Question of the day: Does it scare you that you care so much?
Everywhere we look the signs seem so positive for a big November 7 for the Democratic Party, bringing with it a rebirth of checks and balances within our federal system. And also something more intangible, but at least as important: At last — no, at long last — an election that will bring some semblance of accountability to a national leadership that has served this nation so dishonorably.
But, of course, we’ve been disappointed so many times before. I don’t expect a repeat this time, but only a fool would discount the possibility. So what if the wave goes flat? What if the Democratic gains are only modest, leaving the GOP in control of both houses? How will we feel?
And does the fact you care as much as you do scare you, at least a little?
It scares the hell out of me.
November 2nd, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Yes, but only in the sense that if things don’t go as hoped… I can’t imagine how crushed I will feel. But if that does happen, and those scumfucks steal another one, we take to the streets.
November 2nd, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Perfect opportunity for me to direct your readers to TomDispatch.com and the essay by Nick Turse. A little while ago Steve had something about Skilling getting 24 years just for robbing a few billion $. And pay special attention to about 1/2 way through the 5th paragraph of Tom’s preamble about the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007.
That’s why we have to care so much.
Scaredly, Chuck
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:37 am
Karl Marx (yeah, I know, THAT guy; as our Prexy would say, “Now let me finish”) has several great passages in his “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” about how the sudden coup by which the president of the French republic (who was Napoleon’s nephew) turned it into a dictatorship on December 2, 1851, and formally proclaimed it an empire and himself Emperor Napoleon III one year later, was inevitable and not an unforeseeable “bolt from the blue” event like other people said. I feel the same thing could be said for our Prexy, especially if the Democrats take over the House this year and become “obstructionist” and so give him an “excuse”. Anyway, it is amazing how few words you have to change to make some of Marx fit today!
Here is a great passage about how the democrats (I only have to make that upper-case to fit modern America!) were futilely hoping that the next election would save them from the increasingly despotic president (so I have to change the date, and a couple other things of course, too):
“For the rest, every fair observer, even if he had not followed the course of American developments step by step, must have had a presentiment of the imminence of an unheard-of disgrace for the American Republic. It was enough to hear the complacent yelps of victory with which the Democrats congratulated each other on the expectedly gracious consequences of the first Tuesday in November. In their minds that first Tuesday of November had become a certain idea, a dogma, like the day of Christ’s reappearance and the beginning of the millennium in the minds of the Chiliasts. As always, weakness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles, believed the enemy to be overcome when he was only conjured away in imagination, and lost all understanding of the present in an inactive glorification of the future that was in store for it and the deeds it had in mind but did not want to carry out yet. Those heroes who seek to disprove their demonstrated incapacity – by offering each other their sympathy and getting together in a crowd – had tied up their bundles, collected their laurel wreaths in advance, and occupied themselves with discounting on the exchange market the republics in partibus for which they had already providently organized the government personnel with all the calm of their unassuming disposition. [The date Prexy makes it official – still to be filled in] struck them like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and those who in periods of petty depression gladly let their inner fears be drowned by the loudest renters will perhaps have convinced themselves that the times are past when the cackle of geese could save the Capitol. The constitution, the Congress, the dynastic parties, the blue and red states, the heroes of Iraq, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the first Tuesday in November – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. … It is not enough to say, as the Americans do, that their nation was taken unawares. Nations and women are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer who came along could violate them. Such turns of speech do not solve the riddle but only formulate it differently. It remains to be explained how a nation of three hundred millions can be surprised and delivered without resistance into captivity by three knights of industry.”
November 4th, 2006 at 1:58 am
I am worried, of course. This administration has been so totally corrupt, so obviously incompetent, so blatantly extremist. Those who are up for re-election and have supported Bush’s detrimental policies, should not be returned to office. Yet, a number of them will be. I cannot understand the depths of stupidity that would lead anyone to vote for them. Still, the party hacks, the vacuous wannabees, the greedy rich, will vote for the incumbents. And in doing so, they will vote for the destruction of this country. The economic base is full of cracks. It won’t take much for the structure to fall. If the people of this country cannot see the severity of problems facing us in the near future, then they havent the ability to see their nose in front of their face.