WB: A “Bad” Sign – Moon of Alabama

August 1, 2006

WB: A “Bad” Sign

Billmon:

So here’s my confession: At this point I really don’t give a flying fuck whether the Democrats take the House or the Senate back. No, wait, that’s not true. The truth is I hope they don’t. It wouldn’t save us from what’s coming down the road, in the Middle East and elsewhere. It wouldn’t force President Psychopath to change course or seek therapy. But it would make sure that the "left" (ha ha ha) gets more than its fair share of blame for the approaching debacle.

That may well be the natural role of the Democratic Party in our one-and-a-half party system, but I don’t want any part of it any more.

A "Bad" Sign

Posted by b on August 1, 2006 at 21:13 UTC | Permalink

Comments

And Congress is on break.
I just phoned Gerrold Nadler’s DC office and was told they had no idea what position he had, and no one was in the office who would have any idea about these sorts of affairs (meaning the MidEast I suppose). Since WWIII is about to break out, I told the ignorant young woman who answered the telephone that not one single person who is old enough to vote in this country should “not have any idea” or not be thinking about such affairs.
She hung up on me.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 1 2006 21:19 utc | 1

As much as I respect you, I’m afraid I’ve gotta disagree with you on this one. Whether the Democrats regain control of a branch of government will make absolutely no difference to how much the right wing will try to pin the blame for all of this on them, and little difference in how effective they are in doing it. The fact that the Democrats aren’t running anything hasn’t caused them to slack off for a moment in blaming all of the country’s ills on “liberals.” The only thing that’s going to change that is for Democrats and liberals to stand up and declare loudly that they’re lying assholes, something I’m seeing steadily more of these days, a lot of it from new congressional candidates.
After 2000, a not inconsiderable number of people voiced the opinion that it might be better if Gore didn’t win, because the economy was going to be terrible, so whoever was in power would be blamed for that, and the other party would sweep into power in 2002 or 2004. See how well that worked out?
Things can get much worse in the next two years. Even with a psychopathic president and a limited ability to make things better, keeping them from getting worse at the same pace could make a hell of a lot of difference. That downed high-voltage line is inches from a pool we’re all swimming in. I’d like someone who will kick it away from us, not toward us.
Whether or not you think you’ve “already lost,” we’re all going to live in this world for the rest of our lives. You want to declare, just as things are seriously turning around, that none of it will ever get better, that’s your choice. As for myself, I’m going to fight.

Posted by: Redshift | Aug 1 2006 21:32 utc | 2

I don’t believe that the election of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress will make any difference. Once the election results are revealed, the current Republican administration and the Republican-controlled Congress will hold their “lame duck” session to wrap up the unfinished business of government they will not have been able to finish before the elections. Why bother doing the people’s business when you’re liklely to lose anyway and smearing your opponent back in the home district is so much more fun. During the “lame duck” session ostensiably called to complete the fiscal bills needing attention, the Republicans will play their last and final cards to keep the nation bound for disaster. Dubya and Cheney resign and Hastert steps into the role of President. He gets to play “stupid” for the next two years, able to avoid answering any of the questions the new Congress puts to him because he wasn’t the one in charge when the debacles were set in motion.
Of course, all of the subordinate rats will be abandoning ship, so they won’t be available for questioning either. No doubt, they’ll be joining Perle in reitirement in southern France or (if they’re really smart) some place like Paraguay. Pardons will be awaiting them in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, the newly invigorated press will be excoriating the Democrats in Congress for not immediately cleaning up the Augean stables they’ll have inherited. Just in time for the 2008 elections, of course.

Posted by: PrahaPartizan | Aug 1 2006 21:41 utc | 3

I agree with Billmon. I am more angry at having been betrayed by politicians who claimed the high road than I am at politicians whom I always knew were snakes.
I have to choose between a candidate with no conscience who believes his own lies; and a candidate who betrays her conscience and believes she can lie about it to me with impunity.
I’ll “protest vote” for an obscure candidate, since ‘none of the above’ is not an option on the ballot. Or perhaps I should just attempt to dislodge the incumbent, no matter which type of liar they are.
But we all know that the better liar usually wins.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 1 2006 21:47 utc | 4

I think also, as i said before, better the republicans steer the course now than democrats. In some crucial ways oriented to the domestic decline of social “reform,” the republicans are less able to avert the usual contradictions of capitalist exploitation with keynesian palliatives. internationally, the repubs are too commited to neoliberal fiascos to avert the expanding crisis of accumulation. the republicans offer a massive incompetance to manage these contradictions. better the shithouse crashes now than later. and with dem “leadership” the collapse of globalization could be detained by futile reform and conciliation and of course, much more murder ostensibly ligitmated by a general election mandate. within the usual oscillation of two-party political ascendency, this disaster could be prolonged indefinitely.
no. let’s vote our conscience (even, ugh, libertarian antiwar) even as our conscience is betrayed by the reality of vast electoral fraud and assured political marginalization and a victory for republicans. all we can hope to do is compel those within our sphere of influence to find in this catastrophe the radical potential for change.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 21:48 utc | 5

To put what Billmon is saying in another way, the only consistent feature in all of the American people’s dissatisfying elected governments is the American people that elects them.
Damn, poor Billmon is sounding quite terribly depressed here…

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Aug 1 2006 21:53 utc | 6

As for myself, I’m going to fight.
Fight who? Seems to me you’ll be fighting a shadow. Author Sheldon Kopp once wrote, “All of the significant (i.e., meaningful) battles are waged within the self.” This war is not only out there, it is within just as equally. However, I could be wrong, but when Billmon say’s …”whatever is left of this country’s soul, I don’t think he means politically,–that organ America died long ago– but philosophically. Which is the heart of the matter; as in a medical terminology, a terminally ill patient most times it is the brain waves that stop before the heart and then liver shuts down not always in that order. One thing is for sure, our whole Western culture and with it it’s morality is on it’s death watch. Better to learn the death song.
“I’ve spent a lifetime defending the flag and the law. Maybe I should have battled less – and questioned more.”
~ Captain America Comic # 44 Marvel

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 1 2006 21:57 utc | 7

“This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
November 1972

Posted by: billmon | Aug 1 2006 22:02 utc | 8

of course, we might also hope a deep embarrassment of u.s. miltarism, along with humiliuation of the idf, occur post haste, even as these events risk crazed internecine war within islam.
but even this outcome seems so remote given the power of violence owned by the u.s. and its proxies.
yeah. worser & worser…

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 22:07 utc | 9

I understand what Billmon is saying. He understands that the impact of all the awful decisions and actions of the Bush aren’t going to fully evident until well into the next administration. The blame for everything coming down on Americans’ head is going to stick to whatever administration and Congress is in power when it bursts into full bloom.
If it happens that the Democrats are in the White House and in the majority in the Senate and House, then they ARE going to be expected by Americans to fix ALL the problems right now. Meanwhile, the Republicans who created this enormous mess are going to be giggling in the corner, watching the Democrats fail about trying to undo all of Dubya’s damage. No doubt, the GOPers will be eagerly awaiting their next turn in the box.
Why do I think the Democrats may not be successful in coping with cleaning up Dubya’s mess? All I have to do is look at Democrats, such as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and John Kerry to know there isn’t the slightest chance these life-long politicos have a clue about how to even start on the task. Like Billmon, I believe we’re in a hell of mess, folks, and it’s not going to get any better anytime in the next decade, no matter who’s in charge of the government.

Posted by: Taobhan | Aug 1 2006 22:11 utc | 10

~~Yea though I walk through the vally…~~
Fuck that…
My aunt use to say, prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide, I thought it her alcoholism that was talking; the more I look back, the more I understand.
There’s malice and there’s magic in every season
~(Elvis Costello)

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 1 2006 22:16 utc | 11

There seems to be a good amount of difference between Republicans and Democrats in the general population. But when it comes to politicians, I really don’t see much difference at all. They are going to support whatever is good for them to stay in power, gain more power, and accumulate wealth. Don’t matter which party.

Posted by: Ensley | Aug 1 2006 22:18 utc | 12

I’m still open to backing a dem who might make a diff. but, even the possibly hip, like feingold constantly dissapoint.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 22:19 utc | 13

worst ever security flaw
A single switch is all that is required to cause the machine to boot an unverified external flash instead of the built-in, verified EEPROM.”
it’s irrelevant who votes anymore. my faith in elections is nada. there is zilch chance the dems have a chance of taking the houses. maybe they’ll pick up some seats, or maybe 14 of the 15. but definitely not enough to carry either.
either way, i’m disgusted w/the whole lot of them. we may as well just pass over the reigns to AIPAC, they run the show anyway.
kudos billmon, you rock as usual. rock rock rock

Posted by: annie | Aug 1 2006 22:19 utc | 14

Damn, Billmon, you beat me to it, except I was coming in with:
“Is the democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn’t worked out, to hell with it.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
That being said, I’m with Redshift: I prefer to keep fighting. But it’s tough, and you with the “inept Thurston Howell III clones” sure makes my Boner for Democracy droop a bit.

Posted by: montysano | Aug 1 2006 22:19 utc | 15

I just want the Dems to take back Congress so we can get some tasty investigations started. But I still want a Republican in the WH so there can be someone to take responsibility for the crap that’s going to come down the line when W leaves office. It may be simplistic, but I think once the ball starts rolling, it will develop a momentum of its own and we will be able to galvanize the Dems to some extent.

Posted by: moe99 | Aug 1 2006 22:23 utc | 16

one other factor possibly counteracting certainty of republican defeat is the deployment of beat-a-mexican-up populism. seriously, out here in the dipshit west, the cause assigned to all earthly and spiritual problems suffered by america is “illegals.”

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 22:24 utc | 17

moe99
dream on, baby.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 22:25 utc | 18

moe99,
I’m sure Lee Hamilton is champing at the bit.

Posted by: biklett | Aug 1 2006 22:32 utc | 19

Billmon is pouring straight facts today, neat with no chaser. No cherries. No tiny umbrellas.
There are sixty-plus corporate lobbyists for each and every elected Representative. Every elected Rep and Senator’s number one job while in office is fundraising from corporate and wealthy donors to run their next campaign. Congressional slots cost tens of millions of dollars of donated private dollars per office, which costs these elected officers lots of private promises to their wealthy donors.
Their donors are NOT the American people. We’re just the rubes who need to get the media treatment every couple or every six to get us to pull the lever for corporate candidate A or corporate candidate B. They don’t even try to count the votes anymore.
Billmon is right. The actual work to be done to restore, or preserve somewhat of this country, will not be instigated in Congress, carried out in Congress, or carried out by Congress. Congress is in the rear view mirror at this point. They’re the problem, not problem solvers. Any progress made will be in spite of politicians, not because of them.
In America, politicians are corporate mercenaries, not representatives of we the people. Just like you and me, politicians work for whoever pays the bills. It’s no surprise that these Reps and Senators serve the immortal corporations who pay their bills, who own and operate our nation. They serve the undying corporations, the super-persons that have far more power, freedom and civil rights than we breathing mortal Americans ever will.
Corporations are in charge of our government entirely; they are the super citizens that get to directly write our laws and regulations, purchase our politicians, and count our votes without an audit trail.
Political races in this country could just as well be dog shows or horse races or American Idol. It wouldn’t make any difference to our economy, our foreign wars, or the draconian police state laws being written by corporate lobbyists to be passed late at night in dog and pony shows mockingly called self-rule.
Elections are beauty pageants wherein the slots are all franchised, all paid for ahead of time. Them that pay for the pageant get to be in charge. Not the dogs and ponies, not by a damn sight.
The real idea of the American Revolution was and is simple — it’s we, the people, simply leaving the government behind when it no longer serves us. When it serves itself and its aristocracy alone we declare it invalid, and we refuse it, and we abandon it. We go do what we decide together to do, and the government either catches up quick or falls. That is our inalienable right — to decide for ourselves, instead of obeying King George.
This can’t go on much longer. We can either make corporations non-persons again, or we can buy back our politicians by outlawing corporate and investor class campaign monies, or we can just walk away from this government and demand a whole new one. What we have now isn’t working, it’s falling down and falling apart.
Drink it straight — cheering for dogs and ponies and calling it self-government is being willfully stupid. It’s no wonder that more and more of us are just walking away from the circus. The work is in the real world, not at the circus. We are in charge, not these clowns.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 1 2006 22:40 utc | 20

Jesus, please stop it. All of you. Billmon, I worship you like a god — I think you’re one of the two or three finest American political writers working today — but take your own advice have a fucking whiskey, already.
What choice do we have but to continue on as best we can, even if that isn’t very good? Just what are you guys advocating? “Dream on, baby.” “Prepare a noble death-song.” Oh, such realism. Such world-weariness. Such bullshit.
Part of me relishes the thought that the notion of American Exceptionalism is visibly dying a hideous,twitching death. I have no faith in the “innate goodness of the American People”. I have no faith in the Democratic Party.
But I do know that the people at the wheel now are batshit insane and driving us over a cliff. We may already be dropping OFF the fucking cliff, as Billmon thinks — but even if we are I’m gonna struggle and hope and pray that the fucking airbag is enough to save my kids and my friends and myself for EVERY FUCKING SECOND UNTIL I HIT THE GROUND.
What’s the alternative? What’s your option? And what the fuck do you expect from mere humans in the first place?
What kind of people are you, really?

Posted by: mercury | Aug 1 2006 22:43 utc | 21

Here’s what I fear if the Dems take Congress.
They will be completely feckless and ineffective. They won’t make progress on any important issues.
And when the GOP rebounds it will be led by kill-the-foreign-Muslim-darkie freaks who favor consolidating power for the rich and powerful in ways that will make Bush-Cheney look modest.
If the Dems are going to have a voice in the game, they better have a plan more specific than merely hunkering down for traditional Dem interest groups.

Posted by: Carl Nyberg | Aug 1 2006 22:45 utc | 22

mercury, the choice is to face the underlying problems instead of merely pretending that the Republicans are the problem.

Posted by: Carl Nyberg | Aug 1 2006 22:46 utc | 23

What kind of people are you, really?
Weary. Too many images of dead children lately.

Posted by: mats | Aug 1 2006 22:51 utc | 24

mercury, I did a couple summers of sheepherding in my youth.
It always amused me to run the flock into their corral at sunset, and watch the rams and ewes stand in the center, forming a circle around the lambs, ready to defend them with everything they had. They wouldn’t let me come near.
But I had them inside the fucking corral.
That’s how you, your kids, and your grandkids look from Washington, DC.
Fight, fight. Rah rah rah.
Or you could jump the fence.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 1 2006 23:00 utc | 25

How about a hostile take over to Haliburton as the start economic warfare against the system? Why not start a nation wide drive amoung progressives to raise enough money to buy a majority holding in Haliburton and bring it down. Think of what secrets, lies, and theft we could uncover once our control of that ONE company was secured. I’m interested in why this wouldn’t work? or, if it could work, who would be interested in implementing such a strategy.

Posted by: Iron butterfly | Aug 1 2006 23:01 utc | 26

For the rest of us, and for whatever is left of this country’s soul, it doesn’t really matter. We’ve already lost.
in brief, we’re fucked.

Posted by: tgs | Aug 1 2006 23:03 utc | 27

Ahhh, lets see if I can catapolt the propaganda…
I’m reminded of systems thinking and organizational change theory.
From my own comment some year or so ago…

Afterall, watching the kelptocrat’s both repub and demo fleese our nation for the last thirty years continually, stratify and compartmentalise us against each other and ourselves watching the demo move further and further to the right while the right move even futher, where the system is starting to eat itself. Which is a classic symptom of a closed society. Open systems are freqently capable of change and resist entropy. They can be said to practice creative self-destruction. open systems which is what we certainly haven’t had in a long time, are neglected until the system breaks-down or discentagrates. Trying to change a system (like our political system) by changing its content is called First Order Change. In this case, people try to change what an individual element does, try to reorganize a specific organization, or change the people who work for an organization. These types of change alter only the look of the system, not its actual behavior. It is called “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” However you arrange the chairs, the ship will still sink.
Homeostasis is an unconscious process by which systems seek to maintain the status quote. All elements within the system interact to keep the system from changing. Any effort toward system change will result in homeostatic responses from within the system to block the change.Which is what I feel is the left/right Bush/Kerry binary logic. Most system change strategies tend to fail because they do not address the interactions within the system. When a change effort fails, (which it has again and again)the most common response is to try the same (or the same type) of strategy again.A forever feed-back loop that stagnates and falls anyway.
To understand a system, study its content, to change a system study its context. I feel what the good intentions of the progresives and open minded people here at the bar and elsewhere seem to get caught up in is study of content and not it’s context. How long must we play this lessor of two evils game? And w/diebold doe it even matter?

Finally, as DeAnander once wrote, systems theory suggests that when a system repeatedly produces the same result, eventually after N trials we should entertain the suspicion that this is exactly the result it was designed to produce.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 1 2006 23:03 utc | 28

Normally I agree with Billmon, but this is defeatism is just plain wrong. It’s the same kind of reasoning the Nader voters used in 2000. “The two candidates are exactly the same.” While they were very similar, they most definitely were not the same. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the Iraq war, Guantanamo, torture… you may believe Al Gore would have done some of those things, but certainly he wouldn’t have done all of them. In politics, small differences make all the difference. The Democrats may be imperfect, but they are the only hope of steering the ship in any different direction, however slight. We need to win.

Posted by: Alan | Aug 1 2006 23:16 utc | 29

For the rest of us, and for whatever is left of this country’s soul, it doesn’t really matter. We’ve already lost.
Then, Billmon, I’d suggest you turn your talents to helping we all find our way out of this abyss. Drop most of the ultimately senseless commentary on the process of Armageddon and feed the elements of our culture that could and will survive if we all pitch in and understand that this is totally imperative, right now. And that goes for the rest of us here as well.

Posted by: Juannie | Aug 1 2006 23:20 utc | 30

“I don’t believe in the Republic anyway. You can’t reverse the course of history. My great-grandmother Livia said that, and it’s true. I love the days of old, as you do, but I’m not blind. The Republic is dead, except for old-fashioned people like you and Sosibus. Rome is an empire now and the choice only lies between good Emperors and bad ones.”
Britannicus in
Claudius the God
1935
Robert Graves

Posted by: billmon | Aug 1 2006 23:31 utc | 31

While they were very similar, they most definitely were not the same.
this is nonsense. carter=deregulation and assault on labor. clinton=global intellectual property regime, increase of capitalist raiding of 3rd world economies, “welfare reform” resulting in the cynical expansion of reserve army of workers, and the inauguration of nafta whose achievement has been among other things the destruction of mexican agriculture and the impoverishment of north american workers.
instances of the tragic complicity of the dems with the horrors now engulfing the m.e. are too numerous to mention here.
the retention of belief in some value of the dem party as a counterforce to the status quo, is by now, a simple but terrifying demonstration of false consciousness, alan.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 23:34 utc | 32

weary, so weary

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 1 2006 23:35 utc | 33

If you believe that Al Gore and George Bush were exactly the same, and that any suggestion there were even minor policy differences between them is “nonsense”, I just don’t know what to say. You’re not thinking rationally, or seeing things in black and white when reality exists in shades of grey.

Posted by: Alan | Aug 1 2006 23:42 utc | 34

1. publicly funded elections
2. a ban of all corporate lobbying/money
3. term limits for all federal offices (to fend off the temptations of incumbency)
Until at least two of the three above items are in place, any modern democracy will wither and die under the weight of corruption. However, I’m not holding my breath for effective change anytime soon. So, I’ll continue to fight for the least worst option that minimizes the damage – and right now that would seem to be a Democratic majority that at least slows the pace of Armageddon these feckless sociopaths seem so bent on bringing forth.Small victories are all that are available to us right now.
In my opinion, the sea change that many crave becomes possible only when things are truly dark and people are suffering tangible consequences on a daily basis. FDR’s progressive revolution came about only in response to the near collapse of the American socio-economic structure. But few really understand how close we came to complete breakdown. This time, there are just too many deranged people holding the reigns of government and corporate power who have interest in the current path to risk letting it get to that point. This time, if we dare let things continue, our momentum and bloated weight may just carry us over the edge of the cliff before we can put the brakes on.
Yes, I share bilmon’s despair. But I’m not going to let these bastards take me down without doing everything I can to stop them. AFter all, someone has to be the grownup.

Posted by: shazam | Aug 1 2006 23:45 utc | 35

Juannie,
once you know and accepted that you have lost, you can turn that around and use your newly won freedom. If it isn’t in your hands anymore you are not responsible for the outcome and you can instead bitterly comment on the process of Armageddon. That is how I have read Billmons reentry into blogging.
And since I predicted the outcome of the 2004 presidential election I will now use my powers to predict this years elections: Despite exit-polls showing otherwise, the republicans keeps control of both the house and the senate. The media calls it a “Mandate For Freedom” and refuses to investigate cases of suspected election theft.
Still to figure out is what election-subject the republicans victory will be claimed on. You know, what will be the gay-marriage question of 2006? Perhaps immigration?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Aug 1 2006 23:45 utc | 36

alan
w/ respect, the only proof you have is wishful thinking and a propaganda film about global warming.
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 23:46 utc | 37

My, what an unusual topic to post on.
I’d call it the flypaper theory of liberal blogging, and it sure brings out the flies. It works for Kos, and it works here. Anyway, it is not as if this topic hasn’t been blogged to death…..yet.
Though we haven’t had a Nader food fight yet. But there’s still time.
And when we get done with that, we can move on to who started the war in Lebanon. No, I guess not. Fortunately, we HAVE grown up and moved past that one.
Thanks Antifa — I like the sheep story — and Uncle $cam — for taking the longer view.
Coincidentally, I published my response to this thread two hours before Billmon posted. Go figure!

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 1 2006 23:51 utc | 38

What kind of people are you, really?
Weary. Too many images of dead children lately.
@Mats: Bingo
It always amused me to run the flock into their corral at sunset, and watch the rams and ewes stand in the center, forming a circle around the lambs, ready to defend them with everything they had. They wouldn’t let me come near.
Fight, fight. Rah rah rah.
Or you could jump the fence.
@Antifa: Good thoughts, but the lambs need to sleep first, for about a week.
@Iron Butterfly: Really like the way your mind works.
@Monty, Redshift, and CluelessJoe(nice to see you back): Please secure the exits. DR FUMANCHU’s marmoset will be passing the pipes out, and the black smokes going to be rolling.
Meanwhile, feeling pretty rested, I am going to attempt to seduce Le Colonel Chabert. A Red, a colonel, and a Legionaire to boot.
The colonel has promised to squire me around Saint Cyr, the French Military school where he teaches.
If things work out, I probably won’t need a pipe when I get back.
Have a good week.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 1 2006 23:51 utc | 39

I don’t really get entirely the meaning behind uncle’s content/context diremption there, but the structural constraints of global capitalism on even the agency of elites is impressive.
let’s see, hmmmm, there’s actually a fine primer right here. and free!

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 23:53 utc | 40

slothrop
that’s sweet poetry to me

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 1 2006 23:58 utc | 41

slothrop, you’re the evidence of this country’s failure. If you’re so fucking sanctimonious that you can’t see basic differences between a Gore and Bush, then your entire viewpoint is worse than cynical. It’s fundamentally stupid.
To all you world-weary commenters: stop preening your moral superiority in a blog. Get off your goddamn asses and do something. If you’re too lazy, then simply shut up. Those of us struggling to make a difference don’t need to be distracted by opium smokers too high to lend a hand.

Posted by: walt | Aug 2 2006 0:00 utc | 42

scene – Morant and Hancock outside of military cell on the way to their own execution
Sentry: Do you want the padre?
Harry Morant: No, thank you. I’m a pagan.
Sentry: And you?
Peter Handcock: What’s a pagan?
Harry Morant: Well… it’s somebody who doesn’t believe there’s a divine being dispensing justice to mankind.
Peter Handcock: I’m a pagan, too.
Harry Morant: There is an epitaph I’d like: Matthew 10:36. Well, Peter… this is what comes of ’empire building.’
Major Thomas: Matthew 10:36?
Minister: “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
Breaker Morant
1980
I’m a pagan too so it doesn’t do me much good to be a fatalist. Maybe I should try hedonist? Until I make that leap I try to have faith in my fellow man, against overwhelming evidence.

Posted by: joejoejoe | Aug 2 2006 0:02 utc | 43

walt
a bit of proof from you, please. it’s easy for you to say I’m wrong without reasons countervailing my argument.
but, this is the age of bush, in which the truth is anywhere you might want it.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 0:09 utc | 44

walt
actually, read kos. you’ll find your heroic action and contact with truth constantly reproduced for you.
or the american prospect. or talking points memo. or atrios. or digby. and so on.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 0:13 utc | 45

walt
your legislature is corrupt or incompetent, your judiciary & jurisprudence are a joke so crude about laws & rights – that i cannot recount it here, your executive branch is directed by criminals & a just jurisprudence would place them all in a penitentiary for their crimes, your fourth estate & its cousins crawl so low to the ground i doubt they can see anything

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 2 2006 0:25 utc | 46

I don’t think we have to worry about how lame a rearguard action a Democratic House or Senate would be because thay are not going to get them. There is no way the voting machines are going to allow it; but that’s just inside baseball. The big picture, what meta trends will effect you and your family won’t be much effected by the outcome either way.
Be ready to be swept up and maybe swept away in histories march. I don’t have a clue if profound social, economic, cultural, or environmental change is at hand or if it just seems that way. Nobody knows. The majority of Americans have never had to fear being blown up, locked up, dried up, frozen or starved due to the vagaries of nature or other men, like every other human since the beginning. That is the true American Innocence and it has never been lost. Someday it will be on that you can be sure. Don’t take it personally.

Posted by: rapier | Aug 2 2006 0:27 utc | 47

Whow Billmon,
You sure poked a hornet’s nest with a stick.
Looks like I’ll be up late tonight.
Best wishes and Good Will to All.
over and out, for sure, well…
Juannie

Posted by: Juannie | Aug 2 2006 0:31 utc | 48

Or read my post from three days ago, which begins to touch on just what a true left agenda would look like, and where the dems stand.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 2 2006 0:32 utc | 49

antifa, we may look like that from Washington DC and perhaps from your Olympian sheepherding perspective — but I know that’s not what we are, really. And I have NO problem with jumping the fence.
But there are different kinds of jumping, perhaps. And being willing to give the system — the Dems, or whoever — a last shot before drowning my sorrows in my own self-importance and phony ennui is not the same thing as being a dupe. I’m willing to take baby steps to get to where I want to go; they call that “the history of the human race”.
But then, I’ve got kids, so I want something from the future, for them, if not myself. Perhaps that makes me a de facto sheep, or dupe. I don’t know; you, Zeus and Washington DC and are free to see me however the fuck you want.
The rest of you weary hopeless fuckers, the hell with you.

Posted by: mercury | Aug 2 2006 0:32 utc | 50

mercury,
good luck and best wishes.
Here is to hoping that you are right and I am wrong.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Aug 2 2006 0:40 utc | 51

condi rice, on newshour: “it would be unfortunate if syria & iran got in the way of a ceasefire”…”everyone in the region knows the u.s. brings a stabilizing presence to the situation”
this was all written by ionesco or artaud when he spent those last days mumbling to his shoe. it’s all really amazingly bold deceit.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 0:44 utc | 52

Antifa, I read your previous post further upthread; you and I agree on far more than we disagree, so I apologize if I came off overly strident in repsonse to your post addressed to me.
I understand the impulse and I’d LOVE to go raise my own sheep in Sweden or New Zealand and be done with this place — but I just don’t see the value in walking away now. These monsters – as a political force – are close to spent. Everyone can see it. They may suddenly pull a rabbit out of the hat and spring martial law and concentration camps on us, I don’t know — but it seems to me that there could be a slim chance of actual systemic change in the wake of all this.
Or, not. But definitely not if intelligent and informed people succumb to the same apathy that shackles the unintelligent and uninformed.
Signed, Pollyanna.
Or — the Amazing Kreskin!!!

Posted by: mercury | Aug 2 2006 0:46 utc | 53

Democrats!? What’s their point? Can’t/won’t oppose………… despite the rich manure that is the giant turd called the Bush Administration.
You just know that even if they won majorities, any “investigation” would be just a big “smiley face”. Can’t disrupt worship of the cash flow/golden calf.
Imagine the dreams of Baron de Breteuil, hoping beyond hope that his letter writing in 1791/2 will save Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and restore France.

Posted by: Bollox Ref | Aug 2 2006 0:47 utc | 54

My dad was a really bright finance professor. As kids, we traveled the word with him. From Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malyasia, France, Philipines, to UK. He never wanted to live anywhere else but the US. But every where we went the question was “how long are we going to stay here?” And if things don’t work out here we’ll go back to the US. I learnt a lot about all those cultures, made friends, learnt how people behave and those are the things which make me a progressive and thats why I am here at Billmon’s bar. Just a few days ago my dad, now retired, told me that US was always his plan B and he doesn’t have a plan C. That is what it is, there is no plan C for people who have seen the world. It is “here” or nowhere else. You either drown with the ship or drown by yourself in the wide open sea. Are those the only options?
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 2 2006 0:56 utc | 55

I suppose I am as angry, or almost as angry, as Billmon. And I am just as convinced that the present “leadership” of the Democratic Party is unable or unwilling to do anything about the corporate takeover of America or the trashing of the constitution.
I don’t, however, consider Dean to be a “pathetic fraud” and I don’t know the basis or reasoning for that opinion. Dean is, and always has been less about Dean and more about the political education and empowerment his campaign and subsequent career have provided to his supporters.
There are a number of other Democrats, some only now emerging, who give me some cause to have hope.
Billmon asks whether it is really worth swallowing so much shit to get the Democrats were are certain to get. I believe it is, if not for any other reason than the Supreme Court. We don’t have an FDR lining up for the 2008 election and we don’t have a New Deal in our party’s current worldview. But until we do, I am not willing to let the right wingers run the country. I am 51 years old, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life living in the Corporate Jesus Nation.

Posted by: James E. Powell | Aug 2 2006 0:57 utc | 56

Depressed? We’ve been here before, with Billmon. Anyone with a lick of sense is depressed, when to realize the whole setup is a fraud. We play the game because, well, its the only one in town, governmentally speaking.
But people of sense, lo we even speak of orselves as “progressives” or further left for God’s sake, have been increasingly maginalized or — ok, let’s be honest — irrelevant for years if not decades. We are players without a stage.
So, we go through our motions, shake our fists at the gods, to less and less avail.
I wish Billmon, I wish us all, a personal spiritual practice and haven to help us put this despicable human performace into some larger context. Like the song says: “I never promised you a rose garden”.

Posted by: DonS | Aug 2 2006 1:03 utc | 57

I suppose you can make an argument to that effect, you can even make an argument the world is better of with Bush in power. After all, it seems at least possible that Gore would have effectively managed Saddam, tamed Chavez, kept Bolivia in the disfunctional family of free trading nations and left the illusion of American Military Power in place for longer. But I’m sick of that argument and of the nader left that has as its objective a kind of weary superiority.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 1:06 utc | 58

He doesn’t always see the big picture, but I enjoy this guy‘s rants:

[From Senator Kennedy’s article @ truthout:]
Now that the votes are in from their first term, we can see plainly the agenda that Roberts and Alito
sought to conceal from the committee. Our new justices consistently voted to erode civil liberties,
decrease the rights of minorities and limit environmental protections. At the same time, they voted to
expand the power of the president, reduce restrictions on abusive police tactics and approve federal
intrusion into issues traditionally governed by state law.
[Bartcop’s slam dunk reaction:]
Ted, why are you whining?
*I* knew they were lying during that horseshit confirmation charade you participated in,
so why didn’t *you* know they were lying? Why didn’t you filibuster their fascist asses?

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 2 2006 1:09 utc | 59

Bartcop is cool. Too working class for the cool kids

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 1:11 utc | 60

My son is 12, and well aware that he has six years left to live, under this regime. Then he will be drafted and sent to the Levant to die in the sand for Halliburton and Carlyle. Or lose his limbs, his soul, his sanity, who knows what in the sand.
That’s where I live — not on Mt. Olympus. I live at war with my own government, for the above and a whole bunch of other reasons.
So, mercury is willing to give the Dems one more try. Fine. It’s a process, I suppose. I was willing to give them my best as well, a couple of elections ago. No more.
After the GOP retains Congress in November, perhaps mercury will be forced beyond considering the Dems as agents of change. Maybe it will take until 2008.
Billmon’s point is not this Dem versus GOP horse race stuff. That’s what DailyKOS is for — the sports-ification of national politics.
Billmon’s observation is that both left and right in this country actually exist entirely on the right side of the political spectrum. It is that the real left has been left out of the discussion entirely.
And when your own government leaves you out, and shuts you out, where do you stand? Why, beyond the government.
That’s not ennui or despair, that’s the cold realization that you are being stalked, you are scheduled for harvesting through usury, taxes, military drafts, etc. That your life is going to be government issue or there will be hell to pay.
No one here is surrendering the vital fight, the fight for family and future.
But the smart money is abandoning this Dem/GOP carnival, this center-right versus right-center political circus, as anything capable of changing the direction of this country.
The solutions to what’s coming lie completely outside the political arrangements in place right now. Those are simply going to continue their slide into irrelevance, like King Louis’ court at Versailles.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 2 2006 1:13 utc | 61

@GG:
Sadly correct.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 2 2006 1:17 utc | 62

I understand where you’re coming from….there’s going to be a lot shit to clean up, if it ever can be cleaned up. Like an old shirt, this frayed and tattered country is beyond repair and it may be time to get a new one (or sew up a new one).
But this also gets down to the germ that no matter who is in control of this country, American foreign policy will be decided by the same people, using the same old dirty tricks, deception, oppression, what have you. So, I’m with you but I also keep a little glimmer of hope (very, very little…got to have some).

Posted by: Parallax | Aug 2 2006 1:40 utc | 63

Antifa, the question is why it is that there is no alternative in the US – or in Europe for that matter. We have, as some wit once said, the full spectrum from A to B. This is a key question and it relates to a second key question: why does the “left” in the US have so little ambition? Why is it so uninterested in reaching out, in crafting messages or strategies that work? I think the contempt for Kos expressed here is weird. Kos used exactly the same medium to actually change things. Meanwhile, WBAI in NYC sits in the middle of the radio dial in the biggest media market in the country, reaching out to motivate members of the MLA in their hundreds.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 1:43 utc | 64

@Antifa above:
Kennedy has been snookered twice or more, by younger people. Maybe senile?
Sorry, not about to buy into the rest of your Grand Theory.
Can’t even relate to it with a political, social, or any other analogy.
Reminds me a lot of what happened in Germany in the 20s early 30s.
Fascism for Enablers 1.0 might be the gaming model.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 2 2006 1:45 utc | 65

“It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August – the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectation in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay.”
-Conan Doyle
from ‘Sherlock Holmes – His Last Bow’
Billmon’s post brought that to mind for some unknown reason, I probably haven’t read that in 40 years. Just ninety-two years ago they had another bad August.

Posted by: Dick Durata | Aug 2 2006 1:50 utc | 66

MLA?
My God CK, you’re hanging out with those terrists now?
I’m sadly disappointed, but then again, we could use a mole.
Pay might not be much, but there might be some “intellectual” satisfaction there.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 2 2006 1:55 utc | 67

why does the “left” in the US have so little ambition?
because, few media resources and cultural allies. there is also the immense problem, demonstrated even now at this point in history by you, of the unwillingness of so many who claim credentials of “progressive” thought, to engage in the kind of ruthless critique needed to translate thought into action. the social-deocratic, liberal analysis and program is dead.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 1:56 utc | 68

Democratic convention, 1964. SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party bring a primarily black, but with some white, delegation to the convention to protest the lily-white Dixiecrat delegation. Johnson and the progressive powers that be, trying to create a picture of unity delayed and opposed the MFDP, finally offering it a pathetic compromise which was rightly rejected. The Dixiecrats too, looking for a reason to bolt to Goldwater, fled the convention.
Johnson is famous for saying that with the Voting Rights Act he signed away the South for a generation. At the convention, he also signed away truely “progressive” politic from the Democrats.
I am consistently amazed by those idealists who see the world in black and white, Democrat and Republican, and refuse to view the world in the shades of grey required to occasionally support lost causes, to throw your vote away, to say that the problem isn’t winning or losing, it’s in the system. The naivete of lack of youth?

Posted by: Rowan | Aug 2 2006 1:58 utc | 69

I don’t, however, consider Dean to be a “pathetic fraud” and I don’t know the basis or reasoning for that opinion.
Well, if you only get your information from corporate media, you probably wouldn’t.
He is a fraud because he is PRO-war while posing as anti-war, Pro-Israel (which if Martin Luther King were still alive right now, he would term, “the second greatest purveyor of violence in the world”), and because he privatised Vermont’s utilities. (Remember the quotes from those lovely Exxon traders about how they were going to fuck someone’s grandma up the ass with California rate hikes? Well, we don’t have recordings like that from Vermont, and we haven’t had the purposeful blackouts YET, but rates have almost doubled, while corporate media articles about Mr. Dean — heir to millions — invariably lead their descriptions with the following observation: he lives in a “modest” house.)
And since we are talking of frauds, how about good old Bernie Sanders?
Not only is he the only “socialist” in Congress, he is the only Pro-war socialist in Congress. Quite a distinction. Mitterand, himself, would be proud.
I grew up as a hippie. For me it was a belief system. Now it is a style. Vermont, Mendocino, its the same hypocritical b.s. Ben & Jerry cashed out big-time to the corporations, so now you can eat some bovine growth-hormone filled “Cherry Garcia.” I saw Ben the other day on that equally liberal “Travis Smiley” (sponsored by Walmart) Show. He’s going around the country with a bag of oreos showing how you can “safely” cut 10% from the defense budget. Whoa! Let’s not go too far out on that limb now… Maybe we should start with 5%, and slowly inch it up to 10 — that is if we are still alive by then, and haven’t nuked the entire world. (Of course he doesn’t include the 100 Billion supplemental to actually wage war, nor the extra 100+ Billion “hidden” Dep’t of Energy, and every other nook and cranny in this corrupt rathole, secret projects and defense “related” funding. )
But don’t get me started about Ben & Jerry. If there is one single advertisement about the difference between wage-labor and ownership in our corporate society, B&J beat Ken Lay hands down. I mean, they built an entire company on the basis of a 6 to 1 ratio between the highest paid and the lowest paid worker, and then they cashed out and are worth tens of millions each, while the poor idealistic schlubs who worked for them humping cases in the wharehouse are still getting $7.15/hr., but now they’re working for the corporate man, and are maybe starting to think that they didn’t get so good a deal for all those extra unpaid hours they put in to get the whole ship off the ground.
The difference between a radical and a liberal, is the difference between knowledge and illusion, between reality and romanticism, between a plan for change and blind trust, between struggle and complacency, between caring for others and taking care of yourself.
Alright, you got me going. Now I had better shut up.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 2 2006 2:00 utc | 70

Slothrop: I used to buy into the lack of media access argument, but some smart person on the internet tubes (I wish I could remember who) pointed out that the Pacifica radio stations prove the opposite. The problem is the message not the medium. And let me give you your due, class analysis explains a lot. The reason that Bartcop is not ranting on WBAI is that he is a crass white trash okie who has never taken a course at the New School and wouldn’t know Adorno from Noam Chomsky.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:03 utc | 71

These nations have turned sensible since Bush and the Neocons took over:
Argentina,
Uruguay,
Brazil,
Chile,
Venezuela,
Bolivia,
South Korea,
Spain,
Italy,
It could happen here too.
Remember that 57,000,000 is only about 29% of the ‘eligible’ voters in the US.

Posted by: pb | Aug 2 2006 2:04 utc | 72

Hello,
First time (well, since at least the time Billmon took comments off his site) poster here.
I too am weary of the stuff coming out of Democrat mouths, particularly with regard to the current situation in the mid-east.
I want a plan. Clearly the Cheney Administration hasn’t one, or they make it up when they stumble into one disaster after another. I don’t care who comes up with such a plan, but it’s beyond the point where the people of this country need to be told whats what.
John lalo

Posted by: lalo456987 | Aug 2 2006 2:05 utc | 73

Someone suggested Billmon take a whisky, sounds like to me he one whiskey over the line, quoting fer chrissakes that megalomaniac Hunter Thompson, gonzo suicido. Do yer writin Billmon, don’t take yer depression so seriously, it’s the hallmark of a boring middleaged man. (And take some more time off to get yer head out of the bottle.)

Posted by: degustibus | Aug 2 2006 2:10 utc | 74

@Slothrop #68:
I’ll be your huckleberry.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 2 2006 2:11 utc | 75

Malooga: It’s a good argument, but here is the counter argument. Dean is a fake, but it doesn’t matter. He’s a fake that is paying for a 50 state organizing effort that is cracking some of the ideological glaciers that the right has imposed on the nation. Dean is helping to shift the public debate from “god, guns, gays” to money and power. That second debate, should the “left” choose to engage in it, offers an opening for actual change.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:11 utc | 76

that’s very interesting, because I started to read huck finn today.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:19 utc | 77

that’s very interesting, because I started to read huck finn today.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:21 utc | 78

once you know and accepted that you have lost, you can turn that around and use your newly won freedom.
am i the only one who thinks i stumbled upon an D/s site
I understand the impulse and I’d LOVE to go raise my own sheep in Sweden or New Zealand and be done with this place — but I just don’t see the value in walking away now. These monsters – as a political force – are close to spent. Everyone can see it. These monsters – as a political force – are close to spent. Everyone can see it. They may suddenly pull a rabbit out of the hat and spring martial law and concentration camps on us, I don’t know — but it seems to me that there could be a slim chance of actual systemic change in the wake of all this.
Or, not. But definitely not if intelligent and informed people succumb to the same apathy that shackles the unintelligent and uninformed.
ohh, a frisky one!

Posted by: annie | Aug 2 2006 2:22 utc | 79

ck, your defense of what passes as porogressive politics is the weakest argument you have in an otherwise formidable armamentarium of ideas.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:28 utc | 80

Slothrop: There is an amazing film about an amazing teacher in LA and one of the scenes shows a kid reading from Huck Finn, shaking and crying, as Huck decides to condemn himself to hell and help Jim escape.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/hobart/about.html

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:28 utc | 81

mercury, right on.
People, please don’t make yourselves more depressed. I’m at age 41 slowly coming out of something that looks like a life long depression. I know all about maintaining that “living in the bottom of a grave” feeling. Not good. At all.
I want to live today. And tomorrow.
So get out, take a walk (and watch out for the sun – uv-index has been “Extreme” here lately). Doom and gloom is overrated.
I cannot change the world and stop the war, any war. But I can do one positive thing every day. Pick up trash if I can’t think of anything else. Sure, my kids might end up in a meat grinder of war. That has been the human condition for ever. But if they’re going to survive, they’ll need some good memories and ideals to see them through. I intend to give them that.

Posted by: yesbox | Aug 2 2006 2:29 utc | 82

well, fuck, thanks for ruining the story for me.
I’m going to switch to the book of revelations. keep your plot summaries to yourself.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:32 utc | 83

Sloth: I don’t think Dean is progressive.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:33 utc | 84

Johnson is famous for saying that with the Voting Rights Act he signed away the South for a generation. At the convention, he also signed away truely “progressive” politic from the Democrats.
Yeah, cause Mr. Empire himself, JFK, was so progressive. What exactly do you consider to be a truely progressive agenda? Not just a crumb or two thrown out to keep the niggers from rioting.
why does the “left” in the US have so little ambition?
Because they refuse to admit that it is war between agendas, they have no consistent agenda or program, and they don’t have 1/1000th the cash and media control that the reactionary statists (extreme right for y’all) have. Finally, they are consistently derailed by liberals who think it is more moral to starve a population to death than to bomb them to smithereens, or that we can “compromise” and increase the minimum wage $2/hr. and do away with the estate tax, too.
AMLO would call millions out into the streets and block the business district from opening until we got our damn pittance of an overdue wage increase.
Kennedy, who has spent his entire adult life in politics — when not in bars, at least, snookered? As we say here in Massachusetts: Fugggedaboudit… He is worse than what Uncle $cam would call a pawl in the sprocket, he actively winds the watch.
. . Kos used exactly the same medium to actually change things. Meanwhile, WBAI in NYC sits in the middle of the radio dial in the biggest media market in the country, reaching out to motivate members of the MLA in their hundreds.
Did I miss something. What, exactly, did Kos change — besides giving that ecological cancer, Las Vegas, a reason to add more hotel suites. WBAI produces Democracy Now, which educates more people and creates more change than anything Kos has ever done — besides serve in our imperial forces. WBAI has raised radicals for years, and was the single most important force in the country in the development of independent radio. Read “Playing on the FM Band.” Kirkpatrick Sale, Malachi McCourt (brother of Frank), “Travis T. Hipp,” Amy Goodman, I could go on and on. “BAI” was started by people who were anti-war even during the so-called “good war.” They never had to balance the scales between the jobs created by militant Keynesianism, and the lives lost by war. Nope. Never an issue.
Bartcop is cool.
I cut my web-based political eye-teeth with him right when he first started his site. Bookmarked on four or five computers. Haven’t been there in a long time, though.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 2 2006 2:34 utc | 85

I don’t think it’s about superiority, or about any other sort of interiority. I think it’s about, if not the despair, the very low spirits induced by the present political landscape. Partisanship is bankrupt. I’d vote for a Ron Paul before I’d vote for a Hillary Clinton, not because I’m a “Republicrat”, or because I “hate Demoplicans”, but because he would be willing to address our most pressing problem, that is the lunatic wars in progress and contemplated by the neocon regime in Washington and Tel Aviv. Forget the false Republicrat/Demoplican dichotomy. If there is no one on your ballot publically committed to oppose any further spending for the wars in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and wherever else the neocons turn their attention, write one in. Or register and run yourself. Turn off yur TV and speak with your neighbors about a concerted program of write-ins on the ballot. It’s a little late at this point to work through any of the political parties. In NY one can still register Demoplican and vote for Jonathan Tasini for the Senate. That is one of the few constituencies to have actually done some work and provided an alternative to the “made men and women” of the Republicrat/Demoplican mob. There is no reason to feel sanguine, but no alternative to hope, and to action based on hope, either.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 2 2006 2:39 utc | 86

well, dean, all of them, are servants of uncle’s “context” I suppose.
there’s also the problem no one now exists who, like the bill haywoods, john reids, frank norriss, or the woman who wrote the yellow wallpaper, etc. who recall a life lived outside the totality of monopoly capitalism. there’s little imagination for utopia unmoored from consumerism.
ideology, in other words, is real, hypostatized, and we are fish swimming in a reality we cannot deny.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:44 utc | 87

aw come on you guys.
mercury wrote:
But I do know that the people at the wheel now are batshit insane and driving us over a cliff.
Well, that’s the truth.
If Jerrold Nadler’s office assistant is afraid to say anything on the telephone but “He supports Israel” when asked for a position then SHEESH why not take into account WHY that is.
You don’t need another party, you don’t need a huge ideological base to get down to business and counter the reason why this is.
You can start with the stupid attitude that Israel is beyond question in this country and do something about a campaign at least on this military solution to all problems. Nadler’s office (for instance) needs a whole lot of phone calls from people who are upset about the military option, just like he gets the strong-arming from the “Israel is always right” bunch. So start there. Start phoning. Start an internet campaign. Set up a website that sends emails to congresspeople. Do something about whatever you can do.
At least you’ll be doing something. If only the chew out the office assistant. Which is still better than nothing.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 2 2006 2:44 utc | 88

Malooga:
WBAI produces Democracy Now, which educates more people and creates more change than anything Kos has ever done
There’s a good starting point. I don’t know anyone who listens to Democracy Now who is not a dyed-in-the-wool crunchy middle class lefty. Do I need to look at the market demographics again ? Is Democracy Now thrilling a generation of union laborers and pink collar serfs or is it just playing to the same choir of disaffected Prius owners who discuss the latest Amy Goodman zinger while picking up some fair-trade coffee at Trader Joes?

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:48 utc | 89

Here’s something to do.
Go here:
Dennis Kucinich’s website
Check out Kucinich’s resolution for a ceasefire. It’s H. Con Res. 450. Phone your Congressmperson. Phone any others you feel like phoning. Tell them to support it.
Okay, maybe it won’t work. But you’ll be doing something. Something. And it’s still better than nothing. It’s one concrete thing you can do. Post it all over the internet. Encourage people to sound off, to send emails, start an email campaign to your friends. A chain letter. Whatever.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 2 2006 2:50 utc | 90

really, in the Grundrisse we can find all we need to know about our old friends voluntarism and detertminism, and sort outwhat useless interpolations of capitalist domination are necessary to eject to find a better life we cannot now possibly comprehend.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:50 utc | 91

And in case you are really deluded enough to think that you need some grand lefty party to get upset about the fact that tomorrow, or maybe next year, or the year after that, we’re going to have to draft every kid in this country to go occupy Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, etc etc the way things are going… well, just think again.
I guarantee you the majority of this country is with you on that one.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 2 2006 2:53 utc | 92

Sloth: so you see I was a mere pawn of material conditions and can’t be blamed for revealing the ending of Huck Finn. Never got through revelations, so you are safe there.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:54 utc | 93

Walt: To all you world-weary commenters: stop preening your moral superiority in a blog. Get off your goddamn asses and do something. If you’re too lazy, then simply shut up. Those of us struggling to make a difference don’t need to be distracted by opium smokers too high to lend a hand.
Jeez, sanctimonious much?
Mercury: And being willing to give the system — the Dems, or whoever — a last shot before drowning my sorrows in my own self-importance and phony ennui is not the same thing as being a dupe. I’m willing to take baby steps to get to where I want to go.
How many “Friedmans” do you think that will take? And how many do you think we have?
slothrop: condi rice, on newshour: “it would be unfortunate if syria & iran got in the way of a ceasefire…everyone in the region knows the u.s. brings a stabilizing presence to the situation”
this was all written by ionesco or artaud when he spent those last days mumbling to his shoe. it’s all really amazingly bold deceit.
Only Sam Beckett could do this material justice. It’s like Waiting for Godot, only less upbeat.
Noisette: My son is 12, and well aware that he has six years left to live, under this regime. Then he will be drafted and sent to the Levant to die in the sand for Halliburton and Carlyle.
Mine is 14, and I do worry about it, but I don’t think they’ll bring back the draft, no matter how bad it gets — it’s the one thing that could ignite a REAL anti-war movement. They’ll hand out instant citizenship to any illegal immigrant who shows up at a recruiting station before they’ll risk that.
I think the contempt for Kos expressed here is weird. Kos used exactly the same medium to actually change things.
I don’t have contempt for Kos, but I do have to ask: what things has he changed?? We’re still heading straight for disaster and the Dems couldn’t stop it even if they wanted to, which they don’t.
Somebody emailed me tonight talking about all the things he thought should be done to “reimagine” the Democratic Party. I told him he can reimagine until the cows come home, but it’s too fucking late — we’ve run out of time. Before the end of next year (latest) Bush and the neocons are going to have us in a shooting war with Iran. And that’s going to make Iraq and Lebanon look like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
Does anybody REALLY believe that having Nancy Pelosi as speaker is going to make a damned bit of difference? Or that any of the other stuff — Supreme Court, Roe, congressional investigations, even global warming — is going to make any difference once THAT particular bucket of shit hits the fan???
I mean I know it sounds sick but these days when I hear people talking about turning the Democratic Party around or taking the country back, it’s like listening to Shrub talk about Iraq — stay the course, etc, another six months, etc. It bears absolutely no notional relationship to reality and I’m not going to go on pretending that it does.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 2 2006 2:54 utc | 94

or, maybe it’s all in that book.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2006 2:57 utc | 95

Only Sam Beckett could do this material justice. It’s like Waiting for Godot, only less upbeat.
I refuse to argue with someone who can write that until the invention of 4rth generation rhetoric that allows inferior forces to gain some advantage.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 2:58 utc | 96

“or, maybe it’s all in that book.”
Don’t know about that, but I sure would love to “light out for the territories” right about now.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 2 2006 2:58 utc | 97

Ok, I’ll go over the trenches.
Does anybody REALLY believe that having Nancy Pelosi as speaker is going to make a damned bit of difference?
Guilty as charged. Nancy Pelosi, with her powerful dishrag personality and butterknife instinct, with John Murtha challenging for leadership position, has a chance of slowing down Team B in their struggle to bring on the End-of-times. I don’t think we can do better.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 3:05 utc | 98

Actually, I think Eugene O’Neill might be a better choice – The Iceman Cometh. I get to play Hickey.

Posted by: Billmon | Aug 2 2006 3:10 utc | 99

Well, do you want to support Nancy Pelosi or do you want to stop World War III?
Those are two different questions. Pelosi’s just another person who’s going to feel the influence of whatever comes her way. And it’s pretty damn clear right now what and who that is. So create a different pressure around an issue, since you’re never going to do it with ideology. Everybody knows what a war crime is. You don’t need an ideology to be upset about it.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 2 2006 3:11 utc | 100

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