It’s a good thing that the Dempublicans have their priorities straight. Nope, no hard words from them about the REAL outrages being carried out by Lucifer … ummmm …. our Commander in Chief, torturing poor souls right here on Earth, but they’ll rush right to the nearest microphone to tell President Chavez to shut up. As Pierce says:
You worthless passel of cowards. They’re laughing at you. You know that, right?
The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea. For an entire week, it allowed a debate on changing the soul of the country to be conducted intramurally between the Torture Porn and Useful Idiot wings of the Republican Party, the latter best exemplified by John McCain, who keeps fashioning his apparently fathomless ambition into a pair of clown shoes with which he can do the monkey dance across the national stage. They’re laughing at him, too.
The New York Times has the right of it here, limning the pathetic gullibility at the heart of the “compromise.” There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can’t ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it — or its congressional authors — seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a “lesser breach” of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power? And wait until you see the atrocity that I guarantee you is coming down the tracks concerning the fact that the president committed at least 40 impeachable offenses with regard to illegal wiretapping.
And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives — “Aggressive interrogation techniques” — the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.
This was as tactically idiotic as it was morally blind. On the subject of what kind of a nation we are, and to what extent we will live up to the best of our ideals, the Democratic Party was as mute and neutral as a stone. Human rights no longer have a viable political constituency in the United States of America. Be enough of a coward, though, and cable news will fit you for a toga.
However, because I know it is vital for the Democrats to “recapture” the good Christian folks, there’s a passage from Scripture that seems apropos: “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”
The only hope for a genuine left in this country, the only hope for peace in the world, is to turn our backs not only on Old Scratch … ummmmmm … President Bush, but on his enabling friends in the center-right Donk party. They are pathetic, pathetic in a way even more spineless than the Vichy traitors, worse than Chamberlain … they are “good Germans” in the saddest, most horrifying meaning of the phrase. Those principled leftists who still append a “D” after their name should run for the door, ASAP.
Oh, to live in such ignoble times as these. Some solace, perhaps, in some tunes?
- “Teacher Don’t Teach Me No Nonsense” – Fela Kuti
- “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” – Mother Love Bone
- “(Keep Feeling) Fascination – Human League
- “The Popcorn” – James Brown
- “Sultans of Swing” – Dire Straits
- “There’s A Tear in My Beer” – tHe THe
- “It’s Not Easy” – Jessi Coulter
- “September Song” – Lou Reed
- “Downtown Train” – Tom Waits
- “Bobby Brown Goes Down” – Frank Zappa
Oh, and in honor of that idiot over at the Huffington Post, the one who apparently knows nothing about Roger Waters despite his insistance that he’s a Waters fan, I offer these lyrics from “Amused to Death”
We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ohhed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
Our last hurrahAnd when they found our shadows
Grouped ’round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then, the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to deathNo tears to cry, no feelings left
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death (repeating)
Here, at the end of our civilization, with few American politicians willing to speak truth as easily as it rolls off the lips of the President of Venezuela, this song feels more and more like the voice over of a documentary produced sometime in the future.
