Taking the Long View for a Hopeful Progressive Future

I would like to submit to you today a bit of a hopeful missive for progressives in the United States. I offer this positive note though it flies in the face of the fact that our country is in trouble, and there's no doubt about that. This depressing situation has been building for going on five years. In fact, following the 2004 elections, my wife and I sat down for several very serious conversations about becoming expatriates in Ireland. In the end, though, it was too great a sacrifice for too little gain.

It took me no more than three minutes to flip through the headlines of the last 24 hours and find numerous examples of developments which would likely bring any progressive to despair. The ascendancy of the neocons and the "religious right" (very likely the most ironic oxymoron in the history of our nation) has seen the government attempting to stifle the reproductive rights of women at every turn, the relaxation of rules meant to protect us and our environment, and of course our president's seemingly neverending list of shifting reasons to continue the insanity in Iraq. We have even seen the Democratic Party, once a bastion of progressive thinking, flailing about to appease the born-again crowd. It's enough to make a progressive weep.

But even for all this, I think that it's important for us to put things in perspective. We need to earnestly take the long view of our country's history and get a grip on the big picture. Before we judge too harshly where we stand today, we need to remember from whence we came. Our nation was born into a cauldron where slavery was not only accepted, but critical to our economy. Blacks were counted as 3/5 of a human being. The idea of women voting, to say nothing of having personal power or freedom, was considered madness. We immediately embarked on a virtual war of genocide against the indigenous natives of our land. Were the founding fathers to be suddenly placed on their own sovereign nation today they would be considered some of the worst, despotic, repressive dictators or our time.

But we found a way to get better. We progressed. Slavery was abolished. The women's sufferance movement broke new ground for gender equality. The civil rights movement gained respect and equality for minorities. Sexual preference slowly moved from the realm of "disease" to a simple understanding of the differences between orientations.

This is hardly the first time that we've stumbled as a society. There was the repressive era of prohibition; the horror of our government experimenting on blacks in the Tuskegee syphilis studies; the tyranny of the McCarthy era; the battles by bigots against civil rights... the list goes on. When we became too comfortable and complacent we allowed a form of national hysteria to grip our society. Under such conditions extremist religious dogma and a nearly fascist dedication to what are currently termed "conservative" ethics can sweep up large portions of our society into repressive, regressive madness. That's what we're seeing today.

Yes, we have stumbled, but the general trend over the generations has always been in the direction of progressive progress. What our nation is witnessing today in the hands of the neocons is, in the long view, a passing thing. The masses of the middle and lower classes will always, eventually, catch on to the game and react. As long as we can ensure a fair chance at honest elections, the people realize when they've shifted too far towards repressive evil and move back in the direction of progress. Even the prospect of rigged elections, which we may have faced for the last few cycles, will right itself in the end. Our press may be weakened and cowed, but one thing they are good at is polling. When the poll numbers eventually reach a disparity from the election "results" which is drastic enough, serious reform will follow. Managed paper trails for all votes will be put in place, sooner or later, and reliable election results will be achieved.

Don't despair. These are dark times indeed for progressive thinkers, but it's always darkest just before the dawn. I have to believe that if I'm to get up every day and carry on with my life.