The People’s View: Dear Russ Feingold, Let Me Tell You About Dancing With the Devil
America is an idea - that this is the beacon of hope where, for all of our imperfections, we devote ourselves to the ideal that if you work hard and play by the rules, you are limited only by your own imagination or potential. That we are a country where everyone has a fair shot, everyone plays by the same set of rules, and everyone does their fair share to invest in the future. Imagine a country where that quintessentially American ideal has been replaced by a banana republic in which the middle class dwindles to an endangered species, the poor become destitute, and opportunity becomes the birthright of a select few.
If you want to see the the dancing devil looking you in the eyes, Mr. Feingold, you need look no further than the Republican governor of your own state, Scott Walker and those of others who submitted to Republican rule after the 2010 elections. Workers’ rights have been attacked, Republican legislatures and governors have claimed the right to dismiss elected local governments and institute dictatorial rule, right wing activists have tried to force women to carry the children of their rapists, and state governments have gone after their own citizens’ right to vote at their own convenience.
And here’s the thing about how that dancing devil got here and got so far. Part of the problem, frankly, Sen. Feingold, were people like you. People like you who demanded ponies and perfections from President Obama’s sweeping reforms Wall Street for example. It was you, Sen. Feingold, who was willing to contribute to Americans’ feelings that the government can’t do anything right (the Republican argument) by filibustering the most significant re-regulation of the financial sector since 1930s. It was you who was willing to use the “not good enough” excuse to pick up applause lines at pretend-Left spheres rather than doing the hard work of governing and helping this president dig us out of the mess he’d been handed.
What about your pals who are so enthusiastically extolling your “principled” stand on the super PACs, at the Huffington Post? Did you ever think to ask Sam Stein, the reporter giving you the praises, about his employer’s corporate selling out to AOL to make its owners rich while costing 200 American jobs? Did you think to ask his boss, Arianna Huffington, about why she is so happy to cash in on the work of unpaid bloggers that made the Huffington Post? You want to talk about dancing with the devil by consorting with big corporate money? The first people you need to talk to are the ones that are using your words to undermine the President.