It's nine whole minutes long, but watch it all.
Watch it all and think about November 8th.
Don't wear yourself out fretting about the cow-dumb millions who will flock to the polls and vote for a monster because they're just too fucked-in-the-head to do otherwise. They're lost to us and nothing you do will ever bring them back.
Instead meditate on those who know who know better. Paul Ryan. Mitch McConnell. Your Uncle Phil. Men and women who god damn well know better and are still willing to go along on this slow, mad march into Hell.
Win or lose, these are the people who can never be forgiven for what they are about to do.
Never, ever.
17 comments:
Damn, Burt Lancaster is good.
Timely reminder.
Agreed. The one bright side to this election is at least they all sowed big shiny Rs on their chests for us.
But those that known better will never get their tax cuts, deregulation, legal immunity, and key to the Social Security Trust Fund without the cow-dumb millions cutting their own throats in exchange for being allowed to openly hate brown people, so they will never acknowledge, much less address, the real issue.
Will not forgiving 'those who should know better' really make any of us better people?
Forgiveness is the decision that restoring one's own peace is more important than disrupting someone else’s. I don't have to validate or sympathize with Trump voters. But I'm not going to be pissed off going forward over what's happened in the past.
Come November 9th, I need to be at peace with everything about this election cycle so I can live my life creating what I love to create and changing the things that are mine to change. I'm not giving up by forgiving, far from it. I'm saying no to anger and frustration about the past and claiming my present and my future as my own.
They were let off the hook for 12 years of Reagan/Bush and we got six years of Clinton-hunting, obstruction and impeachment.
They were let off the hook for Clinton-hunting, obstruction and impeachment, and we got eight years of the Worst President in modern history.
After they put on funny hats and pretended they'd never heard of Dubya they were let off the hook for the Worst President in modern history. There was no impeachment. No Truth & Reconciliation committee. No accountability. Just forgiveness and a President who begged them to put aside their racism and sedition and work with him to save the country from the disasters they created.
And for this folly we got 7.5 more years of witch-hunting, obstruction, open racist lunacy and a virtual declaration of war against the Enlightenment.
Before forgiveness comes confession and atonement, and history clearly shows what happens when these people are let off the hook for the shit they do. So until I start hearing "We're sorry we wrecked the place, how can we help clean up the mess?" and until I see Orange Hitler lose in a 40 state landslide, forgiveness is off the table.
Eff the cow-dumb millions. My hope is they are too dumb and irresponsible to find the polls. They're lazy and if they think Hillary is going to win they'll stay home. They won't be able to get up early and they can't get away from work. They won't want to stand in line after 5PM - that's drinkin' time! Eff them.
What Driftglass just said. I want to hear a lot of public confessions. Until then, screw the GOP to hell.
In 1968 the Dems (LBJ) let Nixon get away with a textbook-definition of treason - secretly contacting N. Vietnam at the Paris Peace Talks and asking for a delay so he could win the election. Did Tricky Dick know he'd dodged a bullet and change his ways?
Fuck no. Watergate & the Saturday Night Massacre. And BTW, Nixon's direct ordering of the AG (third in line, POS, Robert Bork; first two resigned on the spot) to fire the Special Prosecutor was precisely what impeachment was meant to address (literally, same example in the Federalist Papers). Nixon resigned, and successor Republican Ford pardoned him. To "heal the country."
Reagan playing footsie with the Iranians; Iran-Contra. Bush the Elder pardons everyone. No need to be angry, let's look forward. Well, not when Bill was in office. Nuh-uh. Impeachment is reserved for a Dem president (like lying about a blowjob). Bush the Younger, PlameGate, more pardons. Rinse, repeat. Impeachment is "off the table" we must look forward as a nation.
Looking forward, restoring our inner peace, blah blah blah. Letting Repubs off the hook only encourages them to do more and more. Fuck's sake, tRump is still calling for "election monitors" (imagine redneck yahoos with open carry) for "certain areas" on election day and is hinting he may not accept the results if he loses.
Forgive the sexist example, but this is like letting slide some guy making lewd suggestions to your wife (why be angry going forward?). Then the next time he grabs her breasts (no, lets look forward). What do you think he'll do to your wife the next time?
Conservatives would love to destroy our democracy. Shred the safety nets, voting only for those citizens with enough "skin in the game," getting Blue states to have congressional district Electoral voting for President (hello, gerrymandering), appointed Senators, rejecting/rewriting the 10th, 14th amendments. Those are things that are discussed openly, and some already introduced by Republican legislators.
Fuck these guys. The Republican party needs to be burned to the ground, and the conservative earth salted. End rant.
Will the now serving (Burt Lanchaster) please stand up?
Wow, not even crickets !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Focus on down ballot seats needs to become part of HRC's campaign. At first we heard a thumping could take place. Which turned to Dems retreating citing Gerrymandering, voter suppression etc etc.
Haven't come across anyone that pontificates that Ryan (House) or McConnell(Senate) will work for America with HRC as President. Hell, they undermined Obama at every day off they could schedule for themselves.
Obviously, as the president fails, so goes the country.
What is completely confusing other than the ability to steal from America during created chaos by Congress. Must be what the GOP perceives to be conservative opportunity.
Tearing down America to rebuild it in a conservative idealistic foundation. Is what I have heard by way too many conservative folks I know.
Knowing the founders were not conservative ideological icons. Even Lincoln did not present an iota of conservatism that is reflected today by the GOP.
They want to tear America down and rebuild it in their new conservative world order where government is not for and of the people. In many ways, we are part way there.
A direction change requires a congress change as well.
Driftglass, you didn’t answer my initial question—will not forgiving make us better people?
And where did I say forgiveness lets them off the hook? Forgiveness is not about excusing a wrongdoing. It’s not about seeking some form of justice. It’s about choosing to not allow the wrongdoing to control you or keep you angry as you move forward in your life.
Forgiveness doesn’t condone or minimize what happened. And it doesn’t give the wrongdoer a free pass.
And, where you and I will probably forever disagree, forgiveness is not conditional. You want confession and atonement before you forgive. I want the power to keep the wrongdoing from making me angry because I’m more effective at what I do when I’m not angry. And so I forgive, or try to.
Different strokes for different folks, of course.
What Driftglass said with "Not ready to make nice" cranked up to 11.
I'm not ready to forgive them what they've done, and continue to do to our country. I ain't a Christian; not turning the other cheek to let them hit me again. I am NOT content to be a martyr.
I don't need to forgive them to be at peace with myself.
Bluto: "Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this. Wormer, he’s a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...."
Otter: "Dead! Bluto’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards."
Ryan, McConnell, Priebus, Cruz, all of them need to be publicly pilloried. Named and shamed. They should be made the butts of jokes for the rest of their lives, and long after. They should be pointed out and laughed at as they walk down the street. Their children and grandchildren should have to want to change their names from embarrassment. They should be regarded as poisonous; everyone would know not to shake their hand in the same way they know not to touch poison ivy. The encyclopedias and wikipedia should always follow mention of their names with the words "amoral grifter(s)". In perpetuity.
"We're just the guys to do it!"
Yup.
I have no patience with them anymore. If they seriously want to repent, then they're going to have to atone, too. Because they have already caused very real damage. But until - or if (and not likely)- they ever come to that point?
Fuck them. Amoral grifters, the lot of them.
- lifeat45rpm
At Nuremberg and other Nazi trials, there was no Burt Lancaster to step up and tell the truth and take responsibility. All the Nazi war criminals are remembered as the cowards, losers, bigots and moral failures they really ever were. This clip is a good lesson for the Republican Party of Ryan & McConnell who need to be Burt Lancaster, but are clearly the whiney, chicken shit played by Werner Klemperer.
The rule of law. Absent the rule of law, nothing changes. It's not a D vs R or Lib vs Con--it's those who seek and receive extralegal favorable treatment vs the rest of us. It's gotta be the second-to-last scene in Costa Gavras' "Z", where all the murdering generals are paraded through the courageous prosecutor's office for their indictments.
But Pelosi said it was off the table, so no justice. Or will Clinton prove to have more backbone? We'll see.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell know better? Assuming facts which are not in evidence. You have said many times that all those two want is for someone to sign the law that eliminates the estate tax, cuts income tax for the wealthy, and eliminates all environmental regulations. This is the whole of their truth, these men, and many like them. I know a few people who ought to know better but seem not to. And half of them are voting for Gary Johnson. This is something I can look past for a citizen who has no more power than their vote, as do I. I don't say that's easy, or that I don't think less of those people for their choice. If you are the fucking Speaker of the House you don't have any goddamn excuses.
Denial of forgiveness isn't the tragic error here.
It's presuming that the ratio of "the Lost" (i.e. zealously sincere fascist martyrs-in-waiting) in RealMurricka is now precisely equal to (or functionally interchangeable with) the vast horde of varyingly emo twerps supporting the morbid con-games their political "heroes" exhibit.
Yeah, the "basket of Deplorables" snark was the righteous bullseye that launched millions of liberal ROFLcopters into a rainbow flotilla of joyful flight ... a bullseye that Clinton sacrificed "xxxxxx" votes to make ... in a terrifyingly tight race with a crypto-fascist nutjob.
The trope that the US is now so strenuously polarized that nobody any longer fence-sits could only pass the giggle test if, say, a full 75% of Americans could actually EVER be arsed to vote. It's unknown exactly how much of that epic voter abstinence is neither ignorance nor myopic bourgeois apathy but sheer bone-deep nausea at having front row seats at Ground Zero of a Left/Right polity-as-bloodsport that has devolved into little more than a terrifyingly weaponized global geek show, but it takes a very innocent mind indeed to casually default that ratio to zero.
PROTIP: If your enemy cordially invites sundry numerous ambivalent personnel to switch from your camp to theirs while you forbid by sacred dogma that any impious overtures be made on behalf of any such scandalous shenanigans, your odds of either victory or survival will both asymptotically tend toward sweet fuck-all.
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