up in other places, I’ve posted or commented in those places and explained what’s going on. And I get ignored. I don’t get argued with, I don’t get agreed with, I get ignored. It’s as if I never said anything, as if my comment wasn’t even part of the thread. That doesn’t happen anywhere else. My comments on food blogs, technology blogs, entertainment blogs all get some kind of response. On progressive blogs, it’s been a complete waste of energy.

I mean, it wasn’t always as bad as the last time I tried to post a diary at Daily Kos, but take a look at the last diary I did post there. It got 11 comments, which is a lot for something I post there. It was about the Oklahoma Bank[st]ers Association running TV ads against health care reform, and was a modest attempt to get people with louder voices to pick up on this and put some pressure on them to stop it.

So what did I get? About two comments on topic, three insulting Oklahoma, and the rest just marginally related, like “OK is not a safe place for WOMEN!!” and “that guys has a funny name.” And that, folks, is the cream of the crop when it comes to reaction for anything I’ve said on progressive causes in the past eight years.

The most-read message in the history of this blog is this one, and it was wrong: it was my instant-reaction belief that the Bush Justice Department deciding not to prosecute Contempt of [Democratic] Congress would be seen later as that administration’s equivalent of the Saturday Night Massacre. It’s been read over 33,700 times, and more than 22,000 of those happened in the first 24 hours because it got linked on Reddit not long after it was posted. (I was thrilled to realize that the server could handle the load, honestly.)

I can’t complain that no one read it. But—nothing happened. Just a couple of weeks later, the entire incident had itself gone down the memory hole, like everything outrageous that any Oklahoma Republican does.

It’s extremely difficult to argue, given all this evidence, that anything I’ve done for progressive causes has made the slightest bit of difference. As the new workflow takes shape, and the limitations on work hours become clearer than they were even a year ago (not that there would be limits, but what they have to be for a sustainable workflow), I have to give up those things that both take a fair amount of time and that don’t seem to be accomplishing anything.

Participating in progressive politics seems to be #1 on the list.

I understand casual visitors will write this off as another “GBCW” missive, which it’s not, but that’s how it goes. If I’m going to take an hour to say something, then unless it’s just a personal vent, it needs to make a difference somewhere. It needs to bring a perspective that’s not being offered, or information that people can use, or just something that makes it more than a vanity exercise. Yet every piece of evidence I can muster says that my political opinions are the very definition of a vanity exercise. I simply can’t afford to indulge that any longer.

So I’m going to try giving it up. It may be like saying “I’ll give up football,” and I discover in a few weeks that I’m really hooked and can’t shake it, but I’m gonna try. I’m about to archive the couple of dozen progressive news feeds I read, including several I’ve read every day for about eight years, and remove them from NetNewsWire and from “Top Sites” in Safari on the machine I use to read things when the big machine is busy. I’m dropping the progressive podcasts that I rarely listen to and giving up on Countdown (which is more polemic than enlightening anymore) and Rachel Maddow (because it’s just too depressing). I think I’ll miss Atrios most of all.

I know I can always go check them out on the unlikely chance something good happens, but I can’t keep getting emotionally involved in these things despite evidence that it has zero impact. I’m just going to try to do the things I’m good at doing, until and unless the Congress or the Legislature passes some law that makes it impossible for me to live freely where I choose. If that happens, I’ll leave Oklahoma or go to jail or whatever limited options remain to me at that point.

But in this place, at this time, there is nothing I can do to help, and plenty I should be doing in areas where I can make a difference. I just have to cross my fingers and hope that Sally Kern doesn’t manage to get all gay people imprisoned as she so fervently hopes. I can do no more.

[all in my humble, non-professional opinion, which is worth exactly what you paid for it]

The next play in the healthcare debate is to head to the freepers, teabaggers, and other IGFMY'ers and find their comments on the reproductive health language from Stupak and Nelson. It's incredibly easy to show that these folks find this "compromise" intolerable because it doesn't ban all abortions everywhere and execute everyone involved in thinking about one. This only convinces the Villagers that this is a "bipartisan" compromise, but it should show the Democrats that the teabag right is infuriated by it and is out for Ben Nelson's head (as if they weren't anyway, because he's a Democrat).

It shouldn't take much more effort to find some people commenting about how at least this will keep the "freeloaders" of defined minority groups (perhaps profanely defined) from getting "free abortions," so it's at least a start. Highlight these comments and make defenders disown them.

You may say this is "nutpicking", but there are some significant differences:

1. The right does this kind of thing all the time, and it's therefore easy to call them on it if they complain about it now. Granted, the wingnuts don't seem to have the "shame" gene to kick in when they openly and loudly advocate that a given action is only bad when others do it, but it makes the people trying to limit reproductive rights go on the record as saying that keeping it out of the hands of poor folk is not their intention. That infuriates the right even more, negating any political benefit the Stupaks and Nelsons had from trying this gambit.

2. It then shifts the conversation to "If that's not it, then what is this amendment really all about?" When they come back with "no federal money for abortions," even the Villagers know that the amendment doesn't do that—the Hyde Amendment from way back when did that, and health insurance reform did nothing to change that.

   Even the Villagers know that this amendment prevents people who obtain insurance on the new exchanges from having abortion coverage even if they buy it with their own money. It's not that they "have to buy a rider," it's that they can't buy a rider if the policy is sold on the exchange. It's taking a fully legal medical procedure and refusing to let those most in need of health insurance get insurance for that procedure because a bunch of people either think it's "icky" or say it's against their religious beliefs, and therefore you should not be allowed to do it.

I don't know if any of this is enough, or even close, to stop the bill, but you can't win the game if you don't play.

Oh, and once the bill is passed? Bart Stupak loses every day of his seniority in the House and becomes the most junior Democrat in the caucus. Period. No negotiation, no exceptions. He's coordinated with the Senate GOP to block this bill, in addition to his own attempts in the House to torpedo the party's biggest policy initiative of the past three decades. The tent is not that big. If he goes to the Republicans, and takes five or ten blue dogs with him, let them go. It's better to have an opponent than a saboteur.

IMHO.