Why go on?
By Capt. Fogg
There's really no point, is there? I mean, I've been protesting and griping and occasionally exulting about things for over 50 years and although it sometimes seems I've been on the right side, sometimes on the winning side, the wins have been so slow to grow into anything and the losers so able to readjust their stories to define the losses as wins that perhaps it doesn't matter. Even angels have to fear the sticky epithets falling on the guilty and the innocent, fear to tread on the right and the wrong because right and wrong can't be discerned through the fog of politics of any denomination. Descriptions mean nothing when our language, our history, our morals are written in water and change with the tide. We are not saved by works, but damned at random.
I don't believe in protests any more. I don't believe in elections. I don't believe in the public's ability to pay attention, to be objective, rational or enlightened enough to do anything but make noise and make it all worse. If we actually feel we've been allowed anything like good government, it's often really that we've been thrown a bone to distract us from seeing that the chuck wagon has rolled off with dinner. Take the amazing fact that Congress passed a budget rather than shutting down the country they pretend to love. Reading it you may feel like the patient who learns his illness is gone, but there's a disturbing spot on his lungs. The spot, the shadow, the tumor, the poison pills, are riders you won't hear about, unless the Fox decides they can blame them on Obama.
And of course the president will have to support it else we hear more of the chorus of "he's a tyrant, an emperor ignoring the will of the people" even though there can't be a whole lot of "the people" who approve of allowing a huge increase in the amount of money one can contribute to the Republican Party (up to three million for a married couple) and of allowing a return to the reckless bank chicanery with exotic derivatives that caused the recent recession. After all that protest and demonstration and passion! Should we just admit there's no way to control the course of events that involves democracy?
And of course I've always been told that I hated America, because I opposed a whole shooting gallery of things, like the war in Vietnam or segregation or torture or the end of probable cause or forfeitures without due process. I hated America, it's said, for warning that paying for our most expensive and lengthy war with tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't work. I hated America for making a fuss about My Lai 4, for the abomination of HUAC. I hated it for not hating enough.
Perhaps now, with the voice of evil, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claiming that the only reason we finally admit to illegal and immoral practices like torture, is that Obama wants you to think America isn't awesome, with the ability of war criminals to define their crimes away, perhaps now I can decide that, yes, I really do hate this evil empire. This abomination of a country that dares screech about FREEDOM but won't let you leave, won't let you live abroad and wants to make you pay U.S. taxes even if you're a foreign national and don't live in the U.S. -- unless you're a corporation of course. I have to oppose it. I can't do otherwise.
No, the center isn't holding.
Yes, I'm a fool for protesting, for blogging, for hoping. I can't change minds or anything else and even if I did, our country is a runaway train anyway because people do not vote, corporations do. It's a runaway train because no one can do anything without the permission of the ruling party. Even old John McCain who lost an election because he had to pretend his masters weren't evil, because he had to run with that Alaskan millstone around his neck must hate America for trying so eloquently to hold it to a moral standard higher than the Spanish Inquisition. It brought tears to my eyes. Misery makes strange bedfellows indeed.
Are there enough of us to rebel, to force the money grabbers, the tyrants out of the government? Of course not, and not only because only the worst of us vote. We can't unite because we truly are a small-minded, self-absorbed, uncompromising, and gullible group of fractious fools, and because it's too late anyway and it's all our own fault. The enemy is us. It always has been.
(Cross-posted to Human Voices.)
There's really no point, is there? I mean, I've been protesting and griping and occasionally exulting about things for over 50 years and although it sometimes seems I've been on the right side, sometimes on the winning side, the wins have been so slow to grow into anything and the losers so able to readjust their stories to define the losses as wins that perhaps it doesn't matter. Even angels have to fear the sticky epithets falling on the guilty and the innocent, fear to tread on the right and the wrong because right and wrong can't be discerned through the fog of politics of any denomination. Descriptions mean nothing when our language, our history, our morals are written in water and change with the tide. We are not saved by works, but damned at random.
I don't believe in protests any more. I don't believe in elections. I don't believe in the public's ability to pay attention, to be objective, rational or enlightened enough to do anything but make noise and make it all worse. If we actually feel we've been allowed anything like good government, it's often really that we've been thrown a bone to distract us from seeing that the chuck wagon has rolled off with dinner. Take the amazing fact that Congress passed a budget rather than shutting down the country they pretend to love. Reading it you may feel like the patient who learns his illness is gone, but there's a disturbing spot on his lungs. The spot, the shadow, the tumor, the poison pills, are riders you won't hear about, unless the Fox decides they can blame them on Obama.
And of course the president will have to support it else we hear more of the chorus of "he's a tyrant, an emperor ignoring the will of the people" even though there can't be a whole lot of "the people" who approve of allowing a huge increase in the amount of money one can contribute to the Republican Party (up to three million for a married couple) and of allowing a return to the reckless bank chicanery with exotic derivatives that caused the recent recession. After all that protest and demonstration and passion! Should we just admit there's no way to control the course of events that involves democracy?
And of course I've always been told that I hated America, because I opposed a whole shooting gallery of things, like the war in Vietnam or segregation or torture or the end of probable cause or forfeitures without due process. I hated America, it's said, for warning that paying for our most expensive and lengthy war with tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't work. I hated America for making a fuss about My Lai 4, for the abomination of HUAC. I hated it for not hating enough.
Perhaps now, with the voice of evil, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claiming that the only reason we finally admit to illegal and immoral practices like torture, is that Obama wants you to think America isn't awesome, with the ability of war criminals to define their crimes away, perhaps now I can decide that, yes, I really do hate this evil empire. This abomination of a country that dares screech about FREEDOM but won't let you leave, won't let you live abroad and wants to make you pay U.S. taxes even if you're a foreign national and don't live in the U.S. -- unless you're a corporation of course. I have to oppose it. I can't do otherwise.
No, the center isn't holding.
Yes, I'm a fool for protesting, for blogging, for hoping. I can't change minds or anything else and even if I did, our country is a runaway train anyway because people do not vote, corporations do. It's a runaway train because no one can do anything without the permission of the ruling party. Even old John McCain who lost an election because he had to pretend his masters weren't evil, because he had to run with that Alaskan millstone around his neck must hate America for trying so eloquently to hold it to a moral standard higher than the Spanish Inquisition. It brought tears to my eyes. Misery makes strange bedfellows indeed.
Are there enough of us to rebel, to force the money grabbers, the tyrants out of the government? Of course not, and not only because only the worst of us vote. We can't unite because we truly are a small-minded, self-absorbed, uncompromising, and gullible group of fractious fools, and because it's too late anyway and it's all our own fault. The enemy is us. It always has been.
(Cross-posted to Human Voices.)
Labels: Barack Obama, democracy, Fox News
posted by Capt. Fogg at
11:26 AM
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4 comments
