The morning after
The accelerating onslaught of Bushian outrages pouring out the Obama Administration, beginning with FISA and now having gained so much momentum lately that any day on which only one or two land with the usual dreary thud is a cause for considerable relief, makes me wonder why we even bother to have elections anymore. Everything, and I mean everything, that horrified me about Bush has not just continued at the manic pace of the last eight years, but now has become such a dizzying blur of hair-raising overreach and corruption that I can almost understand the what the teabaggers are going so cuckoo over. In a clever inversion of the Nixon going to China theory, no Republican Administration, even one so brazenly audacious as Bush’s, could have pulled off the crypto-fascist machinations and pronouncements we now hear every day. Obama, with his game-show host good looks, fabulous wife, and a sheen of liberalism due mostly to the ever popular (for Republicans, more usually) “life story” that passes for political orientation these days, is just way too “good” to really be, well, worse than Bush. Well, I am deeply chagrined to say that in fact he is; not because he is a more despicable human being, a bar so high few could jump it, but because his impact on history is shaping up to be immeasurably worse. He has made Bushism the law of the land, quite possibly, forever.
As long as it was just the Republicans abusing our bloated military for power and money, transferring wealth upward, screwing over working Americans, and engaging in rampant criminality and subsequently covering everything up, I could be horrified, angry, and fearful of the consequences, but in the end, that’s what Republicans do, so I accept this. I took solace in the fact that most Americans understood this, too, and soon enough of them would have had enough of it, and the bland Clintonian centrism that was the most I ever expected out of Obama would at least not leave me daily thinking we lived under martial law anymore, and maybe the conflagration at the Treasury would be reduced to a manageable bonfire. But it was not to be, and to call that disappointing would be a risible understatement.
My mother, Joan, had a disciplinary/deterrent tactic she used on us when we were growing up that we called the “surely” routine. She would react, with highly feigned surprise and regret, to some universally obvious transgression of one of us by saying, “Surely you did the dishes like I asked,” or in later years, “Surely you’re not just getting home at this hour?” It was quite tiresome, an indeed made one think twice about doing that again, if only to avoid the theatrics. In addition to apologizing, one was forced to say, “No, Mom, I didn’t, or yes, Mom, I did,” wait for her lengthy, horrified reaction first, and then finally, apologize and accept appropriate retribution. If Joan were still alive, I’d like to have her move into the White House. ”Surely, with that constitutional law degree I paid for, you know that show trials are for the commies and Nazis, and only those really weird Asians torture people anymore; even the nuns at Holy Names knew that.” “Surely you know that people from Goldman Sachs don’t belong at Treasury.” ”Surely you’re not putting someone from Monsanto at the FDA, the last good thing that outfit did was that Plastic House in Tommorowland.” What could Obama possibly say, except perhaps while flashing that thousand-watt smile, “Stop calling me Shirley”? Joan would not be impressed. She saw “Airplane,” too.
Obama, once, had both the chance and the electoral mandate to roll back the destructive, elitist, and often evil policies of the Bush administration, and has now quite clearly chosen the to do exactly the opposite. What was once supposed to be Right Wing fanaticism has, thanks to his fine salesmanship, now become Conventional Wisdom. Thanks, Barack. I’m glad for Joan’s sake she didn’t live to see it.
We live in an upside-down, inside-out, BizarroWorld.
I don’t know what else to call it.
“Change,” along with many other words, has now lost all meaning. Change what, exactly? Clothes? It’s more than disheartening.
Obama to us: “Surely you didn’t think that I intended to do all that good stuff I promised when you voted for me, did you?”
There are those who will tell us that politics and governance have always been dirty business, filled with lies and bad intentions. But until now, there was always an underlying set of principles, laid out in the Constitution and the law, that one did not violate. I really see nothing left at this point. Is there anything that would make Obama and the policybots that surround him say “No, that would just be too much. We can’t possibly do THAT!”?.
I can only compare this moment, quite unfavorably, with the reaction to the Watergate tapes. The ever-lovin’ Chicago Tribune went nuts. The Obama-ites recognize that those days are over. “People,” as in a large majority of Americans, can be aghast, but the media “watchdogs” relentlessly tell us we’re all nuts. Whither, American ideals? Never mind. Let’s watch Michael Jackson’s funeral.
I wonder what the electorate decides when it becomes clear that in this HopeNChnage deal (ie; bread and circuses) we also get neither the bread (eg; an economic recovery), nor the circuses (eg; a strong public option in health care).
I have not been more thoroughly dismayed by the tattered remains of the GOP than I am now. there seems to be absolutely nothing on the horizon to stop this juggernaut. Not even a speed bump to slow it down.
And, I have never been more discouraged by my fellows than to see them not understand how civil liberties relates to who and how people get these economic goods they so desire. How do they imagine their claims to the goods gets enforced?
Strangely enough, the encyclical released by the Pope this week had some good stuff in it on the social justice impact of the economic system based strictly on greed. I even thought about writing a post about it. Then I found the language on abortion and decided I didn’t want to support that part.
Still, I had to applaud my own Fathers at least dipping a reluctant and unusual toe into economic justice, something they used to care a lot about back in the day. I think that alone is worthy of a post. The inappropriately named “life” thingy is so old and ignored as to be irrelevant.
Well, the circuses are the wars, occasionally interrupted by the outfits. It’s about all we do anymore. Sadly, the GOP can officially rest in peace. Its job appears well and truly done.
The USA suffers from electile disfunction. Is there a little pill for that?
If there were, expect said pill to be expensive, well-advertised, and with a lengthy list of side effects.
I was driving in sunny San Diego the other day, down I-5 behind a big ol’ pick up truck with a sign on the tail gate:
“I’ll keep my money, my freedom, and my guns. You keep the change.”
The sign is wrong, of course. It should read, “I’ll keep my money, my freedom to have some money, and my guns to keep the last of it under my mattress.”
The wingnuts have never realized their freedoms were being stolen. They don’t care as long as they’re not taxed and can own a gun. I’m not sure what they need the guns for. They were scared to pick them up.
What does the Obama-revering left want? Watered-down stimulus package vs freedoms? Watered-down health care reform vs freedoms?
I don’t get what Obama has won with his cowardice.
Exactly, Karrsic. As I’ve said so often before, and this extends from economic and military policy to court appointments, when the Republicans win, the get a sports car and a pair of hookers, and when the Democrats win they get a $50 Savings Bond. And the media is just so, well, “:down with that.” (gratuitous use of dated youthful jargon to lower that age demo….)
Sheesh. Bush thought we were dumb, and pretty much proved it. Obama’s just moving forward based on that handy research.
It really makes me wonder why he’s doing this with the trials/detainees and torture issue. I’m not as disillusioned about who he has in his cabinet or any Goldman Sachs alumni in the T-department, because I have come to expect a certain amount of recycling in the government. Although, with job scarcity the way it is, you’d think he’d be able to find good people outside the Beltway and Wall Street to run things.
I am, however, extremely suspicious and angry about the ongoing revelations that he’s not merely embracing, but enforcing bad law.
It makes me think there is something much more sinister behind it. I suspect that the detainees who were tortured and were found not to have any links to terr-ists (or who could be acquitted) confessed to things that the Justice Dept., the See-Eye-A, and the grand poobahs do not want us to know about.
Why ascribe philosophical or political motives to it when it’s probably just a good old-fashioned cover up? There’s gold in them thar toture files, and they don’t want us to see it.
You are quite correct. Secrecy, as a habit of mind, has set in so deeply, that even if Obama really cared about it and the crimes it enables (and I don’t pretend to know whether he does, or did) it is just not a priority, so why bother?
Reelection relies upon something more media-friendly than that tired old Magna Carta crap.
Seeing the world go to hell in a handbasket is perhaps the only real compensation for being old.
It is frightening to see good Democrats miss the point time after time.
Now that Obama has shown you that a Political Party’s leadership is about power and lying to the base; perhaps you should try to understand that the Republican politicians do the same thing.
The Republican Party has sold the pretty rhetoric of less government interference in your life, less taxes stolen from the people, less interference overseas, and so forth for decades and decades. I now find so-called liberals are now getting screwed over by Obama in much the same way that the rank-and-file Republicans did when they assumed power in the 80s.
This continuing name calling by both sides reminds me of the fans of that fake sport called wrestling here in America. It is all for show, but I went a time or two with a friend who liked it. The audience was scarry! They were so into the fantasy of it being real that I was gobsmacked!
It is time for common people to form a party to overthrown the leaders of both parties. Time to stop pretending that electing “better Democrats” is the answer — there are no better Democrats. (or Republicans either)
Unfortunately, Thomas Sowell’s work on world visions has shown us that it is fairly impossible since the “constrained vision” people and the “unconstrained vision” people can not even understand one another. I had a conversation with someone, outside of the hash light of UT, in which we discovered that we must be living in entirely different worlds. I do not believe he even understood my last question to him. (not that he could not make the same claim)
I would like to see the nation dissolved into 50 independent nations. Then a young man might be able to go live where the government was the least objectionable. As it is now, the government of China will leave you more alone as long as you do not challange the central governments authority. But I am way too old to learn Chinese; and they do not want me there anyway.
Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, Heru; I had to go to work early and wanted to think a bit first. I basically agree with what you say; in that in no substantive way are Democrats different from Republicans… anymore.
And as much as I was raised in the tradition of the Republicanism you describe, that kind never existed in my lifetime. Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes were all Presidential supremacists of the worst sort, to different degrees openly. They favored the wealthy over everyone else, in ways that became more astoundingly undemocratic over time. Johnson, Carter, and to a lesser extent Clinton, did embrace positions far closer to my values, especially in an era where corporate power had grown so great that a large, aggressive government was the only force big enough to give ordinary people a fighting chance.
Accepting the inevitability of the two party system and our enormous, self perpetuating governing elite, I voted Democrat, because it seems marginally better than not voting at all. Besides, some Democrats like, say, Alan Grayson, Russ Feingold, Rush Holt, and several others, are actually pretty great. I could say no such thing of any Republican, with the qualified exception of Ron Paul, who nonetheless values freedom not a whit on social issues, which would always color my support for him.
I haven’t left my party, nor would I repudiate my belonging to it, but I do think it’s leaving me.
Good one, Haggie.
And now (ta daa!) we’re abhorring the torture that the Mexican army is inflicting on it’s people in the name of the “War on drugs”. Will hypocrisy ever reach it’s apex in this country?
Don’t count on it. It’s only torture when “they” do it for their obviously frivolous reasons. When we do it, it’s called “protecting innocent lives. Please make a note of it.
Tart,
again a good one. I couldn’t help a little smile though, remembering a phone call we had during the primaries. As the loyal Hillary supporter that I was and am, I refused to drink the cool aid you had swallowed.
I told you that I was not impressed by this Chicagan car sales man. He felt just too slick and cool to be real and I generally dislike persona cults (unless it is all about me, of course). Back then, you wouldn’t have any of this and all we could agree on was that anything would be more desirable than a continuation of the Rovian Nazi Empire under Fuehrer McCain with his obnoxious little Jesus Bimbo.
Voila, my instinct was right, as it turns out (not that I am happy about it).
I also agree that it would be desirable to have at least a third real option. Last time I placed my wife’s name on the ballot. But what is out there? Ralph Nader?
Maybe time for you to found a party. I will vote for you. Better, I’ll be a heel for you
Hell, I’ll be your running mate. But then again, the mine field of our retarded youths would definitely disqualify us in god’s own country….
Although I was certainly drunk during that phone call, Heel, and thus don’t remember exactly, I only switched from Edwards to Obama because I didn’t that America was quite ready for a Cocktailhag as President, and I wanted the Republicans to lose as badly as possible. No great love for Obama was involved, although back then he was saying the right things…. So don’t be such a Smarty Artie. (I believe there was one guest…. but this one was pretty skinny)
I don’t think either of us could have predicted a total washout on all the big things, war, corruption, secrecy, torture, show trials… “Put togethah,” As Lina Lamont memorably said.
I’m still not sure America is ready for a Cocktailhag as President, but maybe with the right turban?
If I might offer a modest word in your defense, Hagele, I’d point out that Hillary is no FDR either. Moerover, I think that the lust in her eyes as she accepted the job at State, and the zest with which she makes imperial pronouncements worthy of Lord Balfour himself, makes the Heel’s gloating seem just a tad disingenuous.
Dear William,
With Hillary, at least I felt I knew what I was getting and the pain the right wingers would have experienced would have been bigger in my humble opinion.
Miss Hag and I differ more on the means of how to torture the detestable portion of America that gave us two terms of W. We also seem to differ on the question of whether this country is more racist or mysogynistic.
One conservative simpleton (yes I am arrogant) I talked to over a beer in a sports bar last year told me that “at least he has a dick” as his argument why he will accept Obama over Hillary. In other words, those people would have additional agony from the fact that a woman is in charge.
Now in Hillary’s defense, I would have to say that she would likely have way less urges to kiss up to America hating Republicans and trying to get the Kumbaya feeling going. She would more likely stand up and tell those lame Mofos to shut up and sit down until somebody ask for their opinion – something Obama should do. But of course that snake oil sales man thinks he can “unite the country”
All right, I admit I am a Smarty Artie.
You are right and I am far from claiming that it was predictable. That is why I called it “my instinct”. Nothing more, nothing less. BTW, my instinct also tells me that humanity will extinguish itself rather sooner than later (e.g. when the methane trapped in the permafrost of Siberia escapes into the athmosphere). That is an instinctive claim I certainly wouldn’t be happy if I were to be proven right about, either.
The implications of the sad topic you chose are that voting is just for the naive and that it obviously doesn’t matter who is in charge. But I guess that has been the sad realization of generations before us. As long as our emperors give us bread and games, we should maybe be humble and appreciative and not uppity, ungrateful and bewildered with such pesky notions as “Change” “Compassion” and “Equality”…
On a lighter subject – at least with the new administrations, a lot more eye candy is presented:
http://www.faz.net/s/RubDDBDABB9457A437BAA85A49C26FB23A0/Doc~EFD0887FA8C9F471A9A9D54D8002B1677~ATpl~Ecommon~SMed.html#9F54CB81097B410F8CE085BAF85E7ECB
Ah, Heel. It seems unnecessary to remind me again of your smarty-artie-ness; it’s what makes you, well, you. I guess that what worried me about Hillary was the Hag factor. At one rally I heard on the radio she was squawking like something you’d hear poolside in Palm Springs. How would she sound by 2012, let alone look? Maggie Thatcher aside, nobody wants some old Mother-in-law type pushing them around, and that alone might have given the Repubs an opening.
On the other hand, she clearly has more fight in her than Obama, as it’s turned out, but we’ll never know what she would have done in the top spot. Worse? Probably not. Better? She’d have to be a lot better than her husband was.