This goes out to all those smirking people out there laughing madly as the poor Cassandra-democrats sit in their political hovels announcing the end of the world: stop. I have had enough of your blindness. You stereotype us as drug-smoking hippies in every sentence. You believe that Bush will do nothing but good for this country. You faithfully belief that a government pandering almost entirely to corporate interests will also look out for your own. It is a fucking lie, and I am so sick of hearing it. You know what just got passed in Oregon? A law which requires full compensation to a land-owner when land-use laws interfere with what they want to do with it. If the state does not comply then the law is voided. Do you know what that means? When a company buys a park in your downtown, they can plant a garbage dump there, or just say so and then get paid for it. The state was just bankrupted, all in the name of private interests.
How can you even start to talk about "what a great job Bush is doing with our education?" Have you seen public schools lately? They are such shitholes. Class sizes are only getting bigger, teachers are hardly paid, turn-over is increasing, students spend half their time studying for federally mandated tests that prove nothing more then your ability to take them. In the meantime, tuition rates for universities are steadily increasing, ensuring that fewer and fewer citizens are receiving adequate education. Do you really think that cutting more tax funding for schools and imposing more useless tests are going to save those schools? Hardly. What about health care? A president that has systematically ensured that your personal health is directly associated with your pocketbooks. He pulls apart Social Security, he pulls apart Medicaid and Medicare. He allows prescription costs to skyrocket so foreign-owned companies can profit. There are no benefits here. Bush is not interested in helping out the poor if they are sick. All of his plans for the healthcare system are purely financial, and no one can attest that he is trying to help out the lower-classes here, he never has. This list goes on and on. Bush is not providing security for Americans. He is not stopping terrorists. How could he? America's invasion of Iraq did more to promote anti-American sentiment than any other event in the last twenty years. For every 19 year-old Iraqi they kill another three sign up to defend their nation. Are they going to depopulate the country? What is going on here? What is he doing that is providing security? What, exactly, is his plan? Setting up permanent military installations throughout the Middle East? Supporting Israel as it incenses the entire region with heavy-handed tactics? Spout off propaganda about peace and prosperity while every other country watches Iraq devolve into a 5th world nation? All that the war has done is remind other nations that nuclear weapons are the only real defense against American Hegemony.
Look, I'm not saying that Kerry is some messiah here. What I'm saying is that we have made a mistake, and it is a mistake that we could be paying for in spades. Our deficit is skyrocketing. As Republican party members fill the government our control of it is slacking. They control all three branches of our government, the Executive, the Congressional, and the Legislative. Look at how quickly we invaded another country. How much control did the public have then? The party does not need us. It has billion dollar ad campaigns; it has a thoroughly whipped media.
American voters proved only how unforgivably obtuse we have become as a nation. We focus on rejecting each other's beliefs, our differing moral and ethical values. By allowing such thorough conservative control we have silenced millions. Abortion could easily be overturned. Gay marriage certainly will be. Even if you very much in favor of such horrible things, I very much doubt that you think it is a good idea to silence such a large part of our population, which is exactly what these laws are doing. Foreign communication will be increasingly limited as other nations begin to realize how abhorrent we have become. I mean, we just elected a president who lied to our country and then invaded another on false pretenses. And don't even start with crap about how he didn't know. It's bullshit. Regardless, there is little to do but continue with our lives. We will still go to supermarkets. Iraq will still be fighting. Classes will still be boring. Enjoy.
2 comments:
Your rant(s) are well spoken. What do you suggest should be about these problems? Therein lies more anguish.
Thank you. As to solutions to our problems, I feel there are two types of answers: the idealistic and the realistic. My idealistic solution would involve electing a strong progressive leadership combining both the anti-corporatism of FDR with the humanitarianism of Carter. It would also involve adopting some of the socialist tenets adopted by many other western nations including public health care, subsidized housing, and public ownership of utilities, as well as transitioning into a multi-party government that is so controlled by two groups that are similar in many ways. However, I think that this solution is improbable due to political and practical realities.
With that in mind, I think that the American leftists need to sit down and take a careful reevaluation of their beliefs and their methods of communicating them, much as the conservatives did twenty years ago. I think that there needs to be a realization of the strengths and weaknesses of the Democratic Party, and a reordering of its structure. I think that there needs to be recognition of the minority status of liberals throughout the United States, and a concerted effort to countering that through strong local politics. If the Democratic Party put a tenth of their social and fiscal determination into securing seats in county governments throughout the nation and important state-level liberal issues it could pay off in a big way, both in terms of Democratic political power and liberal progressivism in America. The concept of “think globally, act locally” is not simply limited to tree hugging environmentalists, but activists of all disciplines.
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