Priests Need Sin

One of the lessons that non-DC Democrats are finally glomming onto is the phenomenon of people with certain self-images and careers fighting against "evil" needing the "evil" in order to maintain their self-images and careers. Police and prosecutors need crime and victims. Priests and the loudest, most self-impressed ministers need sin and sinners. It is absolutely not in their interests to see the "evil" actually vanquished. If anything, they need to hype it and help it at every opportunity. Police and prosecutors wait for crime to happen so they can catch "bad guys"; look at how much of their budgets go into prevention. Look how the Catholic Church tells hormone-intensive teenagers to abstain and then calls them sinners when the hormones win; we know how much they approve of contraception. (We won't get into how cool the Church is with sin in its priesthood.)

The same dynamic is at work in the Democratic Party Establishment and all the long-term, self-absorbed interests backing them. In no version of reality does retaining people like Lincoln Chafee or Joe Lieberman in their current election tussles further what real Democrats want for this country. But there's the Sierra Club, there's NARAL, there's the Democratic Party braintrust with their own particular brand of wisdumb to get the Chafees and Liebermans returned to the Senate. It's hard to understand unless you understand that priests need sin. These groups and sellouts need a Republican Senate that does what this one does, and they need Vichy Dems who will determinedly compromise away basic principles. Otherwise, what real Democrats want might actually happen and then where would they be??? This way, it's "save yourselves, save yourselves, oh, and keep the money rolling in." As Thomas Frank and others have pointed out about the Repubs, ending abortion, getting school prayer, and so on will completely neutralize the key constituency returning the Bush types to office. It's time people recognize that about the Dems "in power" as well.

It's not odd, in fact, it's common, for once justifiable institutions to become so dependent on their enemies for survival that they lose sight of what they were created for to begin with. But it's still nothing to support. As Kos and Firedoglake and others are screaming now, it's time to throw them out. They've become what they were supposed to fight.