Where is the progressives anger?

As progressives we tend to ridicule the "wing nuts" and the "tea baggers" who showed up at the Mall last weekend. They're incoherent, part of the lunatic right wing fringe and obviously susceptible to the propaganda spewed out by the likes of Fox News' Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly as well as the rantings of Rush Limbaugh and those his ilk. Listening to a spattering of responses by those in attendance to an interviewers questions would seem to indicate these are all true observations.

But wait, we may be mistaking the forest for the trees. Those protesters were all angry! Even if their anger was misplaced and generalized, it may have a kernal of truth to it. This may be hard to reconcile, but as Frank Rich indicated in his op ed in Sunday's N.Y. Times, "Even Glen Beck is Right Twice a Day."

The real question begs; where is our anger? Why have we ceded away the megaphone on the issues and the political agenda to the "no nothings" on the far right?

Three examples of our timidity and passiveness readily come to mind( and that doesn't include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the whole issue of torture and the lack of those responsible being held to account).

1. When doctors and nurses, who favored a Medicare type, single payer health care reform plan were barred from participating in the initial Baucus Finance Committee hearings (on health care reform) and only the health insurance company behemoths and their "big pharma" cohorts were allowed to be seated, while those doctors and nurses vocally demonstrated against the basic unfairness of the proceedings, where were we progressives who agreed with them? Other than some tepid objections from a few op ed writers and bloggers, Baucus' railroading of the committees proceedings was just accepted as a fait accompli. There should have been massive demonstrations outside the Capitol in direct protest of the Baucus hijacking that barred single payer participation.

2. When "cramdown", (Senator Dick Durban's bill to give bankruptcy judges the authority to get the mortgage company's to rework mortgages of distressed homeowners in foreclosure and thereby keep these people in their homes) was defeated in the full Senate, where were the demonstrations denouncing this vote?

3. When it became known that the Wall Street financial institutions, the bandits who received federal bailout money were still handing out huge bonuses( in light of their massive losses and their role as the primary perpetrators of the economic and financial meltdown), where were the demonstrations on Wall Street denouncing these practices?

Our government is failing its people. Progressives became starry eyed and mesmerized with the Obama presidency, his eloquence and his mantra for "change we can believe in."

The millions who voted for Obama were energized with hope and had the expectation for real change. When reality set in and business as usual continued without missing a beat, progressives weren't mobilized to take the necessary action, demand redress and protest for and/or against the issues that they believed in.

Instead the megaphone was ceded to the Fox News propagandists who energized the "wing nuts" generalized anger, albeit mostly incoherent, misinformed and misdirected. Maybe we have something to learn from those we ordinarily dismiss out of hand.

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