Around the ancient towerWe have been circling around the most important story in American politics for years now.
And I have been circling for a thousand years
And I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Like most Liberal misfits, I have written about it over and over again practically since the day I began this blog (from 2006):
Dead Center
...
Because when I look across the fence at the remnants of what once was the Republican Party, I see self-blinded ideologues smiling and drowning in a brine of hate and fear. Men and women mesmerized into stupefyingly self-destructive acts of denial and delusion by the Stalin-like cult of personality that has been erected around the epically corrupt and incompetent Bush Administration.A dead press that steadfastly will not report on what matters.A dead Center where critters like Andrew Sullivan, Tom Friedman and David Brooks camp out and hobble hither and thither to find some fake “other side” of every fucking thing from Creationism to bestowing monarchical powers on George W. Bush. Who have debased themselves into useless, human difference engines that reflexively infuse their editorial tintures with one part rat poison and and one part wine, divide the brew by two, and declare whatever half-toxic slurry that they have left over to automatically be the “Reasonable Middle”.Well guys, there is no fucking philosophical “Center” that can accommodate the racists and Dominionists of the Right and free thinkers and Compassionate Christians of the Left.Or to paraphrase Lincoln – who your Party used to esteem highly, once upon a time, before you sold your Founder out the heirs of Jefferson Davis --A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half Wahabi Christian and bigot, and half tolerant.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.Because in the end, you must choose.This Sunday, for example, on the Chris Matthews Show, the Wall O’ Pundits flipped through one Republican corruption and treason after another like a deck flash cards in the service of a conversation mocking and sniping...at Democrats!Scandal after Republican scandal. Failure after Republican failure. And buttlicking drivel like this from Andrew Sullivan -- “The only opposition is coming from the Conservatives. Democrats are nothing but whiners and spectators.” – went unrebutted and unquestioned.Hey, cocknoggin'! Isn’t carving into the people that are actually destroying this country, actually lying to the public, actually bleeding our Democracy dry sorta Your Fucking Job?!Oh, it was quite the gigglefest until Cynthia Tucker threw a sharp elbow into the throat of Matthews’ "Ain’t the Dems a buncha bumblefucks" party by letting the phrase "Southern Strategy" pass her lips. Then she actually fleshed out the ugly, racist-pandering history of the modern GOP; reminding the panel of the true face of who it is they actually serve as Matthew’s fum-fuhed around, trying to find the escape hatch.Then…silence. Crickets. Nothing.Instant right-handed circle-jerk buzzkill. Hit Sullivan so hard that it almost knocked Bush’s dick out of his mouth...
Here is Air America up-and-comer Rachael Maddow being interviewed by MSNBC lead sled-dog Keith Olbermann on the very same unforgivably dishonest media behavior a year and a half later:
And here is the inimitable Digby from today, once again recapitulating exactly the same, disgraceful condition of our wildly overpaid media in the pages of Salon eight years after that:
The media’s most destructive meme: Why we need to admit that the GOP’s extremism is virtually unprecedented
For years, the political press has covered for Republicans, insisting (without evidence) that Dems were just as bad...This disease is getting worse at an exponential rate, and the people who get paid a fortune to lock arms and pretend this problem isn't happening seem to just keep getting stronger.
We have been circling this problem for years, and by now it should be clear that the cavalry is not coming.
Because while each of us in our own way may or may not be a falcon, or a storm, or a great song, like it or not, together we Liberal misfits are the cavalry.
4 comments:
As usual, you pinpoint the right problem and source, Drifty. And you better than most know there's no easy answer to the media's obtuse complicity with right-wing economic and political forces.
When the energy is there, I've found temporary gratification in writing letters to the editor. Some of them are published, and I'd like to think that some editors and a reader hear and there might actually reflect on views that they don't normally hear. And maybe a few additional neurons fire the next time that subject surfaces.
I also write to and occasionally call my (right-wing) Representative / Senator and ConservaDem other Senator about critical pending legislation. But I'm convinced that isolated calls and letters have almost no effect.
But when a wave of public opinion forms on issues of importance to us, we need to do what we can to not only let our "elected leaders" know where we stand, but get others to do so, as well.
Personally, I'm hoping that Bernie's presence in the Dem campaign will create a wave large enough to spawn many such opportunities, as part of an overall change to the zeitgeist. Who knows?
But more good news! Chris Matthews' wife is running for congress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/former-news-anchor-kathleen-matthews-announces-for-congress/2015/06/03/bce7f802-0952-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html
I've become increasingly convinced that we will eventually be forced to engage in a violent civil struggle for the future of our country. Not because we want it but because we can't avoid it.
Between the 1% of the 1% who seem intent on owning everything, including us and their lackey robots in the GOP who are mad driven to bust down the doors of democratic governance to facilitate that effort it is only a matter of time before the Great Unwashed finally say, FUCK YOU. Then we will all bleed.
Digby was a little off. The media does find "evidence" that the left/Democrats are just as bad. But it's almost always in the form of a single anecdote of one Democrat being a moron one time about something that had no importance. While on the other hand, an entire party and ideological movement has been working night and day to discredit and destroy the American system of governance so that they can rule the charred ruins alongside the demented plutocrats who bankroll their sabotage every step of the way.
Alan Grayson being inflammatory is exactly the same as, say, debt ceiling hostage taking.
Or, if it's a Faux News lollygagger, some anonymous dkos commenter being a dick is the same as Rush Limbaugh saying something disturbing and heinous to an audience of several million. Exactly the same.
We're screwed.
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