The Progressive Ideological Roundabout

Can’t see your choices for commitment clearly?  That’s like doing a runaround in a roundabout.  We progressives are in a roundabout, sometimes changing lanes, and always following many paths with our senses to hopefully an action that declares our commitment, until the next exit looks more urgent to follow. But what keeps us from turning to a declared action and getting off the roundabout are our choices which, when illuminated, are not to achieve a positive action, but more of a defense against the obstructionists.

Global Warming/Climate Change.  Now that’s at the top of the list, right?  What’s the point of ending poverty, racial disparities, mass incarcerations, lack of health provisions…unless we save the planet first?  But, there’s the meanwhile, and thus the more we learn about the human condition and how many suffer today, there’s this nagging conscience whose voice says that today’s problems must be addressed now as well.  And we try.  We respond with emails (sometimes letters and phone calls), and sometimes go to town meetings to try to pin down a politician. And we give…endlessly.

I don’t think the conservatives deliberately set out to create mayhem with our choices to support, but I do think that their obstructionism over the last two decades have made them think they are a success unto themselves.  That radical conservatives seem not to have an open agenda, but a covert plan based upon what they deem success in thwarting social change, we progressives have allowed our boots to descend into the mud of slow-motion idealism.

Truly curious and educated progressives see things holistically, yet our choices of actions are placed in silos, as if one grant, one legislative action will conquer a problem.  Interconnectedness is denied its role in fulfilling the promise of even a part of the good intentions of funders and legislators, thus shortly we all recognize the futility of throwing targeted money at a whole problem.

We should be celebrating the 50^th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty successes.  We should be celebrating the expansion of Sargent Shriver’s signature Head Start program.  His Peace Corp should be heralded as the best effort toward world peace ever instituted, but alas, inadequate funding obstructed these programs to flourish, and instead, obstructionism as a belief system emerged as an attempt to destroy them.  This year is proof of an unconscionable ideology that celebrates destruction of progressives’ humanitarian roots.

Maybe us progressives on that roundabout don’t recognize the unconsciousness of our choices of exits.  If we continue veering left, we continue going in circles…it’s that right turn that’s offered that turns us off.