“As good government is an empire of laws, how shall your laws be made? In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good.” – John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776
How’s that working out?
And please don’t get me started on John Adams.
Hello? How many times must I repeat myself?
http://americanhistory.about.com/cs/johnadams/g/alienacts.htm
Which really makes me think: FUBAR
Dear God, deliver me from evil.
It all has an endless quality, does it not?
Yes and no. There IS an end. However it all does have that endless quality, as you say—unless you’re highly pissed, as I have become.
Yet, I remain calm.
Yes! I never thought about that. Good ol Ben was the original blogger.
perusing the federalist papers, eh. good.
these old guys had the right idea, but as franklin summed it up after the constitution convention in 1787:
we do seem to be having some problems with the latter part.
l think taking the weekend off, getting away from politics and trying to find my Qi again, is in order.
l’m tired.
later
dada, don’t you mean those OLD, dead, white guys who wrote all the history books, had an idea? Dead presidents had an idea?
Me? I was praying for Mt. Rushmore to fall on the Queen of England and the president of the United States.
Remember?
It didn’t happen—crap and dammit!—But it will.
S2, Is that another way of saying not to try to resolve anything?
I take it to mean that we need to be wary of people that peddle bad ideas as “solutions” by way of ignorance or for reasons of deception.
Yes indeed. Sorry. I’m in an argumentative mood. I’m sorry.
No I’m sorry! Or else!
(how’s that?)
S2, with this you have captured me:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-William Butler Yeats
Yet, these words confuse me.
I’ve called both my Senators to express outrage. And I’ve written to Obama, whom I supported, at both the Senate and at the campaign. I tried calling him at the Senate but his mailbox was full.
I wrote the most impassioned words I could. Because this is about beyond belief. How does an opposition party handle blatant law breaking by an administration and his corporate cronies? a) Reasonable investigation and prosecution/impeachment where warranted? or b) By granting retroactive immunity for the corporation and expanding the unconstitutional powers of the chief executive to more easily do wrong in the future? Doesn’t seem that hard to figure out what would be right, if you weren’t either in the pocket of some interest or otherwise confused because of some sense of political necessity for taking the wrong position.
And I’ve only got about 0.5% faith that the present Supreme Court will step in and restore the Fourth Amendment. Especially with their on the records opinions giving deference to acts of Congress in the War on Terror. This is wholly politics of right. Sick. It is wholly not Change we Can Believe In.
I keep getting sucked in by this damn party. Donate. Then crap like this. I truly hope Obama redeems himself on Monday after he is overwhelmed by his supporters telling him we were listening when he made the speeches about restoring the Constitution and not bowing down to the use of fear by the radical right’s “War on Terror” bullshit.
At this point — I want a refund.
Boston Joe,
What happens when we become tired of the outrage?
We’ve been at it for a while and have plenty of experience with disappointment.
Shut out the news for a day, or two or five, but don’t give in. If we stop fighting we’ll be seriously fucked…
I have no satisfactory answer to this question.
For me, I keep finding myself in the same position. Like I’m a character in the movie “Groundhog Day” or something.
I try to believe that the opposition party will do right (as I see it). At least fight for the right. I get a little supportive. Maybe enough to contribute or work or vote. Then by experience, the party’s actions (or those in the party who I might have come to believe) show that they will not stand for thing I hold valuable. Human rights over money. Principle over politics. Then I sour completely and thing something has to change or give. A revolution. A new political system. At very least a new party of the people. Start talking and thinking about those ideas for a while. See that you can’t get three people to agree on anything. Find that the current system is way too entrenched to ever change. Try to bury head in sand for a while. Ignore it. Then get suckered in again by another candidate from the opposition party (or now they are the party of power almost). Then rinse and repeat.
I so surrender. This thing we got. It just doesn’t feel like a responsive democracy to me.
Worst part of it has been experiencing it over and over here at the pond, with somewhat like minded people.
Love the BooMan for his constant defense of being loyal to the party and that this is how change must come. But over and over and over. I just don’t think it will ever come.
Humanity. Constant struggle. Anytime we have some individuals with authority over other individuals. Protecting freedom and liberty, or fostering it. I just don’t see it ever happening. Really. Maybe in a historical sense, we’ve gotten better as a species/society with it. But then again, at least in less technological times, with the oppressive systems of authority that ruled, at least you the peasant did not face total information awareness. If I can’t go to the library and not think, “Hey, someone could send a letter and secretly get a list of books I read.” Or the same for what I browse at Powell’s online. Or whatever. Your own mind starts to become a prison.
I’m going off the grid. Preparing for disaster that may never come. Just to opt out. I don’t want to be a conscripted citizen for the country that has declared a “War on Terror” anymore. Not when I’m virtually powerless to stop my leadership. Fucking powerless.
Good question though. Even if it may have been rhetorical. I haven’t got the foggiest about how to answer it.
BJ-
Ever consider that just maybe it’s people like me that make it safe for people like you to tune in and out?
I’m not trying to lecture or pump myself up. But I think it’s something for you to consider.
Just what do you gain from the people that fight rain or shine? And how perilous would your comfort become if they abandoned their posts the moment their jobs felt uncomfortable or pointless?
Here’s another thing to consider: this isn’t an isolated event. Look at when the rogues’ gallery was elected: Pelosi (1987), Hoyer (1981), Rockefeller (1985), Reid (1987), Feinstein (1992)…
What we’re dealing with here is the tail end of an era of profound apathy towards politics and laziness in political thought. An era where “political” was a dirty word, where being involved in the process was shameful, where corruption was unquestioned, a matter of course. The era of Reagan, of Bush I, of Clinton. These representatives, I think, reflect the era that created them. They represent the powerful, the well-connected, and the shady because no-one else could be arsed to be involved.
How can we fix this? Challenge every seat. Dethrone the culture of complacency that rules Congress. Make it so re-election isn’t something taken for granted, but something that has to be fought for tooth and nail every single time.
I do not diminish your writing and effort. I do wonder sometimes whether you will ever reach a point of seeing that the party you are trying to save is an extension of much of what both you and I would equally agree is not in the best interests of humanity.
The reason I ask that question of you (you are an icon of not giving up on the system to me) is because I wonder — when everyone finally gives up, maybe that is where the only real change happens.
Two scenarios. People — all of us — finally just walk away from the Democratic Party en masse. We gel around a new thing for the left. Which is principled. We suffer the bad to re-establish a party. Because our left us a long time ago and isn’t coming back.
Or, alternatively, we all just walk away. From it all. Start gardening our plots of land. Withdraw from the system that makes us sick. Build new systems organically that meet our needs and no more. Just not give a crap about whatever they do. Don’t fight there wars. Don’t fund their police state. Don’t participate (except maybe enough to stay out of jail). General strike. 🙂
I dunno. You are an idealist, I guess. I am an idealist, in some ways. I just can’t stomach it. While everything may be politics, I sure am coming to loathe politics.
You keep on saving the world. I’ll be back for regular updates and expressions of shock.
Seriously though, what is your fight doing? I dunno. Things go well. Your candidate. Your party wins. And they still capitulate to this crazy baloney. It never ends. I got stuck talking to a freak who was lecturing me about Catholicism and the myth of global warming the other day for an hour. And all I could think was, man, if the entire country is made up of approximately half a population who base everything on a faith in Jesus and/or a denial of basic science — there is no winning on any issue. No rational decision making process or dialogue. We’re just screwed man. Fight on. Blog on. But I swear we’re screwed.
I’ve got one word of hope though. Think of it like when George’s old friend told him to take out all his money and invest it in “plastics.”
Permaculture.
Peace.
BJ-
too many of the idealists from the 60’s either dropped out and did the commune thing or signed up and did the yuppie thing. Not enough of them kept up the fight.
Do you understand?
Sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown…
But so far, I’m still out there going for the kick. The only bright spot for me was I didn’t see my blue dog congresscritter (Hill) on the Aye list. Could it be?
Teach your children well. If we fail, then the next and the next generations must carry on the torch of freedom, liberty, honesty and fairness.
The problem here is that Bush and his cronies found a great vulnerability in the system and exploited the hell out of it. Their recipe for constitutional violation:
On a tangential topic, the American deification of the President continues to confuse me. We saw this back with Nixon, too – a considerable portion of the country believed that the President could literally do no wrong, simply because he was the President. Seriously, what the hell? I thought the entire point of the American system was to not have a monarch!
Yes but…
But fixing this is going to require more than a good legislature, it’s probably going to require some interesting restructuring to patch the exploit. Ultimately this bill doesn’t matter because there’s a serious flaw in the system.
Please don’t get me started on the so-called system.
I am sick and tired of it.
Look at why this was passed. For Bush? Hell no, he’s got a 25% approval rating and his sorry ass in on its way out. For the telecoms? Well, maybe. Then there’s the story circulating that the new version will also cover the asses of Pelosi and others who knew the spying was going on but did nothing to stop it.
But benefits the most? It’s like you people are walking around with blindfolds. Everyone is incapable of seeing what’s in front of them. The intelligence community wants to legalize its spying. Pretty simple.
And here’s the simple explanation for why half of the Dems in the House voted for it. Because the intelligence community has the power. It’s simple to blame Obama, or Dems generally. But quite simply our country has been directed from within the halls of Langley for decades. Until you can admit to yourself what’s in front of you you will never be able to even confront your real enemy, much less defeat them.
If you can’t figure it out then it really is hopeless. Go read Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.”
Your sentiments resonate with me… and I’ve read that story tons of times. Other than maybe the truthiness of “common decency”, I see no connection. Please ‘splain!
Not sure what you are asking, or if you are even asking me to explain. But if you are, then here goes:
Here is a bill which legalizes illegal spying on American citizens. We know that illegal spying under Bush was going on before 9/11. 9/11 was an excuse for illegal spying on Americans prior to that date. But the Echelon Program existed back in the Clinton Administration. Do you think that there was no illegal spying back then? Why? And we know there were plenty of illegal spying programs going on in the eighties (my union was a target of one of them). And from the Pike and Church Committees we know that the CIA and FBI were illegally spying on Americans in the years and decades before then. We know that J. Edgar Hoover was spying on Americans long before that. Read Curt Gentry’s book on Hoover to see the kinds of files he kept on politicians. Common wisdom was that most people in DC hated Hoover but no one had the political power to get rid of him until he dropped dead during Nixon’s terms (and some believe Nixon didn’t just wait until he died).
So was all this illegal spying done for our current President, the son of a CIA Director? Or that former CIA Director when he was President? Was the spying done for, say, Jimmy Carter with the same equaminity as the spying was done for, say, Reagan? Was information always shared with each President?
What I am saying is that the intelligence community, which overlays the CIA, NSA, military intelligence et al, is a political power in the U.S. and has been for decades. To ignore their institutional power is to ignore a part of the equation that is power in Washington. To hold Obama to blame and not even acknowledge the intelligence community is intentionally blind. Are people afraid of being called “conspiracy theorists”? Why is Putin running Russia? Because he’s a swell guy or a good politician?
The myth is that these intelligence agencies are under the control of the President, part of the Executive Branch, but it’s never worked that way. Were Linda Tripp (top secret military intelligence) and Lucianne Goldberg (history of CIA involvement going back to spying on McGovern with CIA cover in 1972) doing the work of President Clinton when they were going through Lewinsky’s closet looking for white stains on blue dresses? Were the intelligence agencies working gungho for Carter when all that intelligence funny business went on back in 1979-80? If you look at the roster of public servants who testified against Nixon during Watergate and the reporter who kept talking to “Deep Throat” take a guess of what they all had in common. I won’t bother going back to JFK.
If you think that the CIA/NSA/FBI are all subservient to the President and are neutral and not involved in politics, think again. Think about the CIA-tainted people who were publicly working for H. Clinton or attacking Obama during the campaign. Think about Bob Barr’s employment history.
The intelligence community wants to accumulate power. Do any of you really think that they haven’t discretely “lobbied” for this bill in their own way?
Bob, while I appreciate you elaborating the point – this is the part I got! However, I didn’t get what this has to do with the Flannery O’Connor story, which I’ve read many times.
paine: “It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”
we will fuck them like they have never been fucked before.
parsons:
TO TRAMPS,
The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable.
A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.
Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars’ worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own any part in? Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?
Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him close up. Who cared for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you bid them a loving “God bless you” and turned upon the tramper’s road to seek employment elsewhere? I say, who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to be execrated and denounced as a “worthless tramp and a vagrant” by that very class who had been engaged all those years in robbing you and yours. Then can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” which must be changed?
Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you have no employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the winter’s blast sweeps down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice, hearken not to the voice of the hyprocrite who will tell you that it was ordained of God that “the poor ye have always”; or to the arrogant robber who will say to you that you “drank up all your wages last summer when you had work, and that is the reason why you have nothing now, and the workhouse or the workyard is too good for you; that you ought to be shot.” And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner. So hearken not to them, but list! Next winter when the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in your seedy garments, when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your worn-out shoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when misery has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and existence a mockery, when you have walked the streets by day and slept upon hard boards by night, and at last determine by your own hand to take your life, – for you would rather go out into utter nothingness than to longer endure an existence which has become such a burden – so, perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the lake rather than longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your simple existence. Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a like fate? The waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but stroll you down the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate windows into their voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very identical robbers who have despoiled you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here! Awaken them from their wanton sport at your expense! Send forth your petition and let them read it by the red glare of destruction. Thus when you cast “one long lingering look behind” you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting from the cannon’s mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword. You need no organization when you make up your mind to present this kind of petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land.
Learn the use of explosives!
Dedicated to the tramps by Lucy E. Parsons.
So, does that answer any questions about why the US was the fall guy and invaded Iraq? We did the dirty work, and look at the dividends. Who gets the money? Who gets impoverished?
This is a Capitalist Nation, not a Democratic Nation. That is all there is to it. Most people here are pretty much consumers, materialists, debt slaves — myself included. The enemy is within, All these Jeffersonian platitudes, this Paine and Adams said this bs — who cares at this point. Obama is a liar. Pelosi is a liar. The media lies. Churches lie. All our ideals are bullshit. A gazillion dollars a day in Iraq to ensure a global market share for the capitalists we vote into office and the lobbbyists who paint their wagon green. For the capitalists and their political cronies we’re all suppose to send money to move on dot org to run an ad against them. At what point do we all just puke and die.
Just pay your frickin’ credit card and can it already. Die in debt live in debt debt makes the world go round look over there another new toy another holiday is around the corner — make sure you get a gift. Christmas is only 6 months away — start spending. Did you buy anything today from the capitalists — besides gas? If not, get on out there. Wal-Mart is open 24 hours. Cheap ass bs for your next garage sale. Entrepreneurial city, baby.
Go america Kill torture spy attack defenseless nations allow the rich to break the law elect a change agent ain’t this a change agent blog a bigger bunch of shit there is not send money to defeat steny progressives need your dough repubs are corrupt laws are made with guns complacency fear of fear by the few and the rich for the few and the rich the cows are being milked and i need another drink ugh ach ich ein berliner …