(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
There’s too much going on. Too many issues. Too many fuck ups. Too many know-it-alls. Far too many experts. Too much of too little.
What am I left with? Huh. It was more fun fighting George W. Bush.
Cross-posted at Daily Kos
It’s like we’ve entered into some kind of progressive mass hysteria. Like we’re dripping desperation. We haven’t got a real strategy. We haven’t got a real movement. Why, we haven’t even got a real issue that draws Americans, much less progressives, together.
I thought the idea of progressive politics was populist, at its core. That progressive politics had some sympathy for the duped, deadened, and inert among us. But we seem, instead, to love rubbing it the faces of people just as desperate as we, but grasping at different straws.
Yet we have developed our very own left-edged version of Foxesque headlines about teabaggers, birthers, deathers, wingnuts, et al. Head shaking. Who the fuck are we? I’m going to steal an MB line: Leave that shit to Ann Coulter. In_fucking_deed.
What can I say? I’m perplexed in phases. The clarion calls: public option in, out, going, going … CTers are now Truthers. Max Baucus is suddenly a household name. Harry Reid is as arid as ever. Who the fuck knows in what Nancy Pelosi believes… and did Hillary actually really, in good gods name, say I’m Secretary of State, not Bill?
It’s the utter noise of all the pronouncements and prognostications. It’s all the noise of everybody who knows better, from Tom Friedman to Rush Limbaugh. It’s Rahm playing political hard ball with a fucking plastic bat.
And we, the people, end up as monkey in the middle, between congressional chambers and corporate board rooms, jumping up to catch the crumbs and tidbits and shiny objects thrown just out of reach.
Who’s in charge here? Because the one and only thing that would convince me that Obama and Democrats are for real has not happened: credible effort to force Rove, Myers et al to answer Congressional subpoenas. Has a grand jury been convened to consider indictments against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, or Gonzo? Maybe I missed it.
Dems want to be be seen as strong, serious, and having some spine? Then they must round up those who need to account for this train-wreck of a decade. But my sense is that the criminals are still in charge. And the health care debacle is one pretty good example of their continued influence.
I find it amazing that we can NOT seem to make the link between accountability of the powerful and our own inability to impact the policies/practices/laws that run our lives.
Huh. And me? Yeah. What about that? … huh… I am less sure of where we are and for what we stand than I did when we were fighting George W. Bush.
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every once-in-a-while, rage gets watered down to a shrug.
Nicely done.
Not.
When there’s no GWB to kick around, we find out how disorganized we are. And how very weak and chaotic. That’s because it’s far easier for the left to be a weak, disorganized, but loud opposition than to make the nominally democratic Government the left supposedly elected give a hoot about what progressives think. But you know this already. Sighing is the new yelling.
Good to see you again.
http://politicaltheatrics.org/…
Too much this, too much that? You’ve got to be kidding! 😉
You’re right, absolutely right!
“Who’s in charge here?” Fonny, you should ask!
In the beginning of Obama’s tenure, he did, indeed, try to establish some standards, i.e., CEO’s a standard of $500,000 per year, etc. Of course, I could reiterate some or all of what he attempted to lay down. And, then, surprise, surprise, little by little, we saw him acquiesce (in a bi-partisanship appeal?) I won’t say that’s not somewhat of a noble effort, simply, as he well should know by now, an unrealistic effort — snakes are snakes — if you offer your “hand” to them, do you think they will not bite?
Who’s in charge here? I think you know the answer to that, pf8! Look how quickly after Obama was elected that his previous positions seemed to have shifted? Do you think he was an inveterate liar? I heard him in person, several times, I don’t think he’s a liar or insincere, either. I think he’s simply been rendered “impotent” and he tries hard to save face. How, you say? Well, did you ever think that all the powers that were with us in the Bush years really left us? No, they didn’t. We are still fighting or, not fighting, those same powers.
I could go on and on — the homeless, the uninsured and ultimate deaths. All “lesser people” doomed by the “rich.” Think not? Check out the utter disparity in wages across the nation, for one. But, what I think people REALLY need to understand is that all of these efforts have no innocence — NO, indeed, it has been and is calculated to make a “third world” country of us, or a “Roman empire,” failed. In other words, capitalism run amok!
And, finally, Who’s in charge here? I agree with you 100%, as I have before, in my own right and yours, if we cannot find the will to bring the worst criminals on earth to the fore, how in the hell can we hope to correct our domestic and international ills? Without doing so, everything is a mere “continuum.”
I’ve said this often, but I’ll say it again, Roy Arundhati, an Indian author and speaker, during the campaign period between Bush and Kerry, had this to say: “You can either have an “Oxy-Tide” or a “Gentle-Ivory” for a president — makes no difference if the United States does not change its policies.” Well, she was speaking more in the International sense, but to me, her words ring true RIGHT HERE AT HOME.
Internationally, I worry a lot! Our aggressions, killings, maiming of innocent people the world over may, at a point, come back to haunt us. Doesn’t our government consider that we could, in fact, be the recipient of the “atom bomb?” What makes us so special that we couldn’t have such an occurrence — and, it would be warranted. Please understand that WOULD BE THE LAST OF MY WISHES — but we need to THINK ABOUT WHAT WE DO, NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY!
Finally, so nice to see you here, pf8. (Think about you often.)
I’m actually thinking we could use a little more of it.
Is that bad?
You summed up my feelings this fine morning. I just can’t get past the surreal aspect of this whole freakin mess. I feel like I’ve been on a wild ride that landed me back where I started a decade ago only now I have no clue as to my political identity or what will happen next with ‘the squid on the face of humanity’ that can’t be pried off. I did enjoy Grayson’s speech as it at least was good theater. I am done fighting for a bit until I can figure out what I’m even fighting for or with or even who.. All action seems to be enabling the very entities both governmental and corporate, no entwined that seek to destroy any semblance of our democracy and system. All activist roads seem to lead to a ending that I find appalling and unsupportable, not to mention just useless. It’s as crazy and surreal as the Chinese sending the relatives a bill for the bullets after they execute the so called traitors that stand up to the thugs in power.
very very good questions………
thank you……
and not reactive.
Or, at least more the former and less the latter.
You can’t reinvent the world by virtue of only fighting against that which you don’t want.