Because my faith wasn't really in "Obama." It wasn't really about Obama.
And it wasn't entirely about the Democrats either. Yeah, OK, 59-60 seats and yet all they could do was quibble amongst themselves and make huge concessions to the right. They're about as useless as that option in PowerPoint to print your presentation without scaling the slides to fit the paper. (Which for some reason is the default setting! What's that all about? Given it's utter uselessness, that had to be the work of a future Blue Dog!)
What I was really put my hope in, what I really started to to believe in, as I watched them finally dump the Republicans, finally see the light on Bush, finally seriously support both a female candidate and a black one... what my faith was truly mistakenly misplaced in?
Was the American People.
That's what Losing Heart was really all about. The fact that for a... well, not even for a brief shining moment... for two whole years (!) I watched as larger and larger portions of America finally came to realize that which had been so painfully obvious to all of us: That Bush was stupid, Cheney was evil and the Republicans really, really suck.
And what really frustrates me to no end is that the things these people (the Tea Baggers) complain about? (Deficits, the Economy, Civil Liberties?) Are the things that, if anything? The Republicans were far worse on than the Democrats are or ever were, and yet they've positioned themselves, to the Right of them! For two whole years I watched as my country grew wise by the day. And for the last two it's been like watching them sink into the thralls of dementia.
Now... I've mentioned Erin Lindsey before: in Losing Heart, in fact. She writes a really fantastic webcomic called Venus Envy, or least she DID... she stuck a knife in the back of main character back in March and, so far, hasn't continued with the story. Which... kinds of sucks, actually. LOL. But one of the features of her comic that I really like are the times that the she uses her craft to make a personal statement on some critical political point. One of these that I've been hanging on to, bookmarked, now for a couple weeks, was this one, from 2006:
Now... at this point I'd be insulted if I still had to actually say that I agree, wholeheartedly with the sentiment being expressed, and that didso at the time. Shoot, it really all started with the Patriot Act, years before. So by 2006, it wasn't like I needed any convincing! That being said... Nazi's? I'll admit that even at the time, as a firm believer in Godwin's Law, I'd probably agree with the sentiment, but say that if you want to be taken seriously, you really have to avoid those Nazi comparisons. I mean... even Glenn Beck knows that! [/sarcasm]
But I've always been a bit more Chaotic than Lawful, and there are rather a lot of [non-felony] laws that I'm happy to bend so...
You know we're fascists when a serious Candidate, from a major party, has his hired goons handcuff a reporter to a chair and still have people take him seriously! One black guy with a "night stick "stands outside a polling place, saying nothing to no one and these people want to make a Federal Case out of it, even after the Bush DoJ decided not to. (But... he was Black, so of course it's Obama's fault now.) (Not that they're racists or anything.) But a reporter, heck even a private citizen for that matter, gets unlawfully imprisoned by the hired goons of a major party candidate and people still support him?! Applaud him even?!
And how about Fox's strong stance in support of Net Neutrality, huh? Now, you might think that I'd be A-OK with anything that means fewer people will be visiting Fox-owned websites. But if I can defend Fred Phelps at a military funeral, standing up for people's right to see Fox in this case is a no-brainer. Because this shows exactly what kind of power a company can have when we don't have strong Net Neutrality regulations and draconian penalties for companies breaking them. Apparently Fox thinks keeping some portion of the population for seeing some section of the Internet, due to a spiteful business dispute with their ISP is somehow appropriate. It's not. It's downright chilling.
Why does that make us fascists? Because I still hear people arguing that this is somehow just Fox exercising their free speech, while Net Neutrality is somehow some form of censorship! But hey, why not just censor huge swaths of the Internet?
It sure would make life easier for Sharron Angle, a woman I've already crucified, the parchment nailed above her head reading "IMHO," who apparently believes that the media should only ask questions that the candidates want to answer. Um... that's not how it works, babe. You see... It's the media's job to ask the questions we want answered and it's your job to answer them. And if you can't do that without either sounding like a blithering idiot, or alienating half of the country, guess what?
You don't get the job!
And yet people still support her, despite the fact that she's running a close second behind Joe Miller in the "who's the worst supporter of the free press" contest. Maybe they'd think that *Glenn Beck had a point when he called the *NEA, "adovcating though art" which is "propaganda" and that "you should look up the name, *Goebbels." But the thing is? Sharon Angle basically wants to be Goebells! She's not Goebbels. Goebbels wasn't as stupid as she is. But she seems to think that the only purpose the press serves is to carry the message she wants it to! So... she wants to be Goebbels!
I'm completely convinced that very few of these people have ever even read the Constitution, least of all, my favorite head case, Christine O'Donnell, who apparently thinks it's profound that the word "separation" doesn't appear in the First Amendment.
Firstly, I'd like to repeat what I said in my Religion Tab, because, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, I hold this truth to be self-evident:
The Constitution of the United States, the cornerstone in the foundation of the most prosperous and powerful civilisation the world has ever known, says it best:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Can you be any more clear that that? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." IOW: We are not a "Christian Nation," you Right-Wing, un-American, Funny-Mentalist Morons! And... when taken together with, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," it is painfully obvious, beyond any shadow of doubt or debate, that this intends for there to be a clear, iron-clad separation of Church and State. Period. No sane person can read that statement and draw any other possible interpretation form it. (But when was the last time you met a sane Funny-Mentalist?)
Well... not Christine O'Donnell anyway. But I knew right away she'd fly to the top of my list anyway, once I'd read that she's strongly against Abortion, Contraception and Masturbation. Now, putting aside that she apparently has no problem with over population, I've said it before: No reasonable person can possibly be opposed to more than two of those things!
Secondly, I wonder if this stupid, stupid girl has any clue about some other words that don't appear anywhere in the entire Constitution? Words like...
Christian,
Jesus,
God,
Creator, [that was the Declaration of Independence, in case you forgot!]
Theocracy,
Heaven,
Hell,
or
Soul.
They're not there, Chrissie! Not one of them is, in a document of over eight thousand words!
Now I know she won't win. I know that. Delaware is a strong, Blue state. But... she won her primary. So someone was apparently taking that nut-bag seriously!
Erin, I know what you were saying, and I'm totally down with the message. But we weren't Nazi's in 2006. On the other hand, come November, we'll be electing several bonafide, jack-boot Fascists to the Congress. Not all of them, granted. But some of them. And the State-Run Media (as Rush Limbaugh refers to the Non-Limbaugh-based media, but which I more accurately will soon be calling Fox News) is primed and ready to carry their message. The first amendment is dead. And Fascism is coming because so many Americans would rather embrace it than comes to terms with the fact that we have a Black President, who's cleaning up the mess they made the last time they were in power.
Sieg Feil, America.
--------------------------------------
***BTW, the Glenn Beck / NEA / Goebbels reference is in that same video I linked to, just after Erin's Lindsy's awesome polemic. And, yes, that is my YouTube Channel. At one point I had a personal video there as well; my response to a Tea Party Video. But... IDK... Once I'd made it and posted it, my heart just wasn't really in it anymore. The anticipation of doing it felt better than the result did, so I took it down. If anyone's interested in hearing it anyway, let me know and maybe I'll put it back up.
Well, the fact that I didn't kill myself when Christine O'Donnell won the Delaware primary means that I guess I have a modicum of hope left somewhere in my brain that I am unaware of, so HEY MAYBE THINGS WILL BE OKAY.
ReplyDeleteAssuming reasonable moderates and liberals don't get fed up and complacent about recent events, that is.
VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. FOR THE LOVE OF WHATEVER YOU HOLD HOLY, PLEASE VOTE DEMOCRATIC, REASONABLE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS.
I apologize for my spiked egg-nog induced rage. rofl
Also anyone who, aside from doing twelvew seconmds of research, even thinks about the TERM "net neutrality" (and the meanings of the words tht the phrase contians) for more than half a second should understnad that there's no way net neutrality would promote any sort of censorship. Honestly it's jsut stupid as fuvk
ReplyDeleteIf this election goes as predicted, we'll have to see where the votes came from because the republican voting base should be dying off.
ReplyDeleteIn order to keep their fossilized geezer white male base voting against themselves, republicans have to dump manure on every other type of person every single day, and that should never change. And new voters keep bumping up against the outside world. So there shouldn't be any real source of new republican voters until the end of time.
If this is true, the republican death pangs will only get more amusing, even if they win. If it's not true, I'm going to have to leave the country.
And Obama's presidency has been entirely under the stupidest tax code in human history. If congress can successfully do nothing (which should be possible regardless of this election), that will change, and it'll be the single most important "initiative" of Obama's presidency. Everything will turn around.
(When the fools shut down the government, Obama will have to let it happen and watch the entirety of the republican geezer power base kvetch about their social security checks. If Obama can't do that, I might have to leave the country.)
Look at the forced republican rebranding. First it was "a new kind of conservative". Then it was "compassionate conservative". Now they have to pretend that they aren't republicans at all. This is a progression of desperation from a party that can't avoid sucking like a hoover every time they win, and that is watching their voters die off en masse and not get replaced.
@Metal Matt - Egg Nog? Wow, Christmas sure deos start earlier every year, huh? LOL. RE: The vote? Oh, absolutely. I absolutely will, and it will be for a strait Democratic ticket. But my bitterness at their complete uselssness is growing day by day.
ReplyDeleteA for Net Neutrality? Maybe there's hope. In the recent MMFA thread on the topic, non of teh resident trolls and usual suspects (like Floyd, BoulderHippy, Seahawks) came out to play that game. In the past, I've been met with that kind of argument repeatedly. They way I see it, as long as it's something (anything) the Democrats are FOR, they will be against it.
I really wish Obama would pass a resolution, declaring his strong support for BREATHING, maybe even gop so far as to call for it to be manditory for everyone to do, under the law.
The Right would enthusiastically suffocate itself within minutes.
@Steve - I'm with you, and I hope you're right. But I think your being a tad bit overly optimistic.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all: They have the "stupid vote." And that has ALWAYS been a depressingly large voting block. And when you throwing the propaganda resources that they never used to have? And add in the fact that Fox has only recently come to realize that no one actually CARE if they drop the pretense of being "Fair and Balanced?" And only recetnly discovered the Internet? The "Stupid block" will continue to grow.
As for the "fossilized geezer white male," let me put aside the "whiet male" part of that and remind you of something about old people: There will always be an increasing numbe of THEM as well. And when you consider the every growing number of the STUPID, and the fact that we ALL age, the numbers in what you called the "fossilized geezer" block are thus also quite safe.
Plus, the young and stupid tend to listen to the old and stupid. Kind of a "respect your elders" / pseudo-family values thing. So who are the next generation of stupid going to listen to? People like us, or Fox News and the crochtety old coot they're watching it with who's cheering them on, and telling them not to listen to "those godawful liberals!"?
I don't know. I wish I had more faith in the American people. Two years ago? Almost to the the DAY? I'd not only have agreed with you, but argued the exact same way, with all the same poins, and does so loudly and happily. And I just can't dfo it anymore. The country that I percieved can not exist when the egregious offenses against all America stands for that I've laid out above go unpunnished by the electorate.
The trends may be as you say. But I'm getting a bit impatient. I'd like to see an America that actually RESEMBLES AMERICA some time before I'm IN the "fossilized geezer white male" demographic!
Thank you both for your comments.
Lots of good points. And I agree, I had actually had hope that the American people had finally come to their senses when they elected Obama. But as usual, the American attention span is about two minutes and totally centered on whatever is in it for them, and since the economy hasn't roared back to even better than it was before Bush wrecked it, they are blaming it on Obama and immediately forgetting that Bush and his cronies are the reason it went to hell in a handbasket to begin with. Sigh. But we can hope that the biased polls that are being touted right now turn out to be wrong - and we can make them wrong by all going out to vote down these Tea Party nutjobs - and yes, fascists.
ReplyDeleteEddie;
ReplyDeleteThanks for not using the word 'conservative' in what was a depressingly accurate post.
Rational, _reasonable_, RESPONSIBLE conservatism - like chivalry - may not be dead, but it is certainly on life-support, and these fascists want to pull the plug!
Oh, and before you call me a closet liberal (again) - post my email! Your tag says "Come on in, let's argue!" which is kinda hard to do when my voice is silenced by your evil, liberal censorship! (OK, the last bit was a _bit_ tongue-in-cheek.)
Depressed ('cause of you, and those damned 'liberal' facts,)
okiepoli
People can be misled (and often are, terribly). They can react badly, out of anger or fear or frustration.
ReplyDeleteThey almost always come around, though.
Don't give up on them. Without them, there's nothing.
Yes, the fascist impulse was VERY strong for a very long time, in the U.S. It's still very strong (though NOTHING like what it was during the Bush administration, and that's something about which you're wrong, Eddie--we were FAR more fascist then). It won't win, though. It can't. People can be dragged pretty far down that dark, ugly road, and that's depressing as hell, but, in the end, fascism will lose, just as it always has. Never doubt it.
@Mauigirl - Thanks. And you're right about the Average American's attention span. That's really what at the core here. We need everything boiled down to a 2-second sound bite. And "Obama's STILL blaming Bush for the economy" plays better than a thoughful, infortative analysis that would actually SHOW that (1) Most of the crap still going on is not Obama's fault (and not REALLY Bush's, or even Clinton's for that matter, but that's for another post) and (2) That's things ARE in fact getting better, and have been getting steadily better since we bottomed out back in March of 2009, just a month an a half after he took office! It's beagle poltics. That's all we do anymore.
ReplyDelete@okiepoli - Now I KNOW, you now know I was [sorta] kidding about that "closet liberal" thing, right? ;)
ReplyDeleteHey, I've said it many times, and I mean it genuinely: If most Conservatives these days thought as you do, I'd still call MYSELF Conservative, as I once did. And you;re right, there's nothing "Conservative" about these fools. I'll give you that. "Small Government" certainly doesn't involve censoring the internet, imprioning or intimidtaing journalists, or controlling the press. These people are WAY beyod any reasonable, principled definition of "Conservative."
And I'm defitely going to post that email of yours... Rigth after my NEXT post. (Which is just a Friday-fun post anyway. Very little substance or politics.)
@ClassicLiberal-
ReplyDeleteWow. I really never would have thought that between the two of us YOU'D be the one sounding more optimistic!
*sigh*
You're right of course. But in the Bush years I saw a way out. Shoot, almost immediately after they got their "mandate" in 2006, we were ON the path back. But now? Things are better, but no one will tell THAT story. Obama and the Democrats are moderates on thier BEST of days, and slaves to the Right more often. And no one will tell THAT story! Instead we've got people foaming at the mouth about "Communists" and "Socialists" and all the other nonsense.
Half the country is BEGGING for us to go back to they way things were, just as we are on the cusp of finally getting OUT of them! And if we do, do you REALLY think the TeaPublicans will take the blame? No. It'll all still be about Obama. Either because he's "too liberal" (HA!) or, just as was the case with Clinton, they'll keep asking "And who SIGNED that legislation?" In a effort to blame liberals for bascially LETTING them screw everything up.
I hear you. But I'm just not in a ra-ra, "sprit of the American people" mood right now. If things turn out differently in Novemeber? If the optimism that you and Mauigril have in the [near] future pans out?
Shoot, I'd never be happier to have been proven wrong.
And that's about the best hope I have. We're to the point that is Obama was assissinated, you'd have a significant portion of the media claiming that the shooter did a service to the country. The their audience would fill YouTube with videos saying, "Yeah! Now let's just bag Biden, Reid and Pelosi and get things back on track!"
You may say that's unfair, but is it REALLY?
All I can say is, "I hope you're right."
Thanks to all of you guys for your comments.