*NOTE: I acknowledge that the use of the term traitor as specifically applied to Jim Webb is excessive. Nevertheless, I still feel betrayed by him. The main point of this diary though is not Jim Webb, but all politicians who use and abuse those who support them.
Last year when I was unemployed and dead broke I charged a donation I could not afford to my credit card for Jim Webb’s Senate campaign. I did so because he held himself up as an antiwar candidate and I thought he was different – not a politician but an outsider who would act in our best interest, and a man of genuine character who would in every case do the right thing. I was wrong and now I feel utterly betrayed by his vote on Feingold-Reid. I want my money back Webb.
But that betrayal is merely emblematic of a long line of betrayals of the American people by insincere and corrupt politicians who pander to the crowd to get into office only to promptly stab their constituents, to whom they are beholden for their positions, in the back. It’s what they do. The only time we matter is when they need our money, our support, or our vote. We are fit only to be manipulated and exploited. They think we’re chumps.
And I haven’t even started on the Repubs yet. These guys are beyond belief! The whole world is aghast at the audacious crimes and unprecedented hubris of the Bush administration, and long after they should all be in jail, the majority of Republicans still back these thieving war-criminal scum. They are an embarrassment to humanity but they are still loved by a hard core of self-righteous assholes with an aggressively demented and horribly wrongheaded claim to the moral high ground. Actual nightmares are rarely this surreal.
After all the gut-grinding madness W and his minions have put us through, we’ve now had to witness Gonzales exhibiting brute pride in his criminal malfeasance and the Orwellian spectacle of Wolfowitz draggin us all through the mud again by his public display of pique. How outrageous it has been to watch as he stamped his feet and petulanty demanded his propers – when by all rights he ought to be ashamed to show his face in public at all after the war crimes for which he is responsible – but these guys know no shame. Is that a missing gene or something?
Like a lot of kossacks, I put my heart and soul into the campaign for netroots candidates prior to last November’s election - and I don’t mean to compare my meager contributions to the heroic efforts of so many others, but together we did plenty. We were triumphant too, but did we reap any rewards, did we get action on the war? No. We got a ‘surge’ instead. And now the Senate had a chance to end the war and they voted it down, with the help of a lot of Democrats...including Jim Webb, the one guy who I thought was above selling us out. To say I am chagrinned would be a monumental understatement.
And now I sit here on the eve of the great AtlantaKos meet-up that I have anticipated for months, and I’m torn about even going now...now that it’s being swarmed by politicians on the make. I don’t know any of the several politicians that are now scheduled to show up or phone in or otherwise hog the show. But I am in no mood to be pandered to, lied to, manipulated, or made to be a captive audience for some insincere blowhard who only wants to blow smoke up my ass. I could more easily imagine myself right now burning a politician at the stake than listening raptly to their bullshit. I’ve heard it all before. If Jim Webb screwed us once he got what he wanted, you will too. It’s what you guys do.
What has changed is that more people are on to you. The game you guys are playing is over - you just don’t know it yet. The public is way ahead of you. We know the war is over, we know that the worm has turned in America and that politics as usual is over. We know we have lots of work to do and that it starts by purging ourselves of false leadership. We’re just waiting for you to catch up to us. And one way or another we will bring you around.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Dylan
We’ve had enough.
P.S. I’m going to the meetup. There are a lot of people who I want to meet and I am not going to let some politicians spoil it for me. They’ve spoiled enough already.
Peace out!
OPOL