I feel hopeful about this Scalito Crappalito, and I haven’t felt this hopeful since the last pathetic Dem Sack-o-crap got his ears boxed in politics 101 by the Ailes, Atewater & Rove in November 2004.
It ain’t as bad as December 1981.
As I got caught up on blogosphere reading on the evening of Friday the 13th, my dismay at the non performance of the Dems during the confirmation of the toady of a right wing idiot, a sycophant to the rich and powerful, my dismay really started to ebb. There are so many others looking at the Dem pseudo opposition performance who are also fed up, and I thought, “well, at least I am not alone”.
Then, I remembered 25 years ago, when I was making 4.25 / hour as a cook, the night I was reading my latest edition of The Atlantic and I read, “The Education of David Stockman”, and I thought – maybe the Scalito Crappolito Dem political performance is the death rattle of the Dem “leadership” who need to be fired?
And I feel not only hopeful, but warm inside, and thanks blogosphere.
PERSONAL POLITICAL enlitenments :
There are a lot of … episodes of enlitenment prior to that night when I was 21 reading the article that was published in The Atlantic, December 1981. That night itself wasn’t an episode of enlightenment, it was just good reading. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/budget/stockman.htm
In prep school in `76-’77 I had a lot of government / history classes and read a lot of great stuff, and The Federalist #10 really connected. I also had to read 1984 that year, and it really connected. Neither provided an answer as concise as 42, but they provided a framework for my skepticism about the effectiveness of do gooders.
My skepticism really crystallized a few year before, in the summer of 1972 around the camp fire at Indian Hollow in the Berkshires, where I spent the summer in a tent with a bunch of … hippies 😉 ?
I had been interested in politics since at least 1968, when my father would argue with anyone, anywhere, anytime about what a no good crook Nixon was. I’d gone to a lot of these marches, and I thought “We just gotta get everyone in the streets…” for every issue of the day. But, my family also lived in the shadow economy of welfare food and welfare and shadow jobs, and one trouble I had with “lets all go protest” idea is that we were broke, and … are we gonna be eating hamburger for the next 2 weeks, till the next check comes?
To my 12 year old mind in 1972, it sure seemed like most of the system was set up to keep me and us as peons. And sitting around the camp fire all summer, I remember thinking – well, if we are all off protesting, who is gonna make dinner? Who is gonna grow the food? Who is gonna bring it to the supermarket and to the school next fall, and who is gonna be the teacher at the school … and who are these people leading the protests, and why are they the leaders, and are they as broke as we are?
My 12 year old brain was kind of stuck on HOW do these political things work, and WHY do they work the way they do. Do they gotta work how they work and why they work?
And then I was fortunate enough to get a green exemption to Northfield Mt. Hermon for a year in 1976, and I found out that there were people who had also thought about this stuff, and they had written about it!
So, lets jump to that night in 1981 I am reading this article that is creating a media circus – one of Raygun’s insiders has exposed what a sham his budget was. I had suspected it was so as I was on financial aid and they made it harder to get grant money, but, that kind of didn’t matter. See, I was working full time at $4.25 / hour and that meant I made too much to qualify for grant money even under the old rules. I could still borrow a fortune, and if I worked full time I could eek through culinary school.
I REALLY thought RAYGUN was gonna open camps, and malcontent cooks like me would be quickly “volunteered” to work and to live behind the wire cooking for other malcontents who thought Raygun was the beginning of fascism. Aside from the career in camp cooking possibility, culinary school seemed like a good idea in 1981 cuz I knew so many people in Massachusetts with 4 year degrees in Political Science, History, English … who were cooks. I figured I could read 1984 or The Prince on my own, and culinary school would give me an edge in the job market.
And I am reading this article in 1981, and I think: “Now they got the bastard – here is The Truth.”
Through the 80’s and 90’s I’ve been so dismayed at what I thought were the inept tactics of the Democrat party against the fascists. Disclaimer – a lot of the Dems were and are great, honest, hard working ethical people. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore – honest people. However, aside from being hired to be honest and hard working, they were hired to win and beat the fascists, and in those tasks they failed, and the Democrat establishment around them failed, completely.
During these years I was working as a cook in fine dining in Boston, or on fishing boats in Alaska, or as an enterprise evil empire DBA, not a political operative or political leader. There are 300 million of us in this country, 300 million who need feeding and teaching and nursing and pot hole fixing, and if everybody was a political leader or operative in DC what would get done?
The DC Dems are hired by millions of us with our few bucks and our few hours to win, and they lose, and I always thought they were inept.
Then, my most recent episode of political enlitenment occurred last Feb. when I finally skimmed Lakoff.
All of a sudden, all the years of wondering “what the hell are they doing” w.t.o. campaigning and governing against these fascists, all the years of wondering while I worked as a cook or a whatever career …
All those months of watching the DC media & DINOS savage Howard who stood up to this crap,
All of a sudden, I realized that the people who are NOT cooks, NOT nurses, NOT pothole fixers, NOT teachers … the people whose job is to be “leader” while the other 300 million keep the wheels on the road –
I realized that the “leaders” on my side weren’t just inept, they were incompetent, incompetently corrupt, or both.
I’ve been kind of swallowing the company line that since Dems don’t own NBC the Dems can’t have a message … I’ve bought various party lines cuz, well, I have another job to do and to keep so I ain’t living in my fucking car, and my job is NOT political operative.
As I watch Raygun stir up Happy Days memories of June and Ward Cleaver, get elected, completely screw the peons over, all the while spewing the language of being a champion of the peon, with Tip O’Neill bargaining away our ¼ of a loaf,
ooops, as I watch MNBA Biden, the folding over the Patriot Act, roberts and alito, Hillary attack flag burning, as I watch NOT defending or building on murtha’s messages, … and, and, and, and …
and, as I skim so many completely pissed off comments about Scalitto Crappolitto, and, I think, just like I thought in November 2004,
maybe, finally,
HOPEFULLY
The crap elements of this party, a party which used to be something, the crap elements are going to finally get flushed, and we can clean up and get on with building something.
rmm.
http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html
