2006-10-19 10:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineI'd love to be more upbeat, and continue to post the trivial victories and setbacks of my personal life and nothing more, but there are people actively ruining the fucking world, and, more to the point, destroying the America I believe in.
That was almost typed as "believe(d)", but the small kernel of optimism that hasn't yet been extinguished by my own innate cynicism, pragmatism, or snuffed out by the large forces of stupidity and evil steering and staying the course (and, yes, I do wholeheartedly believe that the sitting administration is evil, with whatever size E you care to use).
Keith Olberman Eulogizes: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321167/
Where is the outrage? Will people vote quietly, and hope the Democrats make enough hay from the incessant scandals and poor policy of the current crop of government assholes to nudge things in a slightly less onerous direction?
I am done tarring and feathering Republicans; the actual Republican Oath is a list of ideas that, basically, I agree with.
"I've also discovered an unfortunate tendency in myself toward facile labelling. I've been conflating the terms 'conservative' and 'Republican,' using them interchangeably, when in fact I mean neither of those, not in their larger senses." -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaylake, here.
No, the problem isn't that these people are Republicans, the problem is that they were given and brought to power by people who thought they were. The Republicans are to blame only insofar as they had the brand recognition under which the current regime stole to power in front of our eyes, and under whose flag they continue to operate.
Republicans, real Republicans, should be outraged that they are being defamed and dragged through the mud by these people.
Throw them out. You don't need to vote Democrat, but they're the only alternative out there right now.
I'll be making a few hours' worth of phone calls on behalf of MoveOn.org over the next couple of weeks. It's a pittance compared to "give me liberty, or give me death," or, as Billmon puts it today:
I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.
My question to myself, in other words, is like Thoreau's famous question to Ralph Waldo Emerson when Emerson came to visit him in jail after he was arrested for not paying his poll tax as a protest against slavery:
Emerson: What are you doing in there, Henry?
Thoreau: No, Waldo, the question is: What are you doing out there?
It's easy to think up excuses now -- we were in the minority, the media was against us, the country was against us. We didn't know how bad it would be.
But we knew, or should have known, that what Bush was planning was an illegal act of aggression, based on a warmongering campaign of deception and ginned-up hysteria. And we knew, or should have known, what our moral and legal obligations were:
"Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
We were all complicit. I was complicit. Because I was afraid -- afraid to sacrifice my comfortable middle class lifestyle, afraid to lose my job and my house, afraid of the IRS, afraid to go to jail.
But not nearly as afraid, of course, as the thousands of Iraqis who have been tortured or murdered, or who, like Riverbend, are forced to live in bloody chaos, day after day. Which is why, reading her post today, I couldn't help but feel deeply, bitterly ashamed -- not just of my country, but of myself.
What are you doing to save America? Or are we all simply going to be witnesses... or pallbearers?
That was almost typed as "believe(d)", but the small kernel of optimism that hasn't yet been extinguished by my own innate cynicism, pragmatism, or snuffed out by the large forces of stupidity and evil steering and staying the course (and, yes, I do wholeheartedly believe that the sitting administration is evil, with whatever size E you care to use).
Keith Olberman Eulogizes: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321167/
Where is the outrage? Will people vote quietly, and hope the Democrats make enough hay from the incessant scandals and poor policy of the current crop of government assholes to nudge things in a slightly less onerous direction?
I am done tarring and feathering Republicans; the actual Republican Oath is a list of ideas that, basically, I agree with.
"I've also discovered an unfortunate tendency in myself toward facile labelling. I've been conflating the terms 'conservative' and 'Republican,' using them interchangeably, when in fact I mean neither of those, not in their larger senses." -
jaylake, here.No, the problem isn't that these people are Republicans, the problem is that they were given and brought to power by people who thought they were. The Republicans are to blame only insofar as they had the brand recognition under which the current regime stole to power in front of our eyes, and under whose flag they continue to operate.
Republicans, real Republicans, should be outraged that they are being defamed and dragged through the mud by these people.
Throw them out. You don't need to vote Democrat, but they're the only alternative out there right now.
I'll be making a few hours' worth of phone calls on behalf of MoveOn.org over the next couple of weeks. It's a pittance compared to "give me liberty, or give me death," or, as Billmon puts it today:
I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.
My question to myself, in other words, is like Thoreau's famous question to Ralph Waldo Emerson when Emerson came to visit him in jail after he was arrested for not paying his poll tax as a protest against slavery:
Emerson: What are you doing in there, Henry?
Thoreau: No, Waldo, the question is: What are you doing out there?
It's easy to think up excuses now -- we were in the minority, the media was against us, the country was against us. We didn't know how bad it would be.
But we knew, or should have known, that what Bush was planning was an illegal act of aggression, based on a warmongering campaign of deception and ginned-up hysteria. And we knew, or should have known, what our moral and legal obligations were:
"Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
We were all complicit. I was complicit. Because I was afraid -- afraid to sacrifice my comfortable middle class lifestyle, afraid to lose my job and my house, afraid of the IRS, afraid to go to jail.
But not nearly as afraid, of course, as the thousands of Iraqis who have been tortured or murdered, or who, like Riverbend, are forced to live in bloody chaos, day after day. Which is why, reading her post today, I couldn't help but feel deeply, bitterly ashamed -- not just of my country, but of myself.
What are you doing to save America? Or are we all simply going to be witnesses... or pallbearers?
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(no subject)
Sedition is less enjoyable when it's necessary. Can we impeach that fucker for treason yet?