Dear Senator Kerry:
Your recent post on Kos didn't say a thing that would give any other Bonesman (hint, hint) so much as a moment's worry. It reads more like a written version of a secret handshake. The kind of secret handshake that neither you nor Bush would talk about when you both refused to discuss Skull and Bones during your campaigns. Can't talk about that, though - makes one a clear conspiracy nut, so onto your blog post.
It might help if you offer more of - even the faintest glimmer of - a solution to the horrors you acknowledge. Hell, everyone on this site has been saying the same things you do in your post. You, however, have the power to DO something about it. You suggest none of those steps, you only say it's time for an accountability moment.
How do we get that accountability moment? Aren't you the one who should be proposing just how to get that in the loudest voice? And certainly not the voice we heard before the vote was all in in 2004 and you threw in the towel soaked with the sweat of so many whose hopes were dashed unconscionably by you. Seems that that non-Ivy outsider John Edwards felt the same way, didn't he, when you handed the election to Bush without taking so much as a moment to struggle for the justice so many of us needed more than anything? With nothing, supposedly, but some thought for your own image, for fear that it would be said of you that you were puckered up with sour grapes. If that was true, you have no business trying to lead us in these times of pure evil, in the face of the terrible success being enjoyed by those who want nothing more than an end to American liberties and the obliteration of the ideals that until the era of modern republicanism defined this country.
You don't even bother to mention filibustering Hayden, let alone impeaching your fellow Bonesman Bush, not a word about needing to fight the crooked election machine already in place and that already cost us your presidency (with, again, your bizarre acquiescence). You name none of the names of the corrupt and criminal traitors who are destroying us. You shy away from even using the word. Traitors - it's what they are and what the people should start hearing them called. Traitors, a word that now should be used by people like you, not just people like us, every single day.
The only thing you send up from the trenches is your helmet on a bayonet. We need someone to lead the charge. You demonstrated your courage under fire; was that so long ago that you are now another man, now unable to do anything more than proffer a room-temperature sop or two to those who already understand the problem? What is stopping you from leading, Senator? You must know that there is a starving hunger deep in the pits of the guts of millions of sickened Americans for someone to stand up and pick up the reins we thought we handed you when we voted for you. You say you want to lead? Then LEAD.
GET SOMETHING THAT COUNTS GOING. I, FOR ONE, AM TIRED OF WORDS.
But as long as it's going to be about words, please take a favorite out of the classical fascist glossary: action.
Your blog post only says that you feel our pain. I find it astonishing beyond belief that you propose exactly nothing to counter the problem you recognize. The unanswered question is what are you going to do about it? It's way past the high time to speak up. Or it's time to get you and the rest of those whose silence - and your post amounts to nothing more than silence, as it steps back from any fight - abets the enemy. The republicans and their supporters are the enemy; they are no longer fellow Americans with only a different point of view, and they no longer deserve the respect of being treated that way by the now-inappropriately loyal opposition. They are established criminals, on the take, bilkers, murderers, theoligarchs, swindling liars, shameless kneecappers, rapists and extortionists. Their greed and bloodlust does not merit any respect beyond that accorded to an vicious and amoral enemy in need of ruthless assault. They are the enemy that now threatens us with a government so purely evil and severe that it will require fighting in the streets by people like us if people like you don't get on the stick and get things rolling in Congress. I don't want to hear any more boo-hooing about subpoena power. There's power in a loud enough voice proclaiming strong ideas, too. There's almost none in a voice squeaking with fear under intimidation and unable to suggest anything that will lead us out of this calamity.
Speak more, Senator, but tell us something we don't already know. Your post only reinforces the disillusionment, the feeling that help is not on the way, not from those we were counting on, anyway.
You offer not one single solution, not even the seed of any plan of counterattack. That's not leadership. It's nothing more than another warm breeze blowing out of Washington. I, for one, feel that I have the right to expect more. The reality of Democratic leadership, though, tempers that expectation with the horrific realization that there's not much to be hoped for from a Democratic leadership that doesn't have the stomach to fire even the first shot, no matter how righteous the anger behind it ought to be.
Goddamn it, Kerry. Was that all you really had to say? Is that really as far as you're going to go? If so, man, that's frightening.
[Sorry for the repost, but I put it in the wrong place originally and then some.... G.]