Congratulations, Left Blogosphere.
WE did this.
It was OUR push that moved the political balance in the United States far enough left that a tipping point was reached.
Ours.
Make no mistake about this.
Without the thousands of passionate truth seekers who spent literally millions of hours thinking and researching and writing about the sheer criminality of the 2000-2006 Republican administration and its corporate enablers, the American people would not even have KNOWN about it.
We forced the media to cover it.
Cover it or be scooped.
And the people have spoken.
Take a day off.
Hell…take two.
And then…back to work.
They ain’t dead yet.
Not by a long shot.
Back to work.
More below the fold.
MUCH more.
First, a word from the past.
“Eternal vigilance.”
Yup.
Here is what I wrote 24 hours ago, before the dam of anger and indignation that had held back the ire of the people opened in a righteous flood upon the heads of the wrongdoers in Washington. (Election Day? Don’t Worry. Be Happy. And Prepare For Wednesday.)
The Rahms and Schumers will immediately start crowing about how correct they have been, meanwhile busily selling the United States right down the same corporate-owned river that it has been sailing for 60+ years. We need to understand this, and oppose them with the same vigor that we have opposed the Neo-Cons.
They are simply NEO-Neo-Cons.
Neo-Con Lite.
Do not be conned.
Listen.
I heard Barack Obama say with a completely straight face yesterday that we must “…pursue a rational course.” That we need to find a way to CO-OPERATE with President Bush, not try to impeach him. That was the gist of his spiel, no matter what words were used.
Fuck these centrists. Positions of this sort, positions which go over big when they are hyped by the media of the U.S., are POISON to the U.S. in the Third World. A Third World which is rising faster than the waters in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster. (Check out Mexico and Nicaragua for the latest developments on THAT front.) The entire “Pax Americana”, CIA-built and enforced international kleptocracy is toppling like a house of cards, and Iraq is only the first battle in a long, long war of liberation for the Third World.
The poor of South/Central/Caribbean America and Africa, the peoples of the Islamic world, of non-Chinese, non-Japanese Asia? They see through that kind of bullshit in a NY minute.
A DUBAI minute.
An Oaxaca second.
Their translation?
“Both parties in the United States are owned by the same sorts of racist, white supremacist forces that have been ripping us off since the 1400s, and we will not take it anymore. VAYA!!!”
No matter WHAT the complexion of those making the statements.
And go they will.
To an ever-expanding war.
We can’t even handle Iraq.
How long do you think that we will last if we do not RADICALLY alter our course?
Let us do it NOW.
Before we quite literally go the way of the U.S.S.R.
We face a worldwide storm that will make something like the Katrina fiasco merely a footnote to history.
From a future history course at the University of Mexico City:
“Oh yes. Katrina. Several years before its collapse, the U.S. mishandled a storm in one of its oldest cities. This was one of several hundred evidences of the rot that had set in at the base of that society, a rot that caused the whole system to fall in the autumn of 2010.”
Yup.
Dig it.
And DO something.
DO something.
Do MORE.
The Ratpubs are still in control of the executive and judicial branches of the government, and at LEAST hold a Liebermajority in the Senate.
Only in the House of Representatives…the part of the Federal Government that is most quickly responsive to the changing wishes of the people because it is the one with the shortest election span and the weakest grasp upon power…has our voice truly been heard.
And brothers and sisters…IT HAS BEEN HEARD!!!
By our enemies as well as our allies.
Bet on it.
If this were a war, it would be one battle won.
NOT a victory.
Just one big battle.
In competitive sports, there is something admiringly known as “the killer instinct.” One who has this is known as “a finisher.”
We MUST finish this job.
We must literally CRIPPLE our opponent this time.
No Marquis of Queensbury rules.
This is not a sport, bounded by a set of relatively inviolable laws.
This is an out and out blood war.
A war that leaves people dead and bleeding in the dust.
A war that ruins literally BILLIONS of lives.
It is a fight to the finish.
The BushCo Boys are not going to roll over and play dead.
If they do so…they ARE dead.
They are guilty of crimes so heinous that were they not in positions of monstrous power, they would ALREADY be standing in the dock next to their moral equivalent, Saddam Hussein.
They would already be facing the hangman.
Quite literally.
The ONLY difference between Saddam Hussein and this crew is that Hussein did not have the military power to win.
But the power of truth has…at least this once…trumped military, economic and political power.
Let us continue in our efforts.
Let us continue to try to find the truth in the morass of spin that we laughingly refer to as “The Mass Media”.
Continue to try to TELL the truth on the only truly free “Mass Media”…a media of, by and FOR the masses…that exists in the world today.
The internet.
VAYA!!!
So…
Take a day off.
Hell…take several days off.
And then…back to work.
They ain’t dead yet.
Not by a long shot.
And if we do not put a stake through the hearts of these…these parasites, these vampires…and bury their ashes at the Wounded Knee killing ground, they WILL BE BACK.
Under cover of night, as is their way.
Secretly.
Under cover of “I am a Democrat!!!”
Under cover of “I am a patriot!!!”
Under cover of “I am a religious man!!!”
Under cover.
As is their necessity.
Bet on it.
I repeat:
“Eternal vigilance.”
Yup.
VAYA!!!
Today is a good day to win.
But every day is a good day to die, if that death is in the pursuit of life, liberty and the right to happiness.
Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Patrick Henry and Malcolm X understood this.
As did my Uncle Mike, who died on the beach in Normandy.
As did my mother and father who put THEIR asses on the line during the Battle of Britain, three years before America even entered the war against Hitler.
As have millions of others throughout the course of human history.
Now it’s our turn.
VAYA!!!
Once more.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’
Ol’ Will knew.
“In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:”
He knew.
“But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger”
Do we?
Know this?
Are WE…gentle, peaceful souls, most of us…capable of being finishers?
God will it so.
Because it is time to finish this.
This thing that started with a gunshot to the head in Dealy Plaza over 40 years ago.
It is time to finish this.
It is time for the nightmare to end.
We have two years.
VAYA!!!
Because if we do NOT…
If we let this opponent get up off of the canvas…
The rest of the world is going to finish it FOR us.
You can bet on THAT as well.
VAYA!!!
Once more into the breach.
And you can rest in 2008.
VAYA!!!
Peace…
AG
The usual.
On a VERY unusual night.
My love and thanks to all of you.
VAYA!!!
AG
P.S. Even to the dKos creatures. If anyone with dKos posting privileges…I was busted off of there over a year and a half ago for having too much passion AND too much brains…cares to post this paean to the blogs over there, I wouldn’t mind.
They deserve some props, too.
I do hate to pimp my own posts…Lord knows I haven’t done much self-promotion in my musical career…but recommendations of diaries which say something that you think might be useful or important are important themselves.
Thanks…
AG
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GpsF_0-ta_A
I wonder what the Paraguayans are doing?
The Paraguayans?
Breathing a giant sigh of relief, as are most of the folks in the rest of the world if they have any sense at all.
These BushCo creatures have been cut off at the knees.
The military has refused them.
And the people have refused them.
They have little or no other recourse.
Not that they won’t try, of course.
They have no choice BUT to try.
Try or BE tried.
A cornered rat is at its most dangerous.
But…it’s only a rat, now.
Back behind the curtain, where we thought the Wizard lived?
Just another cornered rat.
Let us finally squash the motherfucker and be done with it.
AG
http://airamericaplace.com/boards/index.php?act=ST&f=30&t=18711&st=0
or: http://www.cjrdaily.org/politics/paraguay_and_bush.php
Not cornered yet. It will take more than an election to crush this rat. He’s still got the guns.
God help me, I’ve been putting too much faith in the military stopping these maniacs.
Effing Eichmann!
Words to live by, AG. Amen to that!
Congratulations to you too, AG, and thank you for your passion and fire!
Thank you, Knox, but…y’know what?
I posted this as both a paean to left blogdom and as a little test bet.
I posted it here, and on My Left Wing as well. (Here.)
I wanted to see the response to the plea for more, more, MORE.
And 6 hours after posting it…there has been damned LITTLE response.
I fear that we are NOT finishers. That the impulse towards egalitarianism that pretty much defines the left wing, liberal type of human being generally precludes the ability to take decisive, final action against all but the plainest and most immediate of enemies.
Too much forgiveness, not enough fire.
This has been the case throughout the history of the left and the single reason why with the exception of the strongman-based Communist “lefts” that arose…lefts that were perhaps economically left wing, but socially and politically far right wing…there have been precious few truly successful “left wing” governments of any real size and power in the world.
Hitler understood this, and jackbooted the left of Germany in HIS time right into the ash can.
Kill a few left wing newspaper publishers and politicians and watch their supporters run for cover.
Joe Bageant’s “soft, moody, self-absorbed American lefties. (“Joe Bageant Speaks Out” @ <www.coldtype.net> [The html code doesn’t seem to be working here today..])
Yup.
I fear that the people of the middle class left…not all, but many..want to go live the good life once again. They think that they have slain the dragon, and they are now going to revert to suburban, white privilege middle class form.
Well…it ain’t over ’til it’s over.
And it ain’t over.
Not by a long shot.
As we speak, “centrist” forces of both sides are plotting the future course of America.
And I will GUARANTEE that they are plotting the wrong course.
One that will maintain our dependence on economic imperialist strategies and the tactics that must be used to implement them, in the short-sighted, short-term (but quite practical politically) approach that will maintain the good life here in America at the cost of the bad life for some billions of other human beings.
So’s they can get the votes.
And unless we oppose them with everything that we have…that is EXACTLY what is going to happen.
Meanwhile, the impoverished of this world are gaining more and more military power.
More and more destructive power at the very least.
25% of the world’s population simply cannot continue to consume 75% of its wealth.
It’s as simple as that.
Not without DECISIVE military superiority.
In the Old West, the .44/.45 caliber revolver was known as “the Great Equalizer”.
Yup.
Atomic weapons are the equivalent today.
And terrorism is the way that they will eventually be used.
On US, most likely.
Then who ya gonna call?
Can’t STOP the spread of nukes.
Not without using them in preemptive wars, and who wants to take THAT risk?
Possibly crazy motherfuckers like Cheney, but who else with any brains whatsoever?
What will happen to this country if someone lights off a nuclear cap under the ass of say…Chicago?
No matter WHO it is? INCLUDING so-called friendly forces wanting to force things to come to a head here?
What will happen then?
I’ll tell you what will happen.
Military law and the end of any sort of democracy (no matter HOW flawed) here at all.
And how can we head this inevitable confrontation off?
I’ll tell you that, too.
By publicly and forcefully rejecting the policies of the last 50+ years.
In terms that are unmistakable.
Impeachment of the latest round of war criminals to push us to the edge.
Legal action AGAINST those war criminals and the war profiteers (often one and the same people) who ran them.
PUNISHMENT for their crimes.
To the death, if necessary.
Real investigation of the assassinations of the ’60s.
The opening of secret documents like those of the arch-war criminal Henry Kissinger.
IRON fisted civilian control of the secret services.
And real motion towards tightening the belt of this massively wasteful society.
Will this happen?
Six years ago…even as little as two years ago… no one would have guessed that last night could happen here in America.
But it did.
And the constantly mounting pressure and presence of left blogdom was the engine that PUSHED that movement.
I fear that we will rest on our laurels now.
I pray that we will NOT rest, even though it is a quite natural reaction to such a nearly revolutionary turn of events.
And so…I am posting these warnings from the DEW line of this society. The Distant Early Warning line. From outside of the mainstream in every way, which is where my own tendencies have brought me to live over 40 years of adulthood.
It ain’t over yet.
Not by a LONG shot.
Wake the fuck up.
Again.
And if you ARE awake…STAY THAT WAY, GODAMMIT!!!
INCOMING!!!
Still.
It ain’t over.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
The struggle continues. I’m going to wear orange to day — like the Ukranians, not the Kosacks.
in the midst of the general euphoria — it’s not quite long enough for a diary, so yours seems an appropriate place to post it:
Keep Our Eye On The Ball
Okay, we’ve taken the House, and it looks like we’ve taken the Senate (if we count the two Independents, Bernie Sanders and Sore Loserman…err, Joe Lieberman).
But our work has just begun. Especially in the Senate, we’re going to have to keep a close watch on our purported Democrats.
I propose that ANY DEMOCRAT that crosses the aisle and votes for ANY of Bush’s pet projects (be it Social Security “deform”, continued involvement in the Iraq War, wingnut judges, etc.) in the “spirit of bipartisanship” be targeted for removal when they come up for election. Because we have such a slim majority in the Senate, this is especially going to be crucial. We have a little more leeway in the House, but we still will need to keep close watch in case some of those House members might have thoughts of moving up a chamber.
And we need to watch our leadership too — Pelosi and Reid, and whoever else is in leadership positions (would love to see Jack Murtha get Majority Whip). Let’s see how they do in keeping their troops in line.
The right-wing will scream about “congressional gridlock” — but better gridlock than a rubberstamp on the worst of Bush’s harebrained schemes. Let’s pass our agenda — raise the minimum wage, do something constructive about health care, improve airline and port security, put true checks and balances back on presidential power grabs — and watch Bush veto the bills. Then the American people can see who really has their best interests at heart, and can choose accordingly.
I’ve gotta take a nap — up too damn late last night, and had to get up early for an eye exam — but I’ll get back to work soon, promise…