How many times are you gonna get punked?
Seriously. How much can you take? I got punked again too when I lined up behind Chris Dodd after he put a hold on telecom amnesty and promised to filibuster-it seemed so principled to LEAD NOW!-then he failed to show up for the vote on Mukasey. So much for the “gravitas appeal.” Punked again. Dodd’s dad, the Nuremburg prosecutor, must be especially proud that his own son can’t take a stand on torture. I guess that leaves me with flying saucer boy. Dodd wasn’t alone, of course. Most of the rest of you fuckers got punked too.
It’s like watching unbelievably cruel parents playing a game of keep away with their toddler’s favorite toy. Daddy waves the toy enticingly, and just when the child toddles up to Daddy, both them smiling joyously, Daddy throws the toy behind his back to Mommy, and comes up with astonishingly empty hands. The child can’t find the toy until Mommy waves the toy and smiles, Come and get it! The game is endlessly cruel, because the toddler simply can’t understand that punking even exists, much less that Mommy and Daddy would play such a game. He simply hasn’t yet reached that cognitive stage, and remains forever vulnerable until he does. Sure, he may eventually get mad out of sheer frustration, but he simply doesn’t have those cognitive brackets yet that can embrace “punking.” Both Republicans and Democrats deserve points for the sheer hilarity of mastering this same game on adults who presumably do have the cognitive brackets to know that two can play at that game.
I think Chris Floyd says it best about the Mukasey nomination:
Here are a few profiles in courage for you.
On the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States:
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY: did not vote.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill: did not vote.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn: did not vote.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del: did not vote.There you have it. The only four Democratic senators who did not vote on the nomination of Mukasey – and the legitimization of torture and presidential tyranny it represents – were the four Democratic senators seeking the presidency.
Draw your own conclusions on the implications of these absences, and what they portend for the possibilities of genuine reform should any of these worthy paladins win the White House.
It’s not about Republicans and Democrats. Never has been. It is about the Constitution. Period.
I can think of one way to stop this without even worse outcomes.
14 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
i told you last week you were too soft on those dems
i think you should join me in my essay
let’s pretend we’re going round and round in a round above ground pool and by some crazy chance, we start sweeping others up in the circular motion with us… why can’t we get people caught in our current?
I’ve played that game with all my kids–and it isn’t cruel–they usually love it. If the kids were upset I would have stopped–of course I usually gave them the ball in such a way as to show them their effort won the day.
Still it is a good analogy. The key to what you said is the implication that the public lacks certain required cognitive skills–and it does lack those skills on the whole. There are three reasons for that: 1) the propaganda/PR/Advertising/Marketing department of the State (I include the major corporations in the State) is incredibly sophisticated, innovative and is able to attract the finest minds in the world to its service and the arts it practices are beyond excellent; 2) perhaps because of several generations of assault by the above-mentioned group the the average person is rapidly loosing his/her reasoning ability–perhaps due to information overload as well; and 3) the fact that public education has basically remained conceptually in the late 19th century and simply refused to adjust to the realities of the contemporary world and the advances in social science that the propagandists are only too eager to use.