Yes, an argument can be made that however much Reid and Pelosi and their cohort deserve punishment, the other side deserves even more punishment. That’s assuming that you continue to accept the premises of the system, and dutifully choose between the party that commits the crimes and the party with a leadership that will not actually stop the crimes. However, stepping back and looking at it, the whole system is broken if that’s our choice. The only option, then, is to opt out, and vote for, well, anybody else. (Some would say that revolution is an option, but I say that if you have enough energized people to go and burn down enough stuff, you have enough energized people to vote out the bums and vote in a real opposition.) The fact that most Americans don’t care something about the culture.
“Not me! I’m not just blindly excusing crimes! I’m trying to make a difference!” you say, and you’re probably right. If nobody else is voting third party, it’s irrational for you to vote third party. However small the difference between the parties might be, if there’s any difference at all, and if those are the only viable options, then you are being completely rational by voting for the guys who promised to at least pick the undigested corn kernels out of the sh!t sandwich.
But here we are: Crimes were openly revealed on the front page of the nation’s most important newspaper two and a half years ago, and less than a week ago the ostensible political enemies of the criminals gave them full immunity. And there is no uproar outside a few corners of the blogosphere and a few activist groups. The fundamental significance of this is lost on or irrelevant to most people, and so the crimes will go on.
~Thoreau, blogging at Unqualified Offerings. Emphasis added.
Read the whole thing.
If we don’t understand why this is happening, I assure you that we have no chance of stopping it.
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…Thoreau and the other two bloggers at UO, Jim Henley and Mona, are three people who I think we should read more of.
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…just because it is so damn good:
That’s Joe Posnanski, at his blog which is mostly about baseball.
ate my comment, i’ll take that to mean it wasn’t worth posting.
so, no history lesson, no ‘kj’s eye on the sitch’ enough to say the national election is in four months and my vote for obama is secure. there are other options to explore in the meantime and i think the ones that grab me are very much concerned with the “why.” national myths, for instance. what we believe about ourselves and where we live. how our connection, or lack of connection, to ‘the land’ informs our beings. whether anyone smiles or waves while you walk the highway carrying a grocery bag, because you don’t want, or can’t, afford the gasoline to drive instead.
the nekkid emperor and his court of cohorts has been acting out in full view for years now. why do “we” let them? because we’re soft, we’re infused with myths of American Greatness, we’re poor, we’re broke, we’re tired, we know, from experience or relationship, what happens when someone speaks out and losing their jobs, their health insurance, their savings… they’re on their own. the myth of the great lone cowboy.
i want to bust some of those myths, and i’m not talking the television show. 🙂
I guess I just disagree with this statement, with the possible exception of the word “irrelevant,” which is probably quite correct:
There is nothing easy or glorious about walking the highway back from the grocery store in July, or December, for that matter.
There is nothing easy or glorious about losing your job, your health insurance, your retirement savings, because you stood up/out and spoke ‘truth to power.’
There is nothing glorious about watching your loved ones come home (and lucky to come home) broken by a war that you initially supported.
There is nothing easy or glorious about loving your child, but believing his/her ‘lifestyle’ is a sin.
There is nothing easy or glorious about disengaging with your parents because they believe you are a sinner.
We’re witnessing absolute power corrupting absolutely. Taking a stand against that and ‘winning’ is a myth. A myth that bugs the piss out of me personally, because I’ve experienced one of those few examples listed above.
People that I know, Republicans, see what is going on. They are no more blind than any of the rest of us. Democrats see also what is going on, what has transpired, how their ‘leadership’ has caved for profit or their own comfort.
It isn’t about seeing. There are few scales left in my experience. “It’s” about a lot of other things. And we start with one another. We start by enlarging the table. We start by giving the kid, the woman, a ride home from the grocery store in the July heat, or else deciding to walk those highways ourselves in solidarity.
and i go further: those allowing the crimes are worse than the law breakers.
they are worse because they could stop it… they could have stopped it… they lie to us, asking for our vote to stop it… they lied to us, asking for our votes to stop it
they are worse because they admit, by running on platforms to stop the criminals, that they recognize WE see it criminal…
they issued subpoenas… they had all this rhetoric… they are the ones accountable for allowing this mess to unravel to this point.
imo.