Bamboozled by a blow job, America turned to Republicanism to save it from moral decay and to restore ‘honor.’
How’s that workin out for ya there, America?
Confused by relative peace, a good economy, growing but slow progress on Gay and Civil Rights, the respect of the world, a long record of fairly successful diplomatic effort, progress on the environment and huge budget surpluses…..America turned to Republicanism.
And has nearly destroyed itself.
We literally went from a country of peace, prosperity and tolerance to a country of perpetual war, hatred, racism, torture and looming economic collapse in what must be viewed in historical terms as …overnight.
In a mere seven years we have mad a transition from the hope of the world to the bully of the world….to a laughingstock of the world. All because of one thing: Republicanism.
All through the Clinton years, Republicans chomped at the bit. They had a new philosophy and new spokespeople. No longer would they hide some of the aspects of Republicanism that they had been forced to keep in the closet for so long. Things like racism, homophobia, rabid religiosity, and Manifest Destiny that enabled us to, in their eyes, really BE America….IOW REALLY be who they are, were discredited and disrespected.
Not to mention things like a Robber Baron Economy, raping the environment for profit and the destruction of the middle class. These were the things that the evil libruls were keeping repressed. Damn them….they were keeping America from being great!
Now as the Clinton years ended and they triumphed over fellatio…They Had Their Big Chance!!!
They were in control of EVERYTHING! Unfettered Republicanism could now flourish and thrive….they could do things their way with meddling bleeding hearts getting in the way! Hallelujah, they were free at last! They were able to act out every philosophy, precept, theology and policy of Republicanism virtually unthreatened. Including a perfect chance to try out the doctrine of Manifest Destiny Superpower Might Makes Right….We can just TAKE what we want.
And here we are.
All of the ‘promise’ of Republicanism has been fulfilled.
The famous question: Are you better off than you were 8 years ago?
Only if you are a CEO or in a mercenary army.
Of the fifty percent of Americans who voted for Republicanism……a full HALF of them have jumped ship, using Bush’s poll numbers as the most obvious measure.
Republicanism has failed and failed miserably. The closer the election gets….the more we need to emphasize that.
But the reason I have gathered you here today is not just to state what is obvious to us…and to encourage you to trash Republicans and Republicanism vociferously. It is to ask a question….
….when the Democrats regain full control in ’08, how much will all these years of Republicanism influence them?
Even after we win the White House and increase our majorities to levels high enough that even Dem leadership can’t pretend we don’t have them….how much will the hangover over Republicanism still linger. How much will the mental limits they have imposed upon themselves in the face of the Republican rhetorical terrorism centered around the “traitor” meme that Rove was so successful in implementing?
After a decade of Republican dominance and fear mongering, how much will the now epic and legendary spinelessness of the Democrats ‘allow’ them to still act weak and cravenly and capitulate to entities such as the Fundies and the Military Industrial Complex and the Corporatocracy?
Will they continue to be reactive instead of proactive?
How much will they cling to the myth of cowboy jingoistic Republicanism?
How much will they still continue to fear and pander to what has now obviously become a small minority of people who are still stupid enough to still believe in the failed ideology of Republicanism, hatred, war and environmental destruction?
Continue to play it safe….continue to look ahead to the next election, instead of acting on the problems and challenges we face now?
Will they follow a ‘safe’ middle road?
Or will they craft a new vision for America and the world and implement it?
Now more than ever, our future depends on it.
46 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
ZWOOF!
imho
buhdy, you run. or meteor blades. or somebody.
let’s get a contingent together to go talk to jim webb and ask WTF, jim. are you one of them or one of us?
let’s get a list of retired military that have spoken out against bushco. let’s gather people of substance who have the intellect and compassion to tell the truth
and number 1, prepare us for the times ahead
2. elevate the struggle
3. don’t make it about republican or democrat… it’s easy to change names but not methods…
4. incite quality, questions, and emotional realism
and let’s keep a hot eye on the candidates and start zoning in on any, if there are any, that may qualify to lead this nation.
and please, refrain from using images of bush. they make me sick.
!
wake up each morning with. The main reason I have this lapse of faith in the Democratic intentions is because of their refusal to even denounce what is as clear as day to 76% of the public. I feel I’m being extorted, as do most Democrats. Where do we turn?
We have only them or an upheaval that most Americans don’t have the stomach or courage for. So it’s a race between the total collapse of our democracy and and the corruption that rules both parties, and punishes or marginalizes those in public service that try to restore our system. Within it or outside it I feel that it will go full tilt towards destruction.
seem to take it for granted that an Irish Catholic (JFK) became president. This was a wild anomaly within US history.
There are a lot of good books on the backdrop of the Kennedys’ rise to power (for instance Collier and Horowitz’ the Kennedys) which was primarily fueled by Irish borough politics.
The Irish Catholics have been “dissed.” Hence a huge portion blue collar heart of the Democratic party is gone, gone, gone, quite unwilling to blink away the revisionist US history which so dishonors this people.
Remember when the Democratic Party was called the DFL – the Democratic Farm Laborers? Now it’s more like a yuppie club. Blue collar people, who in very large part are Irish, probably won’t ever be back.
that smirking idiot’s face on the TV & elswhere? How much longer will he have to hear the whiny adolescent gibberish he utters?
I’m not better off than I was 8 years ago. My family’s not better off. My country has been damaged, maybe beyond repair. What’s the answer? I really wish I knew.
hitting people where they live in their day to day lives, as civil rights, money, jobs housing, environmental impact and heath care they may. When you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to loose as they say. You wipe out the gatekeepers, the middle class and when people see they have no parliamentary or legal recourse for their grievances, they may just have to become revolutionaries, in the sense that they will demand representation. Will the Democratic party survive this? Don’t think so as they have not given any indication that they are interested in changing the status quo of corruption or restoring our democratic foundations.
…especially at Planet Orange.
Yes, I know we don’t have the votes in the Senate to convict. But the very process will lay out the official, Congressional historical record of the war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the Constitution that have been committed by BushCo.
That will be even more evidence to use against them when they are out of office and taken before the Hague for trial.
Only two steps after that for ultimate justice to be achieved….
Step 1:
Step 2:
(Or insert your own “Higher Power.”)
America never turned to Republicanism, not in 2000, not in 2004.
Rather, America had Republicanism thrust upon it by Supreme Court decisions, illegal scrubbing of voter rolls, and hacked Diebold machines.
America acquiesced in this result because that “other party,” the one which won the elections, conceded the results.
The key word in American politics today is not “Republicanism,” but neoliberalism. Neoliberalism will pose as the “‘safe’ middle road,” and we will vote for it because, after all, at least it’s not “Republicanism.” And neoliberalism will end up being the “Republicanism” we endorse.
It has nothing to do with the Republican Party per se, only that the Republican Party is today the vanguard of neoliberal economic policy. Richard M. Nixon, despite his numerous crimes, had plenty of political stances that were to the left of Bill Clinton, simply by virtue of the fact that Nixon wasn’t a neoliberal, and Clinton was.
You couldn’t find a more disgusting lead photo could you?
thing I believed, ‘If you don’t run you can’t win’. Third parties can’t work at this time, and people are frightened of the government with good reason so taking to the streets in mass won’t be feasible. I do sense in the grassroots a confusion as to why the Democrats they work for won’t impeach.
People last night didn’t have the constitutional knowledge of the defunding options or of the powers of opposition that congress had, but they did grumble about impeachment. They also complained of what to say to the people who they have signed on to canvas, anger over congress’s dismal refusal to try and stop this.
These people are hard core Democratic progressives who are the parties boots on the ground, I fear they are going to get an earful at each door they go to. These are the folks we need to combine with. One woman I talked with afterward, was surprised that in the netroots there were moderates and even centerists. So if we could work together combining our knowledge and information with their community activism we could strengthen the base on line and off.
— when it is uttered in the run-up to the ’08 Presidential election…
I think this message is sinking through in mainstream America.
Unfortunately, it is the main reason (IMO) why the Dems are standing pat, willing to accomplish only minor legislative victories until the ’08 election.
If their ship is sinking, just make sure you don’t throw them a lifeline. Stand by and let the ship go down.
Cynical bastages, I’m tired of their crap.
at the risk of being railed at a say political realist. Fear, hand wringing,despair, giving up even fleeing, won’t do anything other then allow these rat bastards to accomplish their New Order faster. This is not an just an American problem it’s global. It knows no nationality it’s capitalism run amok. Were just the epicenter of it, so if were blogging for the future we have to both confront and use the systems in place, which while empty shells of what we had, we can still effectively change. I guess all roads are needed including the now pointless party system. The race is on however with the Law of Karma, which is cause and effect, starts it’s mighty blow back.
Bush is destroying this Country. He may have kept the blow job from happening, all the while he has raped the Peoples of the US.
I deeply appreciate your consternation and share it. What we have understood to be a political process has grown unresponsive to passion and truth. Something else carries the day, something that we do not understand.
It was a gorgeous Indian summer day in the San Francisco area today. Everyone seemed buoyed and happy. Traffic on the shopping center frontage roads was dense. Contractor trucks were lined up to load at Home Depot — construction noise was everywhere.
What we think of as the progressive agenda needs time to coalesce. I think it will combine aspects of socialism with environmentalism. Neoliberal capitalism has spread a poisonous gospel of smirking irresponsibility. As a philosophy, it is incredibly shallow, inhumane, heartless. We cannot breathe something so airless.
The work going on here is the good work of rebuilding the connection between government and conscience. It is worth doing and perhaps there is nothing else so worth doing.
America cannot answer your question, yet. The time is not ripe. Still, nourishing a heartfelt governance can begin here, and it is. To say that a few dozen people can begin to change the world is not presumptuous. Look at PNAC. This community will find the light to extinguish their darkenss.