Few of us know the full picture of the debt talks, regardless of what a media we know to be non-credible says, so I am watchful. But some are being the opposite of watchful - they are shrieking their heads off on minimal information, responding to their worst fears as if they were facts, and yet still not managing to translate any of their emotional energy into anything resembling an intelligent thought or plan of action with any possibility of producing a desirable result. Well, these people have made plain that they feel their voices are being ignored, and screaming at the top of their lungs with an ever-decreasing amount of coherence hasn't changed that, so it would seem their choices are limited.
You've spoken. You've decided that you weren't being listened to, so then you tried instead going the teabagger route and posting insane, incoherent, gibbering, hate-filled screeds directed against an alternate universe caricature of Barack Obama - something you've done repeatedly at every major turn of events since this Presidency began. That obviously hasn't produced the results you'd hoped for either, and there was no sane reason to have expected it would work - it hasn't worked any of the other times it's been tried by the sort of people who find solace in slandering their own side to feel better about their own laziness and incompetence. So you're choices are down to two: Finally do something, or STFU.
The rest of us have a much broader set of options, because we haven't deluded ourselves that we have a perfect understanding of the situation, nor do we grant credibility to media sources we ordinarily distrust simply because we find it convenient to indulge our worst fears. But if we were in your position, we would at least recognize the direness of that position and act accordingly - because our assessments and the choices we make in addressing them are based on reality: We do not have, and do not want the "freedom" of perfect arbitrariness that comes from constantly promoting false narratives and self-involved delusions.
You claim to see disaster on the horizon; scream that doom is at hand; demand that someone rescue you; complain that no one is rescuing you; interpret (your own belief) that no one is rescuing you as proof that you've been betrayed; condemn an ever-broadening circle of Democrats as enemies until it's just you, frightened and alone, curled in a fetal position against the Big Bad Cosmos that is both hostile to and unworthy of the awesome moral perfection that is you. But at no point in this downward-spiral of solipsism do these impulses manage to find their way to changing your own behavior, because screaming at other people costs you nothing, and if they're dumb enough to act on what you say, you can always blame them for the consequences. Always outsourcing courage and sacrifice, you. Not that this ever stops you from taking credit for all the progress ever made in history by people you would have condemned with lazy, self-superior contempt if they'd been your contemporaries.
No, if you were to act on your own statements, then you would pay some kind of price for being wrong - and that would be an unsustainable proposition for someone totally indifferent to the truth of what comes out of their mouth. But if you can bully others into paying homage to your narrative fixations, or whip up the weak-minded into believing in them for your own nihilistic entertainment, then you can simply blame them when the results are pointless or negative - the domain of the active, the living, the personally involved, this is where you invest all blame, while keeping yourself removed from ideological pollution by the trials of reality.
You speak disaster, but don't budge from careless repose - you lie so often, so completely, and in so many ways that you don't even know whether the things that come out of your mouth bear acting upon. No one believes you, because you don't believe you - and with good cause. You have a big sign on your forehead that says "I am a liar and a coward." You see the sign in the mirror every day, and are always finding opportunities to see it on the faces of people who are the exact opposite - the people who most remind you of your own inadequacies, and rub them in by failing to resemble them. In the actions of the courageous, you find cowardice; in the thoughts of the careful and self-aware, you find folly and stupidity; in the actions of the accountable, you find recklessness; in every noble quality of humanity, you find its opposite. Because you are corrupt, despicable, and full of malice.
A progressive is someone who makes progress, not someone who judges the progress of other people against ahistorical fantasies and willful ignorance of circumstances. A liberal is interested in finding solutions, not obsessing on a specific course of action regardless of present facts or logical outcomes. I don't believe someone is an intelligent person who reacts with violent outrage to facts that don't fit their chosen narrative, who forms these narratives from incident emotion rather than calm observation, and who are incapable of moving to a different conclusion after settling on one that promotes their ego. I don't believe such people are honest, who lie in defense of their opinions rather than changing them dynamically and carefully as information develops and is analyzed. I don't believe they know what any of these things are, or ever did know, or ever cared if they did know. I believe they are full of hate for reasons that mean nothing, like their teabagger mirror images, and become prolific in their one and only output (the same as the teabaggers' - attacking Democrats in office) whenever circumstances grant them the slightest excuse.
If we, the actual progressives - the people whom you imitate and mock in form while deriding in substance - find that reality has come anywhere near to the dire situation you rhetorically paint, we will do something about it. Because that's how sane people respond to a situation that is legitimately dangerous and untenable. What would we do about it? Gee, I don't know - we would have to know the details of the situation before we decided that: Another thing sane people do. And then we would have to figure out what course of action would logically produce the results we seek - yet another silly thing we sane people insist on.
And once we'd done it to our satisfaction - something we are capable of, unlike you - we would stop, and go back to our lives: You know, everything other than politics. This is possible because real progressives are actually capable of solving problems, not just harping on them for eternity and building up huge lists of enemies and betrayers who are responsible for them. And the reason we're capable of solving problems is that - again, unlike you - we aren't part of them.
The sum total of your contribution to progress is to be so unreservedly arrogant, selfish, and lazily judgmental of people whose accomplishments you can't even match (let alone exceed) that you test the resolve of everyone who would serve their fellow human beings: You say to them, "With people like me around, is it really worth the effort to save the world?" You pound on the back of a firefighter carrying you from a burning building for not carrying your TV in his other hand. You are what results when complacent, nth-generation cargo cult misunderstandings of liberalism and humanist progress meet Fahrenheit 451-level shallowness and ignorance. You offer nothing but a test of our own commitment. Can we remain committed to building a future for our nation and our world knowing that eventually, it all just leads to...you? To people with no capacity for reflection or assertive action, but infinite capacity for discontent with what others provide them? The answer is, Hell Yes We Can - and hell yes, it is worth it.
I harbor no delusions that this diary would change how you behave, anymore than I could argue a rock into becoming a tree, but this is just another thing that we sane people do to stay that way - call it due diligence, or giving people a chance: Something you'll never understand, no matter how often you benefit from it. So I'll go through the motions of talking to you like mentally healthy adults: You've all but declared the Apocalypse at hand and President Obama its handmaiden (for the umpteen hundredth time since he became President, and in seemingly total obliviousness to this being identical to what Republicans are doing). This time there is at least something dangerous actually going on - the GOP holding America hostage to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But you aren't doing anything about that, and you aren't going to: This is just another day at the orifice for you. You've been shrieking so long, about any damn thing, that you can't even tell the difference when something truly perilous is happening - and of course your choice of enemies is as psychotic as ever.
So I'll put it to you straight, knowing full well you are incapable of reading epistemically-open English: Do something or STFU. Your routine cannibalistic bile is hindering the clarity of our information and the effectiveness of our collective action. So either shut up or prove that you aren't just a wall of talking anuses - act on what you believe to be the case and accept the evidence of what follows. Or not. Just keep being who you are, and doing what you do. You can always take retroactive credit for the courage and foresight of others you maligned while they were sacrificing, just as you've always done. Some day you can sit your great-grandchildren on your knee and tell them of the time you heroically slandered Democrats into saving you. If the rest of us have to die in hunger strikes or walk into teabagger gunfire to save this country while you sit on your superior ass scanning Obama's dandruff for Republican DNA, it's okay - liberals understand we have a duty to protect the weak, even when they're as annoying, deluded, and hypocritical as you.
If you are the people being addressed, you will not read this with any level of diligence. You will not understand what you read. You will not respond intelligently, constructively, or with any recognition of anything other than your own anger at being challenged. But it had to be said, and you would know why if you had any incling of the values you pretend. The louder and more condescending you've been to Democrats on the front lines, the more certain it is you would flee the country at the first sign of being called upon to make personal sacrifices. That's why you are neither free nor content, and never will be - you will always be living on heritage, and filling in the gaps with mere words to console yourself that what you lose is because others have betrayed you. I've done what I can for you. History is passing you by.