It Has to Stop!

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

I think some the angst I’m feeling comes from my fear that, even with our historic victory, that too little will change in time to make a difference.  Generals always want to fight the last war, while politicians want to wage the last campaign.  It’s easy to look backward and hard to look forward, and far too few seem to realize the extent to which the stakes have been raised.  Our circumstances have really become quite dire.  That doesn’t sink in easily for the many who want to pretend that the world is always going to be the way it’s always been.

The politics of yesterday are not going to serve us any longer.  We need more than change.  We need more than a mid-course correction.  We need the crazy to stop.

And I don’t mean just slow down a little, or be a little less crazy.  I mean it has to stop.  We have to reverse course in this damned country, not just modify it somewhat.  

We cannot continue to put up with the ruthless exploitation of the American people by George W. Bush’s base, the haves and the have mores.  And yes I know that Bush is on his way out, but the ignorant greedheads that infest Washington and Wall Street are going nowhere.

We have to deal with these guys…and not by making nice with them.  These people are dangerous.  Our laws are meant to protect us from people like this, and we need to see that they do.  This is no time to look the other way.

Do I want truth and reconciliation?  No sir!  I want trials and convictions.  We can talk about reconciliation after we’ve settled a few accountability issues.  How about someone taking responsibility for a change?

Progressives aren’t getting a seat at the table, it has been suggested, because no one wants to deal with an angry mob on the far left.

My response is that if you’re not angry, what good are you?

Am I angry?  Fuckin’ A I’m angry.  But it’s not like I’m angry without reason.  Don’t do something horrible to me then point the finger at me for getting pissed off about it.  The right-wingers have stolen everything, not just from us but from our children and grandchildren.  People SHOULD be pissed, and they should NOT be getting over it.  People who don’t want to have to deal with angry mobs shouldn’t go around robbing people blind and fucking people over in every conceivable way.

PE Obama has said that both sides have good ideas and that we’ve ignored that.  That seems a reasonable proposition, or it does until one tries to identify just exactly what the good ideas of the American rightwing might be.

Reagan’s trickledown proved to be just another piss-on-you program.  Deregulation?  A tragic, catastrophic failure.  Tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires?  Corporate welfare?  Outsourcing jobs?  Union busting?  Mercenary armies in America?  NAFTA?  CAFTA?  SHAFTA?

FISA?  Domestic spying?  Secret Presidential signing statements?  Double-super-secret everything?  Extraordinary renditions?  Gitmo?  Abu Ghraib?

Aggressive war?  Torture?  War on the environment?  Looting of the treasury?  Religious intolerance?  Bigotry?  Insulting our allies?  Subverting science?  Denying global warming?  

Doubling down on the drug war when they should be ending it?  Is THAT their big idea?

Outing CIA agents?  Locking up citizens at a higher rate than any other country?  Stationing military troops inside the borders of the USA?  

Pissing all over the Constitution of the United States of America?  Bankrupting us all?

What IS their good idea?  WTF is it?  Small government?  Please.  Until Wall Street needs a bailout, right?  Fuck Katrina.  Fuck New Orleans.  Fuck Detroit.  But Wall Street can have it all just for the askin’.  They don’t even have to explain it to us or tell us where it’s going.  What a huge bottomless pit of unmitigated bullshit!

And these stupid wars!  Is THAT the good idea?  That we are continuing to bomb the shit out of people who have done us no harm?  Ripping families apart?  Murdering babies?  Is THAT their good idea?

That we’ve bankrupted the nation, needlessly sacrificed the blood of our youth, killed millions of innocent people and destroyed our military by fighting foolish wars for foolish reasons?  Is that the good idea?

War crimes?  Could that be it?  Letting heinous criminals skate Scott free without so much as a sternly worded letter of disapproval?  Is THAT their excellent idea?

Class warfare?  Ruthlessly screwing over the poor and middleclass?  Distorting and perverting the once honorable practice of medicine all for the sake of a buck?  Destroying public education?  Politicizing the Justice Department?  Billions in bonuses for the greedheads who stole our money and wrecked our economy – on top of the unaccounted-for bailout money?

Maybe it’s just me but I’m not seeing any good ideas here.  I just plain don’t fucking see it.

Obama said he wasn’t against all wars, just dumb ones.  What’s so smart about Afghanistan?  It may be arguable whether or not it was EVER a good idea, but after seven long years it has certainly become just another very bad one.

But now we’re escalating it?  Sending in twenty thousand more troops?  With Obama’s blessing?  

Why is this sane?  Why does this make any sense at all?  Why is this not totally fucked up?  

Does nobody care about the suffering of the Afghan people?

Compassionate conservatism.  Yeah, maybe that’s their big idea.

Obama has recently spoken about ‘stomping out terrorism’.  When will we get it, that the more ‘stomping’ we do, the more terrorists we create?  Terrorism doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  It happens because we keep giving people good reasons to hate us.  Ahmed is a ‘terrorist’ because we tortured his father, bombed his mother or attacked his uncle’s wedding party.  They do NOT hate us for our freedom – they hate us for good reasons that we keep serving up to them on a silver platter.  The only reason we do it is to placate the military industrial complex whose backers are making a killing off of the killing.  

That’s the only reason.  These people, the Afghans, the Iraqis are no threat to us – or they wouldn’t be if we’d quit fucking with them.  But we have allowed war profiteers to drive our foreign policy.  We let death merchants drive the damned boat and they have gone all over the world starting bogus wars in our names, torturing, killing, maiming, raping.  Thanks to these gi-normous assholes, we are the biggest bullies on the planet – hands down.  It’s insane.  Surely THIS is not the good idea.

Or maybe it’s Bush’s final fuck you to America that’s so damned charming.

Bush’s Final F.U.

The administration is rushing to enact a host of last-minute regulations that will screw America for years to come

RollingStone

It has to stop.  This madness has to turn completely around for us to even have a chance.  And it’s not just because people like me want it to.  It’s because if it doesn’t we’re fucked.

The big melt: 2 trillion tons of ice gone since ’03

Scientists say NASA satellite data on global warming ‘should alarm people’

MSNBC

Things have simply gotten too serious for us to be able to afford continued tinkering with national policy by those whose motives are unpure.  Period.

Barack Obama is no doubt going to change a lot of things in America.  I do not mean to minimize any of that – it will all be as welcome as it is desperately needed.  My fear is that for all the change that will surely come, one still will not have to scratch too deeply beneath the surface of things to find the same asshattery and dimwittery at play.  That has little or nothing to do with Obama.  It is all about the deep reality of who controls what in America.  The ‘big money’ players who control so much from behind the scenes are still going to be with us – and they will be trying desperately to keep us from turning things around.  It might cost them a buck or two to save all of our asses…and of course they can’t have any of THAT.

We have to stop these ignorant assholes, their blind running greed, their tons of cash and the influence it buys from killing us all.

If we don’t get focused on real problems like climate change, alternative energy, sustainable agriculture, etcetera and stop being distracted by these stupid and destructive wars, humanity itself will soon go into epic fail mode.

We don’t need change we can believe in, we need change we can count on.  And it can’t be just a little change.  It needs to come in a steady stream and in huge boatloads.

The madness has to stop.

And yes, I know he’s not president yet, but he still deserves to hear from us.  He NEEDS to hear from us.  Dissent is our duty – now more than ever.