[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
Political junkies view every national election through a prism of participation hope, win or lose perhaps the unique circumstances, issues and cultural flow of the election will sweep up more somnolent American citizens into being interested political citizens who consistently vote. As Joan Walsh of Salon recently reiterated, should the United States ever reach a 90% participation rate the Republican Party would be forever obliterated.
Here we are late November buoyant in victory, the country still relatively tuned in and all the fresh junkie recruits ready for a lifetime of engagement, but from the behavior of the White House and Congress just a few weeks after the election a continuing level of political and media absurdity have crashed in the raised participation hopes of 2012 with a depressingly familiar verdict: oh shit.
First a few political corpse Senators, stung by the election loss and too clueless to understand what utter contempt the country holds for them decided to bully the President over Susan Rice. Absurd and ridiculous don’t begin to describe what these bullies are upset about, they’re clearly pushing people around because they can. Again. Now everyone loathingly watches the disgusting spectacle to see if the White House will fight back.
Behavior like this from Senators is one of the reasons public approval ratings for Congress are in the depths of hell, how it pains this junkie to see Congress so reviled from the beyond-disgusting antics Senators so regularly inflict upon the Republic. John McCain is being a bully because—like all bullies—he has a disgusting confidence from past success. If he succeeds again of course the abuse and bullying will get worse from all quarters.
How the White House handles the latest evolution of abuse will have to be seen. The sooner John McCain gets ruthlessly shut down (it’s easy) the sooner he’ll stop and the esteem of Congress will go up. How the hell can we keep folks engaged and interested in politics with all this hated bullying going on?
Then immediately this screamingly stupid and absurd hysteria of fiscal cliff-ness, there is no way public approval of Congress is going up after this, either.
Political junkies have an extremely low contemptuous view of legislative triggers, rightfully so. What happens is these representatives charged with responsibility just decide to chuck it, if we can’t do it in 20 weeks, terrible things will be triggered!
Oy. As the trigger date approaches or just passes suddenly representatives act like adults and solve—one way or another—the issue. That ridiculous trigger? Never mind! Seriously, that’s how it works, as the present is with us traps in the past are simply magically obliterated with new—hopefully calm and deliberative—law.
Who on earth does Congress think they’re fooling with all this self-imposed masturbatory political trigger contortions of nothing? Jesus Christ. If things are so horribly nuclear terrible this Fall with impossible conditions, well then my good homies, let the conditions expire and fix them in January when everyone is not so trapped. Or bullied into something greatly harmful.
And oh my fucking god the media in all this! Approximately two weeks ago I made the mistake of eating dinner in front of NBC, and not only did they totally leave out the history and context of the Bush tax cuts and those making more than $250,000, the rank fear-mongering in all this absurdity was deeply alarming. “This is really scary!” the reporter breathlessly panted.
NBC needs a story, fine, but inciting fear over nothing with issues that hold great importance is a line those assclowns should be a lot more careful of. NBC seems to think it has a bottomless well of trust in its viewers as they barf up anything they call journalism, but it cannot last forever with such powerfully destructive behavior.
Amusingly one of the terrible triggers are defense cuts. If one really thinks DOD cuts are coming from this totally militarist President and Congress, dream on. What a laugher, DOD triggers will do that magical vanishing act soon.
It does not make our monstrous military spending and involvement in foreign wars any less mortally dangerous, yet this is never mentioned. But Americans of course know that something is horribly, horribly wrong to be making deals that cut Medicaid while spending $120 billion annually for the Afghanistan war, is this how denial works right in front of us? Is it any more possible to be politically lost in space?
Please, take a chill for December and simply drop all this cliff nonsense. Hit John McCain back with a public threat that humiliates the disgraceful old codger even more and go shopping. Let the afterglow of the 2012 sink in with some Christmas hope and joy of what we can accomplish in 2013 instead of some ridiculous self-imposed desperation.