2012: Time for Dems to fight for what is right

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Updated: February 2, 2012 9:45AM

Those who endured the false frenzy of the Millennium, who remember when we feared that glitches caused by computers clicking from 1999 to 2000 would grind modern life to a halt, can never again get too worked up about another New Year.

This fresh 2012 brings us the exact same burning issue that the old 2011 offered. That singular “issue” is deliberate — only one key question faces the United States, though it is so obscured by the steaming frenzy of politics, by Mitt Romney’s hair and Barack Obama’s vacations and such, that I don’t think most people even know what the issue is, even though most debate flows from it.

So I’ll state it clearly, in just six words:

Are we a nation, or not?

If we’re not a nation, if we’re just a bunch of individuals and businesses who happen to share the same continent but want to look out for themselves and be left alone, with no obligation to one another, then vote for any Republican who wins the endless primary process. Any of them will take office and, while not dismantling government — that’s a ruse — will work to pitch the parts they don’t like: environmental regulations, industrial safety standards, limits on the rapacity of big business, to the degree that what shred of human decency might be left will allow.

Any one will boost certain religions, forgetting — if they ever knew — that we are a nation of many religions founded on the ideal of non-denominational government. Social programs go out the window, of course — screw poor people, they’re all crack addicts anyway. And gays, well, it’s back into the closet for them. The serf army of illegal Hispanic immigrants won’t really be shipped back because a) we need the cheap labor, and b) see “a.” These criminals can expect four more years in a rightless limbo even harsher than that being endured under the Obama administration’s malign indifference.

Or are we a nation? The Democrats, in their own stumbling, timid way, labor under the notion that American citizens have an obligation to each other, to educate our kids, to preserve our environment, to promote science, to see everyone can get health care — every other developed nation but ours seems to have figured that one out. What do they know that we somehow can’t grasp?

To be honest, I’m not that worried about the election this November. After the freak show of top candidates, the embarrassment of Herman Cain (forgot him already, right?) and the shame of callous nut Ron Paul, Mitt Romney seems like Solon the Lawgiver. I’d say they planned it that way, if it all weren’t so clearly chaotic. Romney looks the part, and his flip-flopping nature will allow him to tack toward the Democratic notion that we should have a government that does stuff.

We’d survive him. The U.S. survived eight years of Ronald Reagan, who pioneered the idea of undermining the government you are running, plus eight years of George W. Bush.

What I would prefer is to go out fighting. I was reading George Orwell’s 1940 diary, and was surprised to see him hoping to enlist. He worried, after France fell, that the U.S. would surrender, too — remember, we were blowing kisses at Hitler up until the moment he declared war on us. Orwell wrote:

“If the USA is going to submit to conquest as well, there is nothing [to do] but die fighting. . . . One must above all die fighting.”

That is my wish for 2012. That the Democrats do not lose while trying to slink to victory disguised as the Tea Party with a social conscience. We’ve had three years of Obama talking gently to Republicans while they tie his shoelaces together. No more.

Democrats cannot hope to top Republicans in feverish, faith-fueled frenzy, cannot conjure up false realities to serve our needs, cannot exclude vast swaths of fellow citizens from our idea of the American Dream. “In the matter of ruthlessness,” Orwell wrote, of another party set against the American government, “we are unlikely to compete successfully with our enemies.” All we can do is hold tight to our fragile yet powerful notion: that we are a nation, that we rise or fall together, that our fates are intertwined, and we have a responsibility to each other.

The election is 45 weeks from Tuesday. Anything can happen. My hope, as always, is that the good guys prevail. But if we fail, we should go down swinging. Fight for what is right. A New Year is a good time to start.