Good Luck Hijacking Your Best Shot, or
An open letter to those shrill fools who insist on wasting valuable time arguing about whether to blame the Bush Administration for racism first, or for classism first
Shrill Fools:
This is stupid. This is why the people you vote for will never be in power again. Keep going, you'll de facto disenfranchise yourselves. Oh, wait, that's right: you're fucking up my only shot at throwing these scumbags out as well.
There are a couple of things you need to do immediately.
- Say it with me: "They are incompetent".
- Shut up. Just stop talking. Now, take a deep breath and say it with me again: "They are incompetent".
See how simple and effective that was?
Guess what? You just took your first steps toward being an effective part of the movement to remove Bush Republicanism from power!
It's easy!
Now, before the screaming starts again, let's just revisit our priorities for a second. OK, here they are in order of importance:
- Effectively demonstrate the necessity of kicking the bastards out of government
- Kick the bastards out
- Have the representative power/consent of the governed to effect a recovery from the ruin these cretins have wrought, and change the Federal government and the country for the better
- End racism/classism/whatever else you think is important to fix as soon as possible
- Maybe make sure that at least some of the money we pay in taxes gets used transparently and intelligently (I just threw that in there...nobody here seems to care so much about that, so you can ignore it if you like)
If you persist in this useless ranting/debate over whether the dominant motivation for the lack of effective response to the disaster was racism or classism, you will be screaming/intellectualizing instead of correcting the situation forever. You will have perpetuated the Kerryization of the opposition party. You will have confirmed the hopes of Republicans who count on the center/left's predictable inability to rally around a common, valuable, truthful and understandable message. You will give the gift of endless laughter to those who chuckle over the silly "STOP THE BUSH WAR...END RACISM NOW!!" multi-message placards seen at "anti-war" rallies.
You will have squandered yet another chance to actually achieve what you're yelling for, i.e. a humiliating end to those arrogant fools' party at your expense.
It's so simple: They've fucked things up so badly that it's right in people's faces.
What you're talking about is debatable. You might feel it really strongly, 67% or whatever African Americans polled might feel it passionately, my mother might be angry as hell about it, but "Bush doesn't like Black people" is wide open for rebuttal.
Do we need to have a discussion about America and race right now? No, no, no, no, no and no. Why not? Because it's a discussion, Stupid.
All you have to do is stop making your point, and start making the point, i.e. that they are simply incompetent.
Then there can be no argument. It is inescapably true, and it is enough to hand the government back over to us.
It's simple, so simple and powerful and communicable and true. It's the end to every debate. "It's obvious, they're incompetent" answers every question, defines the debate in terms of "who do we get rid of first", and communicates something that everybody already knows.
Now if you fuck this simple thing up, then you deserve this guy as much as the people who voted for him.
Shut up. Stop arguing a point that isn't the most important case to make right now. Then just simply say "They're incompetent" again and again.
If you can remember to do that, we'll all get what we want.