Voting For Dummies.

Because apparently we have to e-x-p-l-a-i-n this whole concept, especially to the bwave, bwave College Republican Bantam Chickenhawks, and the Red State Little Bus Brigade.

So come with me now (FADE, in a Time Machine-ish montage ([Mmm. Yvette Mimieux.], to a thousand years ago) and see how a little Googletime can make anyone look like an expert.

A thousand years?

Dude, nobody was voting a thousand years ago.

That was, like, years before Thomas Edison founded America. Back when people only lived to, like, twenty, and all anybody had was crappy DOS apps on IBM PS/2’s.

Ahem. To continue...

Canute II, son of Sweyn I, became King of England (except swingin’ London) by (re)conquest. He took London in 1016. He was also King of Denmark and Norway, creating a North Sea Empire, which fell apart after he died in 1035.

Dead guy? Dead white guy? Dead-and-buried-nearly-a millennium white guy has what to do with voting here and now?

Patience.

Canute has gotten kind of a bad name, but he was a smart guy who knew the limits of power. His biggest problem seemed to be that his court was as thick with toadies and flatterers as Fox News..

Every time he walked into a room, it started up.

"You, sir, are the greatest human that ever walked upright," 1,000-year-ago-Brit-Hum would drool.

"Who, anywhere, can match you, my liege in sheer noble wisdom?" 1,000-year-ago-Chris-Matthews would wheeze.

"Oh Majesty, you have the finest ass in all the land!" 1,000-year-ago-Ken-Mehlman would squeal. “It is all of that speedy pedaling past traitors on your Royal Schwinn that had kept your glutes so magnif-alicious.”

But unlike our own vain and shallow Dauphin, Canute wasn’t a weak and hollow man and didn’t sustain himself by sopping up the sickly syrup of asskissery with a biscuit and demanding seconds.

He wasn’t buying any.

This rest from an online site that was good enough to write this down...

"So you say I am the greatest man in the world?" he asked them.

"O king," they cried, "there never has been anyone as mighty as you, and there never be anyone so great, ever again!"

"And you say all things obey me?" Canute asked.

"Absolutely!" they said. "The world bows before you, and gives you honor."

"I see," the king answered. "In that case, bring me my chair, and we will go down to the water."

"At once, your majesty!" They scrambled to carry his royal chair over the sands.

"Bring it closer to the sea," Canute called. "Put it right here, right at the water's edge." He sat down and surveyed the ocean before him. "I notice the tide is coming in. Do you think it will stop if I give the command?"

His officers were puzzled, but they did not dare say no. "Give the order, O great king, and it will obey," one of then assured him.

"Very well. Sea," cried Canute, "I command you to come no further! Waves, stop your rolling!. Surf, stop your pounding! Do not dare touch my feet!"

He waited a moment, quietly, and a tiny wave rushed up the sand and lapped at his feet.

"How dare you!" Canute shouted. "Ocean, turn back now! I have ordered you to retreat before me, and now you must obey! Go back!"

And in answer another wave swept forward and curled around the king's feet. The tide came in, just as it always did. The water rose higher and higher. It came up around the king's chair, and wet not only his feet, but also his robe. His officers stood before him, alarmed, and wondering whether he was not mad.
...

Iraq -- and the consequences of electing and then re-electing the liar who dropped us into Iraq -- is rising. Is curling around our feet, and it is way past time for those who went all-in with Bush and slandered everyone who tried to tell the truth to either raise, call or fold the hand.

Understand I do not give a single fleck of amoeba poo what a person wants to believe personally, as long as you keep your personal Flying Spaghetti Monster rituals confined your own, private living-room Sacred Pasta Altar.

It’s when you bring it out into the public square – when you try to make it law – that you can expect me and 50 million other citizens to call bullshit on you.

And King Canute to belt you upside your numb skull with a 2-by-4 of 1,000-year-old English Oak.

Why?

Because there are (at least) two simple facts about voting that Wingnuts – being the kinda s-l-o-w children that they are – seem completely unable to wrap their dull little heads around.

First, a disturbing number of wingnuts believe they can wield their tiny majority (or, actually, if you read Paul Krugman, their corrupt minority) like a Magic Wonka Golden Ticket. They can just vote for poltroons who flagrantly lie to them about Social Security or the deficit or global warming or war and peace...and reality will just magically rewrite itself to conform to their Idiot’s Mandate.

That they can command the tides to reverse themselves.

Worldwide greenhouse damage will miraculously heal itself because they voted it so. The Origin of Species can be flogged onto the Science Fiction racks, and ultimately onto the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and be replaced in biology class by Left Behind drivel...because dangerously pig-ignorant cultists have been led to believe that if the majority votes it True...that makes it True.

These are a lot of the same swine whose great-grandfathers thought, because they feverishly believed the despicable idea that holding human beings as chattel was Endorsed by the Almighty...that somehow transmuted slavery into a moral and godly thing.

A lot of the same swine whose fathers and grandfathers thought, because the majority believed the lynching human beings to keep them in line was Good Housekeeping Seal Endorsed by the Almighty... that sprinkling the pixie-dust of "majority rule" over it made Jim Crow a moral and godly thing.

A view which must shock the Hell out of Sweet Baby Jebus, considering that he was in the distinct minority while he was alive; outnumbered by the Romans several million to one.

Shit. Guess that means he was wrong, huh?

Sorry to be the Cheney in the punchbowl gentlemen, but that a tragic number of you choose to abdicate their civic responsibilities and turn a deliberately blind eye to the moral and geopolitical catastrophe that Bush has created in Iraq, doesn’t change the nature of what it going on there one iota...any more than a child throwing an I-don’t-wanna-go-to-school tantrum actually causes the sun to stop in its tracks.

And second, who the fuck ever told you that voting somehow absolves you of responsibility?

It doesn’t.

In fact it does entirely the opposite: it makes you responsible.

When you vote, you choose. You could have stayed home. You could have voted for someone other than a lying war criminal and his goon squad.

You chose this clusterfuck instead.

You chose to say to the world, “This man represents me.”

You chose to cede to him the power to act in your name, on your authority. Bush works for you, and when he shits up the work you hired him to do for you, you are responsible for cleaning it up.

I hear a lot of once-brave shock-troops of the 101st Keyboarders now getting all whiny and bitchy and defensive about Their President and Their War, because they’re stuck.

They are, at their cores, sniveling little pussies who cannot admit that Bush has fucked up Big Time, because that would mean they must have fucked up Big Time in electing him and, being sniveling little pussies, they are incapable of manning-up and admitting they made a mistake.

A huge mistake.

But they are also absolutely, fill-their-Underoos terrified of putting their high-pay-grade pink skin on the line, especially when they can send other people’s children off to die for them. For their President’s screw-ups. For his lies. The worse the situation gets, the more they take refuge behind weirder and weirder cotton-candy arguments spun up out of nothing.

And as the arguments they make become ever more patently ridiculous, or duplicitous or just plain nuts, it becomes clearer and clearer that they are no longer talking to us, or to anyone in particular really.

They are talking to themselves.

They are in that twilight struggle between their cowardice and their conscience...desperately looking for a loophole that will let them off the hook.

What is happening in Iraq is not the result of natural disaster or bad luck or an act of God.

No, you voted for this! This is the hand YOU dealt, and it is far, far too late to say you don’t wanna play anymore and scuttle back to your play-pen.

Time to raise, call or fold, shithead, because You Chose This. You opted for it. And in doing so, you became responsible for it; a responsibility you cannot evade or avoid or “vote” your way out of.

You, the pinheads who are always so sprinter-off-the-blocks quick to hector the poor, or the weak, or the old, or the infirm on how they need to take personal responsibility for their plight...YOU dickhead are Personally Responsible for your decision to choose George Bush as your President.

This is your mess.

And we will never, ever let you forget it.