The Power of Half Loaves and Baby Steps
Truism: We never get everything we want right when we want it.
Sometimes we get nice surprises. But the American legislative and executive branches are set up NOT to give any group of "us" everything we want right when we want it.
You can debate the wisdom of that all you want, but winner-take-all is a two edged sword that can cut our throats, too.
Am I disappointed that the Stimulus bill will not deliver the level of help promised to everyone immediately?
Yup.
Am I angry that the machinations of power-hungry greedheads are going to result in some of the most vulnerable people and those with the most pressing needs being left out, made to wait, ignored.... AGAIN?
Oh, fuck yeah.
But I know how to turn this around, and so do many (if not most) of our Democratic leaders:
PERSIST
Take the half loaf.
Settle (now) for the baby step.
AND DO NOT GIVE UP.
If we cannot gain a meter, take the ten centimeters. Hang onto them like glue.
And bake another loaf, take another baby step IN THE SAME DIRECTION.
In the long run, we will get there if we do not forget. If we do not stop trying. If we say "we'll take that for now" rather than "that's enough," and keep right on going.
And we can do this.
A hundred baby steps will, in the end, take us a lot further than three or four giant steps.
So, we can do this.
But we have to keep empowering the voices of those who got left out - again. And handing as much agency and power to those disempowered as we can. And working within our own party to unify, help each other, and keep focusing on the needs of those who need it most and keep getting shut out, marginalized, and refused.
No, we may not be able to bring about total equity for every type of person who has been denied it, all at once. But every single damn' day we should make SOME kind of baby step for one of those groups, and not always the same one.
And rather than "keeping score" based on how much closer any one group has gotten to real equity, change, and progress, keep score on how well we manage to make a little progress for each/all of those who have been locked out of the American Dream by racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, classism, and ALL forms of bigotry as well as sheer indifference.
Giant steps provoke giant backlashes.
Incrementalism is painful, it seems to prolong the agony needlessly, but in the end, it can produce more solid, more lasting gains for all of us.
I'm not saying we shouldn't keep trying to take the giant steps, no, not that at all. We have to keep starting with those. Getting as much as we can from them. Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the possible, and chalking up any gains at all, even the partial ones, on the credit side of the ledger. And making MOMENTUM out of those small gains from the big steps that appear to "fail".
NOT getting discouraged. NOT saying "well, this doesn't work", NOT blaming ourselves or the leaders who are making the attempts, or even the "friendly fire" that slows up the process.
Instead, saying, "Okay, we got THIS, we still need THAT, let's try again by a different route."
The GOP has had enormous success with the "flood the room" tactic of introducing dozens and hundreds of pieces of legislation to dismantle government, make it fail, concentrate power and escalate authoritarian/minority control.
They know damn' well that a large percentage of them will fail. And when they do, they repackage whatever it was, and load it up again, hoping that in the hail of bullets, it will find a target and do the damage intended.
We can learn a lot from them.
Yes, getting some big, public successes can be a victory for morale and a real momentum-generator. But getting 1/2 of 1% of what we want in each of 1000 baby steps that have an 80% failure rate will get us there, too.
I am seeing every sign of our current Administration being well aware of this. They have plans, backup plans, backup plans for the backup plans, and each layer of those various plans and backup plans has some particular strength. We won't get them all at once. But we will make plenty of solid, meaningful gains if we don't let go, don't get bogged down in internal conflict, don't let ourselves get distracted by the flak grenades of America's Enemies Within.
determinedly,
Bright
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Thank you!
I wish more people were as intelligent and reasonable as you. It's good to see some well-considered and thoughtful analysis. Your descriptions and observations are right on target.
