mid-week rant

[T Wolf]

Another election day has passed and it's getting harder to maintain any degree of a positive outlook.

Two southern statehouses turn repuke. Is there really any hope of winning any state in Dixie in 2004?

The only positive I could find was the Philly mayoral election. And the main boost from that is listening to the apoplexy of the right-wing radio hosts. They tried so hard and failed so badly. There will be riots in the streets (no pun) according to them. But they will take this one victory and relentlessly use it to rally their troops, so the net result will wind up being negative.

Now comes that intelligence memo crap. Repukes and hate radio are calling for investigations because it looks like someone is politicizing foreign policy. Gee. That has never happened before. And the worst part is that they will be more successful in pursuing their prosecution of this than we have been in getting people to pay attention to the outright lies of the regime or BBV or even the death of American military personnel in the ME. They will succeed in distracting America. Again.

CBS, arguably the least-worst of the networks, has caved to the revisionist right and the truth about Raygun will remain hidden.

So, what can be done? What CAN we do to fight back?

We cannot fight them by relying on rational, fact-based argument because people just do not want to be bothered by the details of the truth.

We cannot fight back by getting down 'n dirty because they are much too much better at that than we are.

We cannot withdraw and just try to live our lives as best we can because the destruction of democracy and the rape of the environment and the murder of freedom will leave us with nothing.

We cannot simply hunker down and wait for this dark age to blow over because it will not go away on its own.

Frankly, I do not see any good options. Does anyone?

[ramapo]

1. Not really

It is all rather grim. The next year will be telling. If the Democrats cannot mount a credible campaign and oust Bush then I'd say we're going down this road for a generation or two, or until events spin so out-of-control that change is forced.

Do what you can in your own life. It's about all you can hope to control.

[Nay]

2. I am in about the same frame of mind as you are, T Wolf,

so I can't be much help. I just don't see a lot of light bulbs switching to "on" above a bunch of heads. Sure, some military people are fed up and will vote against *, some Repubs without jobs will not vote for *, but will it be enough? Who knows. My watershed moment was when CA actually went for a blow-dried moron like Arnold. I then fully realized the depth of know-nothingism, the complete devotion to the cult of celebrity, the power of money and advertising, and I have come to the conclusion that the people in this country will have to suffer more pain and for a longer time than usual to snap out of its commodified little trance.

The scarier question is: how will the population react when all its wealth and privileges and goodies are essentially taken away? Will it be like in 1984, when anything bad that happened was "Goldberg's" fault, exept in our case it will be liberals or Democrats? That's happening already. At what point will the Dem population be so small that to blame them is utter folly? Will there only need to be a made-up Goldberg to prop in front of the masses and they will believe?

I never wanted to live this long and see this stuff. Nixon and Reagan were the worst I could conceive of -- I always had the feeling that the American people would stop real fascists in their tracks. Not so. Not anymore. I think they WANT to join the fascist club.