Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, August 10, 2009

Things Fall Apart

It's quite flabbergasting to realize that for-profit insurance is callously killing and devastating Americans every day all around us while the Democratic effort to reform this slaughterhouse and protect Americans is now being spun as if the reform were the expression of murderous intent against grandmas and babies and, no doubt, whitey, contrary to every actually available statement, detail, legacy, fact.

All this is playing out in what passes for our deliberative discourse through the puke-funneling of the most outrageous lies imaginable and their endless repetition by mainstream media -- precisely because they are so outrageous and hence dramatic -- by Republicans and their cynical enablers, corporatists of both parties, who are wholly owned subsidiaries of that very heartless greedy murderous insurance industry in clear sight of everyone.

Even at the level of their own already surreally laughable stereotypical discourse none of this makes even the remotest kind of sense. Yes, we all know how homicidal-genocidal mushy hippy-love bleeding heart liberals are sure to be compared to the self-appointed hard-nosed hard-bodied gun-totin' god-fearing' capital punishment lovin' pre-emptive war-makin' he-men of muscular-Christianist greed-is-good Randroidal Movement Republicanism... Mm hm.

And so, the ones who would stop the killing are decried as killers, the paranoid conspiracies attach to those who seek to end the collusion of crony capitalists, the anti-authoritarian skeptics and cynics embrace the authoritarian powers that be, the victims direct their pain and fear against the only ones who are trying to help stop the pain and fear.

I don't think these efforts will succeed. I think these strategies are backfiring yet again -- as they did with Terry Shiavo, Social Security privatization, torture-apologists (reckoning still on the way, I believe), Obama's breathtaking election, the race-baiting of Sonia Sotomayor, the flame-out flash of Birtherism, and on and on and on, but that the still self-marginalizing Republican whiny white guy Confederate rump simply has no sense of what it must become to better reflect the changed realities of our present.

But I also think these horrible spectacles of rampaging stupidity and deception provoke precisely the horror that also suffused the 2008 election, as the endless embarrassing lies, the rampant hooliganism, the flabbergasting incompetence of the McCain-Palin ticket with all its blatantly cynical faux-yokelism and scarcely stealthed genocidal-racist rallies confronted us with the possibility -- however unlikely -- that a force this hopelessly, unspeakably idiotic and ugly and bloodyminded could even have a chance to prevail over this rich, diverse, profusely gifted Republic of hundreds of millions of relatively literate citizens.

That we confront even the possibility of rule by these despicable embarrassingly stupid tactics and deceptions and con-artists is nearly as bad as their actual victory would be. It chills the intelligent and critical temper to the bone, it destroys the trust without which we cannot function as a Nation for long, it threatens to shake our hopes and histories to dust even as we make the change we need.

This is horrifying in a way that even the Bush years were not. We must find our way beyond this distress. With each passing day the scale of Obama's task, and ours, seems to me more daunting.

1 comment:

jimf said...

> Things Fall Apart

The center cannot hold.

> Yes, we all know how homicidal-genocidal mushy hippy-love
> bleeding heart liberals are sure to be compared to the
> self-appointed hard-nosed hard-bodied gun-totin' god-fearing'
> capital punishment lovin' pre-emptive war-makin' he-men of
> muscular-Christianist greed-is-good Randroidal Movement Republicanism...

Quote without comment, from a Web site I've been visiting
for years because it has wonderful pictures of old computers
on it. Hadn't noticed the political commentary until
quite recently.

-------------------------------
Ed Thelen's Nike Missile Web Site
http://ed-thelen.org/

This web site salutes those people have risked or are risking
life and limb supporting our war against terrorism.
How did YOU sleep last night? "Bravery is not the absence of fear,
it's doing the right thing in spite of fear."

This is getting ugly!
OBama, who can't even find his birth certificate,
Some thoughts on Politics. and doesn't remember his mentor Jeremiah Wright screaming
Adventures With the Press "God Damn America" during his "religious" service,
wants to tell the doctors what kind of medical care I can have.
I would feel more comfortable if OBama and congress
had the same plan as "the rest of us", instead of their special plan.
-------------------------------

And then, of course, there is John C. Wright's delightful blog,
which I also dip into from time to time.

-------------------------------
http://johncwright.livejournal.com

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 10:08 pm
More Diversity and More Perversity in the Future!

The Sci-Fi Channel (I cannot bring myself to type the phonetic/stupitastic
new version of their name) has recoiled in craven fear and trembling when
lectured by homosex activists, who gave the SF channel an "F" rating
on their political correctness. Alas, the thoughtcrime! Not enough perverts
on TV! The children have to be indoctrinated!

I kid you not. Here is the article:
http://www.seattlepi.com/tvguide/408807_tvgif28.html

The head of Sci-Fi channel has contritely promised to include more
homosex in future shows, and to do it nonchalantly, just as if this
abomination is normal and natural and worthy of no comment. The shows
will not actually come out and say sexual perversion has no bad side
effects. They won't actually lie and tell you homosex won't destroy
your life. But they will imply the lie. They will play along. It's
only polite! It's so tolerant!
-------------------------------

Ah well. Slouchin' to-wards Bethlehem to be born.