Le Sequoit

Flameout

After finishing the above post I turned on CNN in time to see NY mayor Bloomberg blame the transit union for everything from destroying the local economy to endangering the lives of policeman with their illegal strike. Why is a strike illegal? What is the point of having a union if the government says you can't strike? "You can have collective bargaining, you just can't back it up with collective action."

This is Reagan all over again and this is where it all got started. This is where the road to stagnation in wages began, with the vilification of unions enhanced by governmental/business collusion. If a central progressive tenet is that the distribution of wealth is badly skewed, it would seem that progressives should be up in arms over this well publicized event.

So I checked in at the Daily Kos, to see what folks were up to. The innkeeper at this site states "The progressive movement of the future will be built, in large part, on this digital foundation." Between the front pagers (semi-pro contributors), the previous 25 diaries (member's entries), recommended diaries (entries promoted by readers), and open threads (chat string), there was no mention of any of this.

I got angry. What kind of progressives ignore hot labor issues? Then I fired off a "diary" calling them all hypocrites, that this was all just a game to them and they were not champions of the common man, certainly not in any economics sense, and that I was moving on.

That elicited various kinds of responses:

I was called an obnoxious New Yorker who thought the world revolves around him, a sentiment Kos himself echoed, though we both grew up in suburban Chicago and went to NIU. Though he claims to hold Caesar Chavez as a personal hero, apparently I was wasting my time boycotting grapes in De Kalb because migrant worker's conditions were a California issue.

I was accused of failing to do my research in discovering that "10 or so" diaries had been done on this subject previously. It is true I didn't look under the rocks, but I think my point was that the issue should have been way too hot to have to.

Some visited le sequoit and promptly pointed out that I had not posted on the strike on my own blog, and so I was being a hypocrite. Well, there's only one of me and a few thousand of them, I figured they might have a head start, especially in that so many were closer to the action.

Many said that I should have posted a report on the site rather than complain about the lack of them. In order for a post to survive, however, it must be recommended (promoted) by many. There is a whole system of cliques on the site, and I hadn't taken the time to worm my way into any of them. The terrain is rocky, think junior high.

Then there were the technicians, the experts who immediately classified the post as a GBCW (goodbye cruel world) post, and a less than average one, at that. Goodbye cruel world, that's pretty funny. I was being accused of self-aggrandizement, but my sign-off to this bunch was akin to suicide, right!

And there were the name-callers; hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

The truth is that these people are a lot more interested in being Democrats than being progressives. A little dustup in NYC about working people's rights is the least of their concerns. Impeachment is on their brains. Revenge. Not progress.

posted by sequoit @ 7:21 PM