[lbo-talk] mourn

[Seth Ackerman]

From: "Liza Featherstone" <lfeather at panix.com>

> Katha Pollitt's column is an excellent counter to all the stupid
repetitions
> I've seen of that stupid cliche, "Don't Mourn, Organize."
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041122&s=pollitt

Frankly, I find this column idiotic. This is the same country that elected
LBJ and FDR in landslides. So this year because 55% of people turned out and
51% of those voted for a folksy cretin whose policies most of them are
ignorant of, we're supposed to just chuck in the towel? I know it gets
monotonous to keep repeating facts we all already know, but for the past 30
years this country has been subject to a well-funded, well-organized,
massive propaganda campaign from the right that has gone mostly
unchallenged. There is a determined minority of fundamentalists with hateful
politics, but they're a minority of the public and a minority of Bush
voters. Most Bush voters probably support civil unions for gays - how many
Roosevelt Democrats in 1936 or Adlai Stevenson liberals in 1956 would have
supported that? No, we're not in the middle of one of those rare periods in
history when social attitudes suddenly take a giant leap forward, but I
really don't think they're going backwards either.

Seth