"Beginning of the End of America" and an end to my Republican-bashing

[digitaldiscipline]

I'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." - 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?

Comments

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

:::APPLAUSE!!:::

Agreed and seconded!! The party now in control has *nothing to do* with real conservative values. Hell, *I* am more fiscally conservative than the lot.

The issue is not Republicans, or even the Republican party. It is the blissfully ignorant American people who do NOT DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH before voting! Who *STAND BY IDLY* as their constitution (a document BOTH parties used to rabidly protect) is stripped to it's bones. The *ISSUE* is that the American public allowed itself to be duped by pseudo-conservatives (neo-cons, if you will) into thinking that the current administration had anything at all to do with their values.

What can we do about it. FECKING WELL VOTE, for one. And, *do* the legwork to figure out who actually *does* represent your interests before you do.

How about factcheck.org? Even the laziest and least internet savvy amongst us can get some clues there. I know... I am lazy, and not very internet savvy.

Linking to this post... yet again. Thanks for saying it so well, Brother R.

[megiddo-lj.livejournal.com]

Large doses of KMFDM work well in the current political climate. Just sayin...

Summing it up.

[theonebob.livejournal.com]

Republicans need to go back to being Republicans.

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm married to a Republican- he's getting as sick (if not sicker) than we are about all this.

If a third party got any kind of power that would appeal to fiscal conservatives, socially moderate or progressive Republicans would leave for it quick as a bunny, I imagine.

[ivy]

This is an articulate summation of why I felt it necessary to go to the protest last week, prepped for tear gas, and why I was so saddened that fewer people did. I am trying to do what I can; someone has to do *something*. This is Not Okay. I've been calling and writing my senators and representatives for years upon years, and it hasn't done a whole hell of a lot.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's done something... gotten your name on a list alongside mine, for sending letters, the gist of which is, "If you support this, I'll have you fired, and, if I'm feeling surly, I'll meet you out back with a pipe wrench."

Sedition is less enjoyable when it's necessary. Can we impeach that fucker for treason yet?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

wildturkeyparty, perhaps.

[ex-xn667.livejournal.com]

What am I doing? Slowly waking up. I'm with ya in most of the ways that count here, as ya well know. My personal angle will be to cultivate a long term relationship with my rep, Van Hollen. Hell, might even visit the guy, he works around the corner ;) Won't do much good in one sense cuz he's standard Democrat...largely agreed on things, occasionally votes in such a way that I wanna hurl. But he's practice. The day will come when I live elsewhere, so my rep will change. Maybe won't be such a nice guy (sexist insensitivity left in just cuz). Who knows?

But ya know, I'm thinking I might wanna learn more about how school boards operate, too, and be more involved with *that*. Cuz ultimately, I lay the blame for this sorry mess at American feet. Those who are actively fucking things up and those who let it happen, myself included, for whatever reason, regardless of affiliation. Maybe, just maybe, an affect on a school board will churn out at least one generation of kids able to *think*.

I'm tired of thinking on the grand scale though. It's pointless. I can rail about GWB and Cheney and their ilk all I want. To what end other than catharsis? Futility, pure futility. Humble lil ole me will simply not make a big enough ripple in the pond to ever reach them directly. So yeah, I'm lookin' at a smaller pond I can stink up with my weirdness ;)