It was less than a decade ago that a Republican Congressman aptly described the abdication of responsibility by Congress as
a 'deep shallow', and in the years since we have seen the exponential worsening - the echoes and repercussions, the reverberations and impact - manifest itself into a "new normal" and blueprint for intentional, intellectually vacuous unaccountability and relative inaction.
While the greatest threat to the functionality of government and continuance of democracy is, without question, the obstruction and planned execution of steadily encroaching sedition by the Republican party and their Tea Party ("Teahadist") wing of extremists, the Democrats aren't calling them out, confronting and countering them nearly as vehemently as they need to be. And for this, the nation - and the world - suffers.
The Democrats claim that they are the party of the people - equality for all, voting rights, jobs, sustainability, fighting for better/stronger regulations, social security and the safety net of social services like medicare, etc. But much of the verbiage amounts to nothing more than a platter heaped high with pat phrases for public distribution - tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
And topped only by the ever-expanding lunacy of the Klu-Klucking Konservatives, who float conspiracy theories left and right upon seas of disingenuous disinformation.
As a result, we still find that the battles fought in the past are continuing, unabated but often unrecognized or unacknowledged, through the present and into the future, while regions of the world burn both figuratively and literally.
There's a term for that: hypocrisy.
The unsubtle tendency to intentionally misdirect, mislead, and propagandize isn't helping. The intentional, careful selection of words and phrases in the daily news stream is now on automatic, flowing effortlessly through deep channels of "newspeak" that reek of the decayed rot of
language as a control mechanism, only now it's portrayed far more effectively in words and pictures, video and sound bytes - a flash/bang, shock & awe spectacle of scintillating Michael Bay-like explosions at a dizzying rate.
Complex concepts? Forget about 'em - if you can't put it on a bumper sticker, it's too complex for today's citizenry.
Apparently. But we are capable of doing more - that's what we show in this community all the time. And we need to catch those missing subtleties and broadcast them when we're able, lest we lose perspective and get lost in the efforts to reframe our conversations on the latest dissection of the latest subject, which may be simply a buried subtopic of a side thread that split off from a main topic long ago (i.e., a distraction from a foundational issue).
Below the fold, one such example - in one single image - that may help draw one glaring inconsistency and touch simultaneously upon multiple related issues.
Nabila Rehman flew to Washington, DC, to testify in front of Congress about the drone strike that killed her grandmother and injured her siblings while they were out in the fields.
There are 430 representatives in Congress. Five (5) showed up.
That's a not-so-subtle snub of indifference - or perhaps confirmation of apathy - on the part of the American "leadership" that alleges to portray the interests and values of our nation.
From the article on Al Jazeera:
Symbolic of the utter contempt in which the government holds the people it claims to be liberating, while the Rehmans recounted their plight, Barack Obama was spending the same time meeting with the CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Now
that's an unfortunate, stark and striking contrast.
The continued antics and actions of the GOP as they enact their broad agenda aren't doing them any favors, but the overall ineffectiveness of the Democratic and other leaders in Congress when it comes to confronting and countering that agenda is disheartening.
We need to recognize the impact of our actions - and inaction - upon the Rehman families of the world; we need to recognize and rectify the imbalance of priorities, of communications, and of media coverage that could help us counter the abdication of responsibility by our government representatives and alleged "leaders" before we lose the ability to recognize it.
Yes, we can make some important differences right frickin' now:
The echoes and repercussions of both action and inaction are serious, sometimes severe, and often unrecognized or unexpected. We can't account for them all. But we can act in the face of inaccuracy, ineptitude, injustice and idiocy
right now.
And, really - if not now, when?