On business as usual

Georgia10, over at DailyKos, has a post up that I endorse. She (once again, I'm assuming Georgia is female) notes how inside the beltway Dems tend to look down on bloggers as ill-informed teenagers ranting about nothing. Then, she goes on as follows:

The complaints I have received about the netroots are not that we are uninformed in terms of current events. The liberal blogosphere is highly informed--indeed, self-informed--about every minute detail of current events, whether the media report on it or not. Rather, the focus seems to be that we are "uninformed" about politics in general.

We have seen this attack time and time again. People complained that fighting for an Alito filibuster was futile. Our calls for acts of courage on Capitol Hill are frequently met with exasperated sighs, slow shakes of the head, and condescending explanations that we just don't understand how D.C. works.

The reality, of course, is that we do understand how D.C. works--we just refuse to accept the status quo. It is precisely because we know how D.C. works that we call for change. It is not naïveté that compels us to demand that the gloves be taken off; rather, such calls for courage stem from a rational realization that the current system is broken.

D.C. insiders, the big boys as they probably fathom themselves to be, are too busy playing in the rubble of our political process to realize that all they hold in their hands are remnants of a dying institution. They cling to expired notions of "bipartisanship" and "gentlemen's agreements", both of which obviously can no longer exist in the toxic climate of this Republican government. And when we, who haven't been lulled into complacency, desire to step in and step up to perform some type of CPR on this dying democracy, we're brushed off as immature kids who will likely cause more harm than good.

And so here we sit: awkwardly large at the kiddie's table, observing the chaos one table over, where the insiders continue with their failed tactics and policies, preferring their cannabilistic politics to real reform and change. In the meantime, we lose election after election because they're too stubborn to pull up another chair and bring the rest of America to the table.

The"business as usual" (BAU) approach has lost us election after election, but the insiders can't seem to figure that out.