And I have to say I’m death on outright lies being told to me, personally, and then being expected to help and support that person despite the lies.  Yeah, yeah, there’s the political process that has been inculcated into each one of the American would-be serf cognoscenti, again and again and again.

Things about coalition building.  Tactics such as “vote for me on this bill and I’ll let you vote no on that bill, so as to look better to your constituents.”  Things about so-called political pragmatism which is as opposite to the actual pragmatism of running a country for the benefit of its people.

People on liberal blogs will tell you that the Republicans are 100 times worse, and so the natural thing to do is to work for and vote for Democrats to keep the Republicans from getting office.

And, if you subscribe to that theory, yeah, there’s some truth in it. There are many names for this reasoning — it’s called “extortionist reasoning” with much truth by some, but from people who employ it sincerely I’m going to call it the “keep the boogeyman at bay” argument.

You see, there’s a dangerous boogeyman outside your door.  What he wants to do is take all your belongings, rape your spouse, sell your children into indentured servitude and burn your livestock — what you are a serf and you don’t have livestock?  Ok, your pets then.

I’ll circle back to that.

In America of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we’ve been steeped in a culture of lies.  Much of it comes with a wink and a nod, and through an initial culture of consumption.  And despite the fact that people bemoan that Americans are clueless, unschooled and unsophisticated in some ways, for example not being able to find Afghanistan on a map, we have become very sophisticated (I might prefer the term “jaded”) in some ways.

When we see advertisements on TV, or on the radio or in print media, we’re totally used to being lied to with wild abandon.  We know that the products and services we’re being sold come with a passel of lies.  We know that vacuum cleaner just will not work flawlessly for years and as a side effect clean the air we breathe.  If we are sophisticated, we know that the paid programming with the latest get rich quick scheme is a total con job.

So, we’re expected to be sophisticated about it, and if we’re not sophisticated, we’re gullible dupes.  Because of this expectation of sophistication, no one else has to take any responsibility for their lies, on the expectation that those who were sold a bill of goods should have known better.  That TV station that aired the total con job with the criminal liar isn’t responsible for any lies the criminal liar tells — heck they even SAID they weren’t responsible!

Well, at least they’re not Republicans.  Or something.

Yesterday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend the Patriot Act, a law that violates the Fourth Amendment right of all people within the USA to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. The Patriot Act grants extraordinary government powers to spy on Americans’ private lives, grabbing records of their communications, commercial activities, and even checking on which library books we’re reading. The law makes it crime for anyone conscripted into aiding these government spying programs to tell people that they’re being spied on either – they’re required by law to lie, and pretend nothing happened instead.

Last year, the judiciary committees of the Senate and House attempted to draft reforms of these kinds of terrible abuses. The reforms were weak, but a small step in the right direction. However, the Patriot Act extension passed this week by the House and Senate contains none of those reforms. In fact, the Patriot Act extension just passed by Congress has no reforms at all.

(emphasis added)

In the election of 2010, it won’t matter if you call yourself a progressive.  It won’t matter if you sent a sternly worded letter to the Obama administration or denounced Republicans on the floor of the Congress for wanting people to die.

Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault, the American people are going to come screaming for your seats, and you’ll lose them.

It’s as simple as that.

If you don’t pass health care reform, you are going to lose the majority for a generation.  If you pass a corporatist bill with mandates but no public option, you are going to lose a majority for a generation.

And if you play the kabuki of pretending to be for the American people while telling them that their rejection of people dying from lack of health care or medical bankruptcy is “not realistic” or that their wanting decent health care that the average person can afford without giving their money to criminal murder by spreadsheet companies is akin to “wanting a pony”, you are going to lose your seats.  If you turncoat at the last minute and refuse to shove through a public option because it’s “not the right timing”, you’re going to suffer a humiliating defeat as a party and perhaps as an elected official.

It’s time for some goddamn respect for the American people, Congress.

And that is only the start.  The American people aren’t buying “we can’t” anymore.  You better.  And sooner or later the “vote for us or the puppy gets it” routine will fail too.  It’s already failing.  One by one, people aren’t buying the pee-on-our-feet while telling us it’s raining act.

I’m talking even to you, Michael Bennett.  I am talking to you too, Dianna DeGette.  We want results.  And more and more people are not going to be fooled by the red bull flag the Democrats wave with the Republicans acting crazy and the Democrats doing nothing about it.

If you don’t take us to a better place in this country, things are going to get a whole lot worse.

And it won’t matter whose fault it was.

I just came across this article in Mother Jones, which is a bit horrifying:

Walters’ discovery that her home had been sold out from under her marked the low point of a four-year fiasco that began when Ocwen Loan Servicing became her mortgage servicer in late 2004. Through no fault of her own, Ocwen incorrectly processed or lost dozens of Walters’ payments and charged her more than $2,000 in late fees and thousands more in additional charges-all without notifying her. The Florida-based company tried to foreclose on her three times. After she paid more than $10,000, Walters figured things were settled. But Ocwen had other ideas.

Please read the entire article, it’s a tale of shocking usury, which we’re used to by now, but what is more telling to me is the reaction of various agencies of the Federal government, which I am mournful to remind people who believed in Barack Obama, he now heads.

An allegory in four parts

Part I: The Warning of the Dirty Fucking Hippies

The power of the Enemy is growing.  The corporations will use their puppets, the Republicans, the media, and the Blue Dog corporatists and centrists, to enslave the people of America.  Fascism has been unleashed.  The eye of the corporations now turn to the last free people of America.  Their war on this country will come swiftly.  They sense the ring is close.  The strength of the Democrats is failing.  In their hearts, progressives being to understand, the quest will claim their freedom — all their freedom.  It was the risk we all took.

In the gathering dark the will of the Ring grows strong.  It works hard now to find its way back into the hands of Congressmen.  Congressmen who are so easily seduced by its power.  The young Captain of America has now but to extend his hand, take the Ring for his own, and the world will fall.

It is close, now, so close to achieving its goal.  For the corporations will have dominion over all life in America, even unto the ending of the world.

Do we leave America to its fate?  Do we let them stand alone?

It may be time to utter the “unutterable”.

There’s a phenomenon called “core accretion” in the world of astrophysicists.  It refers to the process by which little planets become big planets during solar system formation.  

During this process, the biggest and strongest of the planetesimals gobble up the smaller ones.  And the character of the new planet takes on the combined character of all the rocks it has accreted in the process.

It works a little like this:

If the Democrats continue to take this country the direction they’ve been taking it all the way through 2010, it may be time that the Democrats are done.  If the Democrats were supplanted by another Party or Parties, what would happen next?  What to do, this would bring chaos and political defeat!

Not really.