Be Careful What You Wish For
When people despair of redressing their grievances through peaceful means, administratively, judicially, electorally, they turn inevitably to violence. Now that the Royalists control the media, the courts, Congress, and the Executive, there is little chance that their many derelictions, predations, and atrocities will ever be honestly investigated. They will keep the lid on the situation and the pressure will build. Eventually, because the government is no longer by the people, freedom-loving people will find it odious enough to attack. Nothing less than this is at stake in November.
How to Defuse Partisan Rancor
Want to know how to detoxify the discourse in the country right now? For starters, the supporters of George Bush could turn to his detractors and say, "I'm sorry. You were right and I was wrong." They probably ought to add, " He and his people really are as deceitful, inept, corrupt and loathsome as you thought they were." And if they really wanted to get Christian about it they might say, "I get down on my knees regularly and pray to God that I'm not duped this badly again."
Until such time as one hears this, the appropriate rhetorical stance has been provided by Dick Cheney, "Go fuck yourself."
How We're Fucked by Family Values
Assholes like Joe Lieberman reveal their essential perversity and stupidity when they talk about how uncivil the discourse has gotten. Just so, various pukes in the commercial media decry the vituperation they find in the blogosphere -- almost invariably depicting bloggers on both the left and the right as equally excessive. They seem to assume that the proper response to stolen elections, criminal incompetence, rampant and unrepentant corruption, nauseating hypocrisy, murderous adventurism, the suspension of the Bill of Rights, the endorsement of torture and an unprovoked $6,300-per-second war, which is predicated in innumerable lies, was prosecuted merely for temporary advantage in domestic politics and proving to be the greatest disaster in American history -- the proper response to all this, is something like "With all due respect, you might want to reconsider your course."
The powers that be are essentially shitting on the flag (not to mention the New Testament) and we're supposed to be polite about it. Yet another illustration of Goethe's wisdom: 'The journalists do not speak the language, and in journalese you cannot tell them so.'
Indeed, the "family newspaper" aesthetic of the Times, the Post, et cetera, which prevents them from printing a "fuck" or "shit" yet allows them to megaphone every toxic obscenity, every lie, every mealymouthed
fatwah death warrant the punishment freaks can come up with, is an essential part of the problem. They literally cannot print the hideously obscene truth, but can only approximate it in terms so understated as to entirely misrepresent. It is like the stewards of the
Titanic telling those in steerage, 'Having a spot of trouble. Worry not -- we'll keep you posted.'
By the way, I
love this image, a
pneumatic moonslide in the shape of the dying Titanic. From those wacky Danes, of course, the same lovely people who brought us Kierkegaard.
Speak of the Devil
Bigot: anyone who considers himself, his people or his religion morally superior.
A corollary to this notion: to the degree that people consider themselves morally superior they are certain to soon provide vivid and abundant disproofs of their own belief.
Mark Foley Saves a Life
Just came back from a week long visit to Mom, a lady of some years, in a picturesque hamlet just 6 hours' train-ride from DC and equidistant from two obscenely huge Indian casinoes. Mom is recovering from pneumonia and from her physicians' efforts to cure her, and so was laid pretty low. I think we might have lost her had the Mark Foley thing not provided some therapeutic hilarity and
schadenfruede, some reason to live -- that and the chance to vote against sniveling weasel Lieberman. So, thanks Mark, thanks Denny. Excellent timing!
And the hits do keep coming.
Today we have Lester Crawford, Bush's former FDA chief, charged with conflict of interest and lying about his stock holdings while in office. It seems:
"The former FDA chief was accused of making a false writing and conflict of interest. The court papers say that Crawford chaired FDA's Obesity Working Group at a time when he and his wife owned stock in soft drink and snack food manufacturer Pepsico and food product manufacturer Sysco."
And Kurt Weldon (R-PA) seems to have a spot of troube what with the FBI raiding his daughter's office and hauling away cartons of documents related to the notion that she and he were illegally peddling some influence. Tsk. Tsk.
How long
before we
get to consider
the entire Bush administration a RICO case? Or maybe
the entire GOP? How many indictments?
A Man/Boy Love Story
I started this blog with a little
meditation on evil, to which I'll one day return, but in the meantime, apropos so much in the news these days, it occurs to me that one crosses a line from merely flawed, fallible, human to
evil precisely when one becomes prone to, or perhaps capable of, believing one's own lies. When in the core of your being you have thus parted company with truth, then you are capable of rationalizing
anything
Moralists Are Invariably Monsters
As the example of Mark Foley (who devoted all his legislative energies to protecting children in cyberspace, while devoting all his personal energies to cybersex with pubescent lads) proves, an excessive concern with the others' personal moral decisions is indicative of a deeply troubled conscience, or deeply perverse practices, or both. William Bennett would be another textbook example of this. And we could insert many, even countless, other examples of degenerates on a crusade to eradicate degeneracy.
Glenn Reynolds has as
excellent piece on the depravity of the Right, starring its most pompous contemporary hypocrite, Rush Limbaugh. Two brilliant paragraphs:
"If the term "moral degenerate" has any validity and can be fairly applied to anyone, there are few people who merit that term more than Rush Limbaugh. He is the living and breathing embodiment of moral degeneracy, with his
countless overlapping sexual affairs, his series of shattered, dissolved marriages, his hedonistic and illegal drug abuse, his jaunts, with
fistfulls of Viagra (but no wife), to an impoverished Latin American island
renowned for its easy access to underage female prostitutes.Yet that is who Hastert chose as the High Priest of the Values Voters to whom he made his pilgrimage and from whom he received his benediction. The difference between Rush Limbaugh and Mark Foley, to the extent there is one, is one of hedonistic tastes, not moral level.
Rush Limbaugh isn't just tolerated within the party that stands for religious piety and moral strength. He is a leader of it, arguably the leader of its most righteous wing. Is it really all that surprising that a political movement that has chosen a moral degenerate like Rush Limbaugh as one of its most revered and morally respected leaders is not all that bothered by -- and therefore actively harbors -- the Mark Foleys of the world?"
It shouldn't really be surprising that the self-proclaimed Values Party® is really a criminal syndicate, many of the worst people in the world bound together by greed and hatred, and sharing as MO nauseating, sanctimonious hypocrisy. These people need to be exposed, repudiated and prosecuted if America is to be saved, democracy is to be saved, civilization is to be saved. Al Quaeda is a blip, like Day School Satanists, compared to the threat from within which has become the GOP, and their Democratic enablers.
Snark
Alicublog's fine
rumination on invective and the many fine comments on the post got me thinking, so I thought I'd quote myself here.
One of the many problems thinking people have is that they often confuse the respect they ought to have for people's rights with a respect they ought to grant those people themseves
only when they've earned it. The loathsome should not be treated with respect; they should be pelted with opprobium, so as to discourage their despicable behavior. This is called Civilization.
Here is my snark for the day, or perhaps for the last five years or so: W took office a crooked, stupid, cowardly, sadistic lout, and then a freak of history handed him absolute power. As Lord Acton might have anticipated, the crack-like catalyst of all this power has further degraded W's character, to the point where he is now criminally insane. Look out America, he is capable of Anything or at least, as some hated Frenchman said, "any crime that does not require courage."
Wheels Coming Off GOP?
Like a wounded, cornered animal, the GOP may be at its most dangerous right now, but it sure seems like things aren't really going that well for the White House and its pet party. Tonight Bob Woodward is going on national TV to explain what the Pet Goat Moment was all about ("Christamighty! That's what that CIA guy was on about back in Crawford.") and his book brings lots more bad news for the junta, including further proof that Condescenda is a
lying sack of shit ("Clinton didn't leave us a plan on Al Qaeda...") and fresh suggestions that she
committed perjury before the 9/11 Commision and before Congress. Meanwhile lots of newly released e-mails tie Karl
Rove and gay-yet-brownshirt
Ken Melhman ever more tightly to the Abramoff crime syndicate
And now Mark Foley, Repuritan Congressman and crusading sponsor of legislation to protect children from internet predators turns out to be (surprise, surprise) an
internet predator. ("Wholly
Projection Batman!" says the Boy Wonder.) And it seems that the party leadership responded to the scandal rather like the Archdiocese of Boston -- with denial, coverup,
hush money etc. Even some Republicans are now suggesting that fat-sack Denny Hastert shouldn't really be part of the Values Party anywmore. Oops. Of course George Felix Maccaca Allen continues to roll in the manure lest he spontanously combust from racist hatred. On a low simmer, of course, are the impending trials of uber-insiders Libby and DeLay. And this just in: Even
Fox "News" now says that nobody except the tinfoil hats, and Bill Kristol, buys the idea that we're winning in Iraq.
Still, you can bet that the corporatist press will find all this somehow good for the GOP, because those Republickers really rise to a challenge -- with God's help of course. The whole thing reminds me of one of those Most-Amazing-Police-Chase videos that I flipped through one night. The fugitive in someone's stolen Range Rover couldn't be stopped; after the spike-strip took out his front tires he still rolled right on on the bare rims, sparks showering out as he ground down the highway for many, many miles. Very entertaining certainly (and of course that's the point for the MSM) , unless you happen to be the fugitive, or the owner of the Range Rover. The aware citizen will feel a bit like both.
