There's too much going on. Too many issues. Too many fuck ups. Too many know-it-alls. Far too many experts. Too much of too little.
What am I left with? Huh. It was more fun fighting George W. Bush.
It's like we've entered into some kind of progressive mass hysteria. Like we're dripping desperation. We haven't got a real strategy. We haven't got a real movement. Why, we haven't even got a real issue that draws Americans, much less progressives, together.
I thought the idea of progressive politics was populist, at its core. That progressive politics had some sympathy for the duped, deadened, and inert among us. But we seem, instead, to love rubbing it the faces of people just as desperate as we, but grasping at different straws.
Yet we have developed our very own left-edged version of Foxesque headlines about teabaggers, birthers, deathers, wingnuts, et al. Head shaking. Who the fuck are we? I'm going to steal an MB line: Leave that shit to Ann Coulter. In_fucking_deed.
What can I say? I'm perplexed in phases. The clarion calls: public option in, out, going, going ... CTers are now Truthers. Max Baucus is suddenly a household name. Harry Reid is as arid as ever. Who the fuck knows in what Nancy Pelosi believes... and did Hillary actually really, in good gods name, say I'm Secretary of State, not Bill?
It's the utter noise of all the pronouncements and prognostications. It's all the noise of everybody who knows better, from Tom Friedman to Rush Limbaugh. It's Rahm playing political hard ball with a fucking plastic bat.
And we, the people, end up as monkey in the middle, between congressional chambers and corporate board rooms, jumping up to catch the crumbs and tidbits and shiny objects thrown just out of reach.
Who's in charge here? Because the one and only thing that would convince me that Obama and Democrats are for real has not happened: credible effort to force Rove, Myers et al to answer Congressional subpoenas. Has a grand jury been convened to consider indictments against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, or Gonzo? Maybe I missed it.
Dems want to be be seen as strong, serious, and having some spine? Then they must round up those who need to account for this train-wreck of a decade. But my sense is that the criminals are still in charge. And the health care debacle is one pretty good example of their continued influence.
I find it amazing that we can NOT seem to make the link between accountability of the powerful and our own inability to impact the policies/practices/laws that run our lives.
Huh. And me? Yeah. What about that? ... huh... I am less sure of where we are and for what we stand than I did when we were fighting George W. Bush.