against forgetting.

[ulysses]

The long memory is the most radical idea in this country.
- Utah Phillips

The early days of the Obama transition have been instructive, although perhaps not entirely surprising to anyone paying attention to what Obama the candidate said during the campaign.

This is what post-partisanship looks like. Post-partisanship reaches across aisles, seeks to create movement in a positive direction by circumventing old barricades. It seeks to create unity by being magnanimous toward those erstwhile friends whose candidate you trounced (albeit with his pecker in your pocket, as LBJ might have said - I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during the discussions and caucus vote on Lieberman). Above all, it seeks to move forward and not look backward.

All of which is fine if something gets done for the greater good. And there's a lot of greater good that needs doing right now.

Here's the problem. As big as 2008 has been for Democrats - and it may well get bigger - the Republicans will be back. It may well not be soon, but they're not going to fold their tents and go away forever. They'll be back, and when they return, 4, 8, 12, 16 years, whenever, I wonder what political landscape they'll find.

Obama may be post-partisan, but you can bet your ass the opposition isn't.

The thread title comes from the title of an excellent anthology of poetry about living under repression and cruelty, edited by Carolyn Forche. America is, famously, the land of the short memory, and that has worked to the detriment of ourselves and others. There's a reason that forgetting is a bad thing.

We have much to remember about the last eight years. I hope that we do remember it over the next four or eight or twelve or however long and when posterity sees a newly ascendant GOP, that we've both gained some ground for the good side and remembered what we have to fight.

[SidneyCarton]

1. Yes, they will be back, which is the key argument against using Bush's tools...

For in doing so we further the erosion of the constitution and will make it all the worse when they return.

As to forgetting, or not forgetting I understand your argument. On the other hand, we must be careful not to suffer from the all-too-long memory that afflicts many in the Old World. One remembers the arguments made by the Austrians against Turkey's entry into the EU were based in part over grievances about Vienna being beseiged by the Ottomans in the 16th and 17th centuries. And then there are the Balkans, where Kosovo is the heart of a mess stemming from the 13th century, and finally there is the middle east, where disagreements are never forgotten and become fodder for wars over a millennium after their occurence. Forgetting is neither a good nor a bad thing, sometimes however it can be useful.

[ulysses]

2. we've a long way to go before we get to that point.

[blm]

3. And some of us are not allowing the last 40 yrs to be forgotten....until the revelations are spread

wide enough that the facts become apparent and unspinnable.

You are certainly right that the global fascist agenda is only on a pause....how long a pause is entirely up to those who refuse to give an inch to the lies of the revisionists. Us.

[ulysses]

4. one does get the feeling

that what's at stake is entirely too important to be left to the experts, yes.

[TheKentuckian]

5. You move forward forgeting where you came from at great peril

unless, of course your goal is to end up where you started from.

Long term survival demands indicting, convicting, and repudiating Reagan/Bush/Hoover Republicanisim. This crap needs to whatever extent possible, pitched into history's landfill.

Still, we can bandy words all we want, unless the GOP makes some substantive internal changes they are toast within a generation. The demographics are an undeniable obstacle carrying on with the small tent xenophobia they've been all but exclusively running on for 35-45 years and you can't do a whole lot with that with the rabble they have for a base.

Vote fuck no on the GOP bailout! :fistbump: Let 'em stew. They'll figure it out, or not and some others will but sending them back to the drawing board won't hurt us a bit. Trust me its a good thing, they'll figure out new ways to screw up things and we'll get to resolve new issues instead of running this 80 year treadmill of crap they're throwing at us now. Plus, while they're licking their wounds and figuring out new ways to obstruct progress we might get some meaningful things done again for a season.