Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
On any given day, at any given hour, I could easily regale you with a
litany of issues, events and opinions that outraged me -- at any given
moment, really...
Hard to narrow it down, but I'll rationalise this "Qualitative Queue" of the truly heinous and the truly frivolous and the possibly-esoteric-but-probably-just-lame, by opining that an unabridged recital of my grievances might take 17 days to read -- without clicking through to any of the links...
Outrage!
Lost a filling this morning. Saturday morning dental emergencies are not emergencies unless they involve MAJOR pain, in my view -- I am SO not willing to spend a Saturday in the dentist's chair unless it hurts too much to wait till Monday...
Which it doesn't; it's just supremely annoying, because I have to eat on the left side now, and will surely spend the next two days UNABLE to stop putting my tongue into the gaping hole left by this twenty year-old filling.
You know how that is; it's simply irresistible, far more than whatever spurred Robert Palmer to make those wretched videos with those WHOLLY resistible mannequins and their grotesquely painted pouts.
But I digress. And, well -- it's not much of an outrage, is it? A pain in the ass, sure...
Dancing with the Outrage
This ABC "docudrama" and the outrageousness of it all... am I the only one who just. doesn't. care? Sure seems like it, from the looks of the recommended diary lists across the blogosphere...
Look, I get it, I do; it's disgusting right wing propaganda, blah blah blah. It's full of lies, and people will believe it to be the truth, blah blah blah.
But honestly...
What are we imagining, that everyone who sees this piece of shit will be instantly re-constituted into a member of The 29%, thereby increasing said 29% and assuring the Republicans undeserved victories in the House and Senate this November, and giving them another edge in the 2008 presidential "election?"
That somehow the sheeple, so CLOSE to having been won back to the side of the angels, on seeing this massively ludicrous fiction, will snap back to their usual slavish devotion to the demonic Way of the Rove?
Come ON. If the TRUTH is so precariously perched that a moronic movie of the week threatens to shove it into the bubbling abyss of molten right wing fecal matter, then the problem is not the movie of the week, but the fact that we have allowed the truth to be so badly situated in the first place. The fault, in other words, lies not in the starlets, but in ourselves. AGAIN.
Skating with the Outrage
Another thing that's been bothering me about this "Path to 911" nonsense: when reading the shrieks of outrage and horror and dismay, I am reminded of nothing so much as the howling chants that accompany picketeers outside movie theatres showing The Last Temptation of Christ. But THEY learned their fucking lesson about that, eventually.
I have often reflected that there is a lot we could learn from them, that there are tactics and tacks of the right wing's plan which we could imitate to great effect... But, to no one's surprise, the perennially tone deaf among us, who unfortunately occupy the dwindling seats of power we hold, continue to adopt the WRONG GODDAMNED PARTS of the 30 Year March to Power of the Right Wing.
It's infuriating and frustrating beyond belief to watch as my would-be leaders persist in exacerbating our increasing political impotence through a combination of fear-based decision making and sociological tone deafness. And what an ironic amalgam THAT is:
Outrage: Fear Factor
The Democrats who retain even an ounce of political power in this country continue to lose it incrementally because their "message" ceased to resonate with the people a long time ago. But instead of realising the cause and altering the course, they shuttered themselves up with each other and their incompetent advisors and strategists, afraid to do what any idiot on the outside looking in could have told them they ought to do: CHANGE COURSE. CHANGE TACTICS.
The FEAR that dominates so many of the entrenched Democrats in Washington and beyond has brought them to their knees -- and still, they refuse to try something different - because of FEAR. They fear losing, so they opt not to try anything risky or new -- even when decades of doing the same thing overand over resulted in increasing loss.
As I remarked above, though, it's not just fear: it's also a seemingly incurable tone deafness. It's that "living in the bubble" thing. Happens in every arena, it seems, but seems especially virulent in Washington, D.C. -- and Hollywood, but never mind that now...
Living in the bubble: in D.C., this manifests itself as a reliance on polls and lobbyists, I think. The pollsters and the lobbyists hammer away at the Democrats, selling risk aversion to those hapless souls, whose natural cowardice and sense of self-preservation at all costs -- including the cost to the American people -- inclines in that pitiful direction anyway.
In other words, rather than risk their own seats of power, elected Democrats continue to act in ways which do nothing BUT risk those seats of power -- and simultaneously cause ruin and pain to the world. Cowardice begets pain. It's an ancient truism, but one that, ironically, seems to escape the notice of the cowards themselves, those who should benefit from it most. Well, after those of us who have suffered at their hands, that is.
Outrage: Supernova
I believe they call this "burying the lede," though when they started SPELLING it that way, I have no idea:
Joe Lieberman: What a fucking ASSHOLE.
We all know he's an asshole, we all know it's unconscionable for a so-called "Democrat" to attempt, by running as an "Independent" (and isn't THAT a fucking misnomer wen it comes to this putz), to undermine the primary system that booted his ass. We all know he's a pathetic, appeasing, self-obsessed, war-mongering, Bush-licking, self-righteous fucksnot whose actions and words over the past decade have consistently stabbed in the back the very party under whose name he has hasd his long, lucrative career as a politician.
What we don't know -- okay, what I don't know -- is why every Democrat in Congress hasn't signed a huge, four-page ad taken out in every major periodical and newspaper in this fucking country, CONDEMNING JOE LIEBERMAN for his continued douchebaggery in the face of his primary loss.
WHY? Why is there no long, sustained, SHAMING outcry from the Democrats? Don't tell me it's about friendship, don't tell me it's about fucking LOYALTY -- this dickcheese is running as an independent AGAINST THE DULY NOMINATED DEMOCRAT in a race for the office of UNITED STATES SENATOR.
Every time I think aout the Connecticut senatorial election, THAT is what I focus on: Joe Lieberman's deliberate tanking of the DEMOCRAT on the ticket, his DELIBERATE "nadering" of the fucking election. Even if he thinks he might win -- which he fucking WON'T -- he has NO RIGHT TO RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT unless he leaves the Democratic Party.
Frankly, I'm beginning to think the Democratic Party should adopt the practice of goddamned EXCOMMUNICATION. Starting with Lieberman, moving on to Nebraska's Ben Nelson -- yeah, I'm talkin about a goddamned purge, you're goddamned right I am.
"Take back the party?" How?
Someone told me, hmm, can't remember who... someone told me the best way to change the system would be to take back the party and the best way to take back the party would be to elect the right people. Well, goddamn, lookie here -- I threw Lamont a little dough, a little support, a little love and all my friends with visions of crashing the gates did, too -- and it worked! Hallelujah! Lamont's on the ticket!
But wait -- what's this I see?
HOLY FUCKING SHIT. We crashed the gates, folks, and that motherfucker in Connecticut is trying to pretend it doesn't matter. AND SO ARE HIS SILENT MOTHERFUCKING FRIENDS IN CONGRESS. The ones NOT condemning him.
So yeah, Lieberman's a fucking douchebag. But so are the Democrats whose silence equals assent to his douchebaggery. Jesus,there are even a few who have outright declared their fuckign SUPPORT for his Vichy tactics.
(And I don't want to hear a fucking WORD about how I'm "misusing" the term "Vichy." I was pilloried by some well over two years ago for my adopted use of the term "Vichy Dems" and all I can say is: not only do they exist, but Joe fucking Lieberman is the FACE of the Vichy Dems.)
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you bury a lede. Not to mention a douchebag.
I'd share with you the rest of my myriad outrages, like, um, WHERE THE FUCK IS DICK CHENEY and WHERE THE FUCK IS THE TRANSPARENCY IN THIS GODDAMNED ADMINISTRATION...
... but I have to go watch some television. It's been prescribed, you know, along with the anti-depressant and the anti-anxiety and the anti-psychotic meds that keep me from sharing this all aloud in line at the grocery store on a daily basis...