Let’s Talk About THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM! ANS

For those of you who keep thinking, "Why isn't the Democratic Party standing up to the Republicans?  Why are they just rolling over?  Why isn't Cheney in jail?" etc.  Here is someone who is prepared to call out "the elephant in the room" and he is running for office (Congress) in Virginia.  We have seen his writings before here at Access News Service: Andrew Bard Schmookler of None So Blind.  This is the text of a speech he made for his candidacy. 
Recently, Andy posted a piece asking us to try to make this idea "go viral", and so I am sending it on to you all, with the wish that you send it on in turn. Andy said, "As I've indicated in recent postings, it is my hope that the "Let's Talk About THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!" idea/strategy can go viral. The hope is that enough people can come together to raise their voices to change the dangerous political dynamic in the country. The hope is that a movement can arise that will pressure the Democrats and the media to stop ignoring the unprecedentedly destructive force that has arisen on the political right. The hope is that if this "elephant in the room" can be exposed in the eyes of the American people, it's power can be drained away. "
Find it here: http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10015  
--Kim

* Let's Talk About THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!

In the several days after I saw what my campaign should be, I wrote up a speech to articulate my message. This is the text of that speech.

It is directed to the Democrats of my District in Virginia. It is they who will choose a candidate, and it is with the activist Democrats of the various committees of the currently 17 counties and 4 cities that comprise the District that I will be meeting in the weeks and months ahead.

I wrote this text in time to meet with the Democrats of my own home county, Shenandoah County. For that occasion, I actually delivered the speech from the text. Henceforth, I will not do that. Instead, I will speak without text or notes, but rather improvisationally: I believe it is more important to bring an immediate human connection into the act of communication than to say precisely the right words.

But when I speak to any of these groups (for the first time), the ideas in this text will be the essence of what I want to convey.

********************

A CALL TO BATTLE

I am here to issue a call to battle.

At one level, I am asking the Democrats of the Sixth District to put me in the arena against the Republican Party's local foot soldier, Bob Goodlatte. The campaign I intend to run, I now believe actually has some chance to defeat Goodlatte, even here in the conservative Shenandoah Valley.

But the battle I want to call you to has purpose beyond that. Win or lose on Election Day, this nomination can have a valuable political impact­not only here in the Valley, but also beyond. Together, we can send this battle call out into the broader land.

For there is a battle that America desperately needs for us Democrats to fight. America needs us to fight harder and, even more important, to fight on the right battlefield.

For this battle, I am armed with one powerful weapon. That weapon is a truth­an important truth but one that is also, to the great harm of our beloved country, being ignored.

So I ask you to rally with me under my banner. That banner's not only my battle call, but it also contains my battle plan and it unsheaths that weapon.

And here's what this banner says: Let's Talk about the Elephant in the Room.

[pause]

THE ELEPHANT

You are probably familiar with the idea of "the elephant in the room." It refers to a situation where a group faces some big problem but the people pretend it's not there. It's the one thing that the people most need to confront together, but no one will talk about it.

So in what way is there an elephant in the room of our American nation?

It's that something unprecedented –something unprecedentedly dangerous and destructive­has arisen in the American polity, but we as a nation act as if these are normal times in American politics.

Let me get more specific.

A force has arisen on the political right in America –today's Republican Party and its allies­that is unlike anything ever seen before at center stage of this nation's political arena.

Never in American history has there been a presidency so lawless, and so consistently dishonest, as the one the Republicans gave us from 2001-09.

Never in American history –as in these last two years, with these Republicans– has there been an opposition party so indifferent to solving the nation's problems. Making the president fail was their sole priority, even though it was a time of national crisis and the president's failure would necessarily imply great damage to the country.

Never before has a major American political party relied so thoroughly on lies and deceptions­from the lies that led the nation into war in Iraq to the lies about death panels and the lies of the birthers. Not to mention the con job from Goodlatte and company that they're looking out for the good of average Americans.

Never before has one of America's major parties worked so consistently by pitting groups of Americans against each other­whether it is the Republicans' always focusing on divisive issues (like gay rights and abortion), and never seeking issues that could unite us around the values we share; or their fomenting fear toward people who are different, like Muslims or Hispanic immigrants; or their demonizing American liberalism and every other component of American civilization that might challenge their dominance.

Never, at least in my lifetime, has a major political party been so hell-bent on taking power from the weak to give to the mighty, and wealth from the poor to give to the already very rich.

Never has this nation seen one of its two major parties so utterly bankrupt of any positive vision, so devoid of any concept of how to make a better America. Instead, their consistent dedication is to blocking the efforts that others make to provide solutions to the nation's problems (even when the ideas used to be their own) and to dismantling what America has already achieved to make a more whole society (like gutting the Clean Air Act, abolishing the EPA, and assaulting Social Security).

Never has a major political party been so insistent on making everything into a war, so uninterested in cooperation, so contemptuous of the idea of compromise.
The list could go on. But the emerging pattern should already be clear and it is most disturbing.

This is the elephant in the room: The unprecedentedly destructive thing the Republican Party has become.

[pause]
This is not the Republican Party of Eisenhower, that decent man; nor of Barry Goldwater, with his integrity; nor of Ronald Reagan, amiable and positive, and delighted to find common cause with an old enemy, from that "evil empire," and to beat some old swords into ploughshares.

This is not even a conservative party, because conservatism is principled. Calling itself conservative is just one of its lies­a lie I'd be glad to expose for the benefit of true conservatives in this District.

This dark force degrading our politics is the thing that must be talked about because it has proved so unrelentingly damaging to the country. It's not just that it is ugly. It is dragging this country down into something much worse than she was, something that falls far short of what she might be.

When the Bush presidency ended in early 2009, can you think of a single aspect of our American civilization that is touched by politics that was not in worse shape than it was when Bush took office? I cannot.

Looking back at the just-concluded 111th Congress, can you think of a single issue on which the outcome was not worse than it would have been were it not for the conduct of the Republican Party? I cannot.

Can you think of a single constructive thing this new Republican House has even tried to accomplish? I cannot.

As a result of all this damage, the signs of American decline are proliferating:

** No more is America a world leader in providing opportunities for its people to move up the economic scale.

** No more is America a leader in providing health care to its people, or in educating its young.

** No more is America a land with a thriving middle class­not now, when our politics have helped the richest one percent triple its share of our national wealth while the bottom 90 percent has been losing ground.

This list, too, could be extended.

Suffice it to say that in these and countless other ways the America we love is paying an enormous price for this elephant in the room.

Good government –wise government, foresightful, just, and caring government­is essential for a society like ours to navigate its way successfully into the future. But this force on the right has shown a determination to prevent good government.

Not only does it make war on government itself. It also labors continuously to turn our government "by the people and for the people" into a government by the dollar and for the dollar.

And at every turn it throws a stick into the spokes, preventing our democratic discourse from functioning as our Founders intended. Can you think of a single public issue on which our political system has been able to conduct an honest and constructive discussion since this dark force rose to power a decade ago? I cannot.

So we as a nation are like a boat on the rapids without a functional rudder. The boat is getting battered on the rocks of our unmet challenges, and our confidence in our being able to get through these rapids intact is justifiably weakened. Americans sense this: things are heading, they say, in the wrong direction.
And at the center of all this is that elephant in the room. That thing that we must talk about but do not.

These are the stakes in this battle. If this force is allowed to continue to wreak this havoc, the future for us Americans will continue to dim. It is only if this force is talked about –only if it is exposed so that it is discredited in the eyes of the American people­can we regain that proud and hopeful birthright we were given as Americans.

[pause]

DEFECTS ON BOTH SIDES

This elephant in the room is thus at the center of our nation's difficulties, because it prevents us from meeting effectively any of our other challenges.

But recall: the idea of the elephant in the room identifies two problems. There is the elephant, but there's also the fact that we're not talking about it.

So why has America not been talking about this elephant in our national room?

There are different answers for different groups of people.

One group is of people who have bought the lie and have aligned themselves with this force. Mistaking it for something good, they simply do not see this elephant.
There are a lot of these people in our District. From talking politics with my Shenandoah Valley radio audience these past eighteen years, I know that this group includes true believers who will not be swayed. But there are also many who just lean the way their neighbors do. My hope is that by showing them the pattern, I can at least make them a bit more wary of the con-artists they've supported. And maybe, just maybe, I can open the eyes of enough of them to actually take Goodlatte's seat away from him and today's Republican Party.

Another group consists of people who oppose the Republicans but don't recognize how dangerously abnormal that party has become. They notice many bits and pieces of the elephant, with distaste, but it remains to put these pieces together so that the whole menacing beast, now looming over the nation, becomes visible to them.

It is the third group, however, that most concerns me: people who do see this beast, and recognize the war being waged against everything decent and honest and good in America but, for whatever reason, shy away from confronting it.

It is here that we come to the point where the picture requires us to go beyond purely partisan loyalty. Loyalty to America requires that we recognize that our national Democratic leadership has failed to wage the one battle that America has most needed for it to fight.

The sad fact is that both sides of America's political divide have revealed defects.
Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats have had their hearts in the right place.
On virtually every issue where the two parties have conflicted in recent years, it is the Democrats who have been right.

But in the arena of power, especially in dark times like this, there is another important aspect of having a good heart, besides its being "in the right place." When the other side has declared itself your implacable enemy, and is attacking you from every side and laying waste everything you hold sacred, you also have to be lion-hearted for the battle.

But, to the great frustration of millions who have looked to our Democratic leaders to be our champions in this struggle, our leaders have avoided confrontation.

In the face of the most lawless president in the history of the Republic –as even the very conservative jurist Bruce Fein described the Bush presidency, after having voted for him twice­the Democrats in the Congress were timid, and could not rally themselves even to vote for censure. In spite of a solemn oath to defend and protect the Constitution, our leaders shrank from confronting the law-breakers in the White House as our Founders would have wanted them to do.

Then came President Obama, whom I supported with deeper enthusiasm than any politician in my lifetime, and whom I continue to support.

When the Republicans set out to demonize him with their base, using their usual fear-mongering lies and calumnies, our president did not contest it, did not call them out. He did not make the lying the national issue it needs to be.

When the Republicans, reduced to a rump minority in the Senate, abused the filibuster rule in order to nullify the power the American people had chosen to give to the Democrats, our leaders did not make that abuse –that assault on the principles of our democracy­the scandal it deserved to be.

This list, too –of battles unfought­could be lengthened.

One side picks fights needlessly. The other side shrinks from the one most necessary fight.

Because our Democratic leaders made the Republicans pay no political price for their ill-gotten gains, the power –so recently gained and so hard won by the efforts of millions of us­flowed back to that party that damages everything it touches.

The evidence abounds: confronting this destructive force is job one. It is job one because failing to do it makes every other job so much harder. That's why health care reform became so messy. That's why hundreds of good bills passed by the House just died in the Senate.

That's why it is so important for us Democrats now to rally under that banner: it is by helping America confront this truth that we can overthrow the outrageous Reign of the Lie.

By making the elephant in the room THE ISSUE for discussion, by forcing the Republicans to pay a political price for their lies and abuses, we Democrats can force them either to lose power or change their ways.

That brings us to the fourth group: those who see the elephant and are prepared to fight it by exposing it for what it is. These are the lion-hearted.

My passion requires me to be in that group. I hope you feel the same.

[pause]
It has been terribly painful for me these years to behold what has been happening in my country. I bet it's been that way for many of you.

I grieved the loss of my parents –fine, loving people. But the grief I have felt these years about this ongoing degradation of my country has been still harder to bear.

That's why I'm ready to fight. I hope you'll help me get the chance.

I have known fear about the wider world before­fear of a nuclear holocaust, fear of our degrading the earth's living systems. But never have I felt so searing a fear as I've experienced watching this force working so relentlessly, and so successfully, to enshrine raw power as a god that destroys all other values.

That's why I'm ready to fight. I hope you will support me.

I have felt anger before­seeing civil rights workers hosed and beaten, seeing my generation sent off to an ill-conceived and brutal war. But never have I had to live with such frustrated rage as over these years when average American families are being robbed of their birthright of opportunity and dignity by a force fueled by insatiable greed and the lust for power.

That's why I'm ready to fight. I hope you will stand with me.

I would like for us to take this fight to the Sixth District, and I want us to raise our voices to the country beyond so our leaders can hear this call to battle. Let's expose this elephant for what it is and drive it out of our room.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 8:43 pmand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.