Preface: This diary is in response to all those who call people who used to support Hillary Clinton, and are now going to vote for Barack Obama, "deadenders", simply because we refuse to rewrite history, we remember how this race unfolded, and we're not happy about it.
A few weeks ago, I took my son to the library, and while my wife was watching him, I looked for a couple books that might draw my interest this summer. I ended up picking out George Orwell's Animal, among others. Don't get me wrong, I had read Animal Farm before. However, I believe that was in high school when I read Animal Farm, and I'm now in my mid-to-late 30's. So, I figured I'd revisit a classic.
Well, after reading it again, and participating on MyDD since Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed Obama, I've noticed certain similarities between what happened in the book, and what has happened to the Democratic party.
Orwell's Animal Farm is described as follows:
Old Major, a prize-winning boar, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise and teaches them a song called "Beasts of England," in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals greet Major's vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs--Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer--formulate his main principles into a philosophy called Animalism.Late one night, the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major's dream. The cart-horse Boxer devotes himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting as a personal maxim the affirmation "I will work harder."
At first, Animal Farm prospers.... When Mr. Jones reappears to take back his farm, the animals defeat him again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer's abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly quibble over the future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build an electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon solidly opposes the plan. At the meeting to vote on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a passionate speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then makes a strange noise, and nine attack dogs--the puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order to "educate"--burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and declares that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions--for the good of every animal.
Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. One day, after a storm, the animals find the windmill toppled. The human farmers in the area declare smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill.
He stages a great purge, during which various animals who have allegedly participated in Snowball's great conspiracy--meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon's uncontested leadership--meet instant death at the teeth of the attack dogs. With his leadership unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second maxim, "Napoleon is always right"), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain.
Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being--sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighboring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon's propagandist, justifies every action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great leader and is making things better for everyone--despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked....
Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human beings--walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually, the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and inscribed on the side of the barn, become reduced to a single principle reading "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring classes of both the human and animal communities. He also changes the name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming that this title is the "correct" one. Looking in at the party of elites through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the human beings.
Well, there are those of us who look at the 2008 Democratic primary process, and see it as nothing more than a group of younger Democrats, upset at how rich and fat their superiors have become, conspiring together to overthrow their leaders and take over the party "for the people", demonizing the old guard, and purging the party of anyone who does not agree to demonize the old guard, as well.
How do we see it that way? Well, for starters, many prominent Obama supporters have made their intentions quite clear.
Take for example Donna Brazile:
BRAZILE: Well, Lou, I have worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, and I respect Paul. But, Paul, you're looking at the old coalition. A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don't have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics. We need to look at the Democratic Party, expand the party, expand the base and not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Or this, from Obama himself:
Obama clearly felt that the Clintons had already exhausted their possibilities as leaders. They "have been the dominant political force in the Democratic Party for 20 years," he said. "A sizable number of prominent Democrats in Washington, the sort of government-in-waiting, all came in with the Clintons. There's enormous loyalty there, as there should be. What's interesting is that they all came in as outsiders; most of them came in as outsiders running against Washington. They're now Washington, and I don't think there's any denying that Washington established a set of rules that people get comfortable with about how you play the game."
Or this:
"The one thing I am absolutely certain of," Obama told me, "is that if all I'm offering is the same Democratic narrative that has been offered for the last 20 years, then there's really no point in my running, because Senator Clinton is going to be very adept at delivering that message. What makes it worthwhile for me to run is the belief that we can actually change the narrative and create a working majority that we haven't seen in a very long time--and that, frankly, the Clintons never put together."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/cl inton-obama
One blogger even put together a solid timeline establishing that the DNC has been supporting Obama over Clinton SINCE JANUARY, 2008, BEFORE SUPER TUESDAY (a few snippets):
Who has Harmed the Democratic Party?Children do it often. When they get caught misbehaving, they tend to point fingers in every direction except toward the mirror. When adults engage in such behavior, it inspires questions about their rationality and character.
As adults, we can all agree that any negative statement by any Democratic candidate against another Dem candidate during a primary could undermine the party's ultimate efforts to establish unity before a general election.
That said, the DNC (and many media) seem to blame Hillary Clinton's campaign as the one that advanced all the divisiveness. She certainly has said some negative things about Barack Obama. I admit it, and the media has been all over it for months, so I need not provide examples here.
Hillary is not the only one whose words (or actions) might have caused party division. Obama said and implied very negative things about his fellow Democrat, Hillary. Yet, the DNC (and many media) never really called Obama out.
The most recent example was on Friday, when the Obama campaign bizarrely made an issue of Hillary's reference to Robert F. Kennedy. Preferring to start with less recent examples, I'll get into the RFK non-issue later.
Starting in January, Obama supporters falsely called Hillary a racist after she acknowledged that Martin Luther King had needed a president's help to turn his dreams into laws. Obama supporter James Clyburn lobbed implied racism accusations twice -- just before the primaries in two heavily African American states (North Carolina and South Carolina).
That was downright harmful to the cause of party unity, but the DNC didn't chastise Obama's campaign. And Obama didn't timely chastise his surrogates or supporters....
Disseminating common-enemy talking points is a way to split a party, not unify it. Obama likely knew this and did it anyway. The DNC remained silent....
I could go on with examples, but my point is this: Hillary's not alone in deserving blame, because Obama has contributed a good-sized share of the negativity and divisiveness that may ultimately hinder efforts to unify the party.
Moreover, the candidates aren't the only ones who contributed to the party's division. The DNC's own leaders chose to act in ways that have infuriated many Dem voters....
Those actions gave many Dems the impression that the DNC wanted Obama to win at any cost -- even if 2 sates' Dem voters were disregarded. That the DNC has remained silent while Obama's campaign used divisive tactics only intensified that impression.
Naturally, many Hillary-supporting Dems feel that the DNC does not care about what they think or want.
This top-down, disregard-the-little-guy style of leadership has caused many ordinary Dems to notice similarities between the DNC and the GOP. That's a major deal breaker.
In short, the DNC's own leadership countered its own purported goal of party unity by repeatedly alienating so many of its members....
http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buc k_naked_politics/2008/05/hillarys-rfk-re .html
In Animal Farm, the pigs that purged the farm of the humans wrote a list of commandments, as follows:
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
However, as the pigs grew more and more accustomed to being the leaders of the farm, they became more and more like the humans they had purged. For example, they began drinking alcohol. The other animals seemed to remember that one of the commandments was "No animal shall drink alcohol", and were confused and upset. So, they went to where the Seven Commandments were written, and it now said "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess". The animals scratched the perverbial heads, and wondered why they didn't remember the last two words "to excess".
In other words, the pigs had to re-write history, and convince all of their subjects that the Commandment regarding alcohol always had the words "to excess" in it. And those who questioned whether history was being re-written were considered traitors to the cause.
The theme was similar to another George Orwell book, 1984, in which the history books were always being changed to fit the political narrative, because it was assumed by those in power that the people would not follow them if they knew the entire truth ("we have never been at war with East Asia. We have always been at war with East Africa" (or whatever it was).
This is what some Obama supporters on MyDD have become. They insist that you not only agree to vote for Obama, but that you re-write history and accept as reality that his victory was 100% pure, and untainted by media bias, propaganda, slash and burn character assasination, or a conspiracy to purge the DNC of the old (Clinton) guard, and if you don't, they'll tear your perverbial throat out.
It is not enough that they are in control. It is not enough if you follow them. It is not enough if you support them. You have to actually go through a brainwashing/re-training, until all concerns regarding the manner in which Obama won with the assistance of the DNC and the media are replaced with slogans and songs in favor of not only the dear leader, but each and every person who made it possible, such as Keith Olbermann, and Howard Dean.
In Animal Farm, the slogan was "four legs good, two legs bad", until the pigs learned to walk on two legs, and changed the slogan to "four legs good, two legs better".
I can't wait to see how some Obama supporters are going to change the slogan "yes we can" into "oh, no you didn't!", once they are firmly in control of the DNC and getting fat, lazy, and more and more like those they purged from the party. Regardless, I refuse to be brainwashed in the Orwellian fashion propounded by many MyDD Obama supporters.
I'll vote for Obama, but I'll never forget that Hillary Clinton most likely would have won on a level playing field - - - NEVER.
As I have read Animal Farm, I know what that means. Soon, the pigs will send the dogs to tear my throat out, while the sheep keep bleating "four legs good, two legs better", in the background.
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