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SteelWngsBRONZE Member
member
169 posts
Location: Malden, Massachusetts United States, USA


Posted:
Oh Boy More Fear And Gluttony

Darkness falls across the land, flowers wilt, the GOP takes full, and frightening, control
By Mark Morford

Feel that numbness? That strange slightly chilling shift deep in the heart, like a cold wind across the blood, an ice pick straight to the third eye, fingernails across the karmic chalkboard?

Fear not -- it's just the dark storm clouds of sadness and savage spiritual pain that just settled in over the collective soul of the country and indeed much of the world recently, as the Republican Party snatched total control of the American government and really honestly promised to further its agenda of fear and war and intolerance and bad sex and more petroleum products forevermore.

And the basic upshot being that Congress will now have almost zero struggle or balanced counterargument when the GOP chooses to ram through more generally invidious resolutions and white-power laws.

Laws that further its famously mean-spirited schema of war, oil, corporate cronyism, CEO inbreeding, heartlessness, artlessness, cultural molestation, giddy homophobia and really awful fashion sense.

Let us not also forget anti-choice misogyny, racism, gluttony, support for Big Agribiz and Big Tobacco and a general antipathy toward anyone who makes less than six figures or who really cares about the environment or enjoys true religious freedom or alternative viewpoints or authentic orgasms or honest laughter.

In short, it is an agenda that contains much sneering about anything that doesn't gibe with rich white-bread American doctrines of money and power and the earnest care and nurturing thereof. Yay, Republicans! Suggested GOP slogan for 2004: "More SUVs in more private gated communities now!"

This is the feeling right now, that the nation has been so successfully pummeled with fear and a sense of impending doom by the conservative agenda, so flagrantly blinded by the largely artificial threat of manufactured "evildoers" and contrived foreign demons -- most of whom we ourselves armed and funded and helped bring to power (Hi, Saddam!) -- that it allows a handful more Repubs to slither into power and swing the balance so dangerously to the Right it would make Reagan giggle with glee.

The Democrats failed ugly. They were nothing short of a disgrace. They whimpered and recoiled and had no real selling points, no fiery humanitarian agenda, nothing of true intelligent social value to say, and were in fact a genuine embarrassment to the very appropriately depressed Left. Shame.

Such was their conundrum. They couldn't very well run on an anti-war platform because the Bush/Cheney/Rummy Axis of Evil has made certain the nation is far too terrified, and hence anyone who opposes the war is still considered a heathen pagan witch sodomite bastard leper by much of the gun-totin' vigilante populace.

They couldn't very well run on the miserable economy thing because, well, sure Dubya drove it into the tank and major multibillion-dollar corporate scandals have rocked his administration and layoffs abound and the CEOs are snickering like mad, but we are still at "war," after all. Fear über alles, friends. God bless America.

So the GOP takes over, and all that is light and progressive and good, shudders and sighs. This is the feeling. This is the sentiment. This is the truth.

But I am here tempted to say, it doesn't really matter.

Am tempted to say it's all cyclic anyway, all part of the continuous and ever-numbing pendulum swing of power and control in this very violence-prone nation, same as it ever was and just because they're all shockingly corrupt money-engorged lizards on both sides of the aisle, despite the rare glimpse of actual integrity or plainspoken honesty, that doesn't mean you should worry.

And really, when you step back just a little, in the grand and even not-so-grand scheme of things, it really doesn't make that much difference who runs the nation. The balance always seems to shake out, the people only suffer the party in power for so long, and no matter who is assaulting the national common sense, most people go about their days same as ever, despite skyrocketing unemployment and smog and hate and general sense of dread and fear of guns and evildoers and your swarthy neighbor. And the pendulum swings.

Dems hold majority control for a number of years until taxes soar and the bureaucracy explodes and we get really sick of it and hand it all over to Repubs next election, right until we realize they've screwed it up even worse and have driven the economy into a black hole and have thrust the nation into a dozen covert bloody wars for oil all while further insulting women and gays and minorities and slashing/burning the environment in the name of corporate greed.

And we shake our heads and say screw you crusty old white cigar-chomping country-club snakes, and give majority control back to the quivering Dems, who just look all baffled and stunned and launch a million new mostly useless social programs and raise taxes and get all smug and overconfident and then get blow jobs in the Oval Office and ruin it for everybody.

This is the way it is. This is the way it has always been. I am tempted to say this. I am even tempted to believe it.

But not this time. This time is different. Few people of any subtlety or intelligence really want either party to rule completely, to take full control of both the presidency and Congress, to be given a blank check to, say, launch perpetual wars and drill for negligible amounts of oil in nature preserves and roll back women's rights and install new conservative justices and pass a horrific new $37 billion Homeland Security bill the sole purpose of which is to invent and then destroy perceived enemies of the state, forever and ever, amen.

This then, is why this is an extremely dangerous time. Why the energy has shifted so darkly, why the wind feels so bitter and the gods are shaking their heads and popping the Valium and heading off to the spa.

Neither party should have such power. And the GOP now has far too much. The counterbalance lost its footing. The greedmongers and the power vipers have been loosed like never before in recent history. The center cannot hold.

As noted crusty and ruthless and largely unpleasant former Clinton adviser James Carville observed just after the election, "The American people just don't have a clue as to what's coming."

If you are female, gay, bisexual, atheist, black, immigrant, poor, progressive, intellectual, open minded, open hearted, if you hold alternative views, dress funny, dance, enjoy sex, read seditious literature, believe in peace and funky spirituality and don't particularly care for a sneering angry self-righteous well-armed anti-everything deity, you are about to find out. The hard way. And so is everyone else.

The gods can only shake their heads, and sigh.

Blessings to all,
Peter
When you find yourself in the company of a halfling and an ill-tempered Dragon, remember, you do not have to outrun the Dragon ...you just have to outrun the halfling.


NYCNYC
9,232 posts
Location: NYC, NY, USA


Posted:
Yeah, but my gasoline prices are so LOW!

Well, shall we go?
Yes, let's go.
[They do not move.]


falloutboySILVER Member
remember
433 posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia, Earth, Milky Way, Universe


Posted:
Fear is the kryptonite of the human race. it is our major downfall, and will most likely see our destruction (a bit 'apocalyptic' for 10am, but hey ). It can turn friends into enemies in a blink of an eye, and create hatred in even the most peaceful of minds. unfortunately Bush & Co. seem to have discovered this, and are playing it out for all it's worth.... with no greater purpose than their own self gain.
We fear the unknown, and many people also fear the 'different'. Knowlege is the only proven cure for fear.

Ignorance may be bliss, but for how long???

don't mind me.. i'm just procastinating. :

-As angels debate chance and fate-
i was riding through melbourne on a midget giraffe, things were peachy.


KaliBRONZE Member
member
577 posts
Location: Berlin, Germany


Posted:
Yeah people are saying, "Well on the upside, when the repubs severly f*ck everything up, they'll all be voted out of office."

But why should we have to wait for that and there are no guarantees. As the baby boomers age, the U.S. is getting more and more conservative on a lot of levels and you just don't see the kind of ideology that was present in the 68ers. This generation seems so apathetic, which is really a tragedy because we have so much more information availiable to us than any other previous generation.

Very worried and will now be even more happy to move to Germany for a bit.

Beauty is the conscious sum of all our perversions.-Salvador DaliHope without action is hopeless.


CantusSILVER Member
Tantamount to fatuity
15,966 posts
Location: Down the road, United Kingdom


Posted:
By Gods that was a long post. Have you stolen Pele's typewriter or sumfink?

Meh


LuNcHbOx...(Aka. Nathan)-un-singlemember
536 posts
Location: beneath a cloak of self-torture


Posted:
yeah dude i almost felleded asleep!
but, i do dress funny!
but that is anothern' subject....

-LuNcHbOx, Aka. Nathan...Give a man to fish, and that man knows where to come for more fish...Teach a man to fish and you have just destroyed your market base...


CantusSILVER Member
Tantamount to fatuity
15,966 posts
Location: Down the road, United Kingdom


Posted:
Feel free to detract from any humour inherent in my posts Lunchbox.

Wasn't having a dig (cept a friendly one) at you SteelWngs - although it does look that way now thanks to the young Texan.

Meh


Bender_the_OffenderGOLD Member
still can't believe it's not butter
6,978 posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia


Posted:
Lotsa people take out their frustrations by joining guerilla culture jamming.
The Billboard Liberation Front are my heroes.
Subvert, and have fun!

Non-Https Image Link

Laugh Often, Smile Much, Post lolcats Always


fieryfiendmember
48 posts
Location: California


Posted:
I cant believe the aussies have heard of those guys! I'm not sure if it was their work but last week there was a GM hummer billboard changed to say 'Dummer' in the south bay (california) . I didn't see it but heard the quality was what you might expect from the BLF.

Two wrongs don't make a right but three lefts do



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