That'll Show 'Em!

Mike Sylvester asks a question in a comment, a few posts down:

Here is a question for you Bartleby:

What will you do when Bush decides to send MORE troops to Iraq and the Democrats agree and more troops are sent...

I think this is going to happen.

I think there is going to be a BIG FIGHT in the Democratic Party in the next couple of months!

What will I do? What will I do? Same thing I've been doing, I guess: get a little more cynical and write ten or fifteen more angry, bitter blog posts. That'll show 'em! In fact, I suppose that'll just have to show 'em; my alternatives are cruelly limited. What else can I do? Well, I could declare the Revo, but, shoot, I've been doing that, every other month or so, for years now. Not only does the Revo not happen, but no one listens at all. Amazing, huh?

So, you think Congress and Bush will do a "surge" in Iraq? Well, so do I. We're in agreement there.

You think there'll be a big fight in the Democratic Party in the near term? There we must disagree. There might be a little "sound and fury, signifying nothing." There might be some halfhearted simulation of a fight. But there won't be a fight. A fight (a "big" fight, at least) requires substantial numbers of people who have serious, heartfelt, committed disagreements about important principles. This, in turn, requires the existence of said principles. In my estimation, real principles are just as scarce in the Democratic Party as in the Republican.