Taking a deep breath

Interesting week, last week. Got invited to join the Progressive Blog Alliance, which may not be so progressive after all. Lotta true progressives refuse to join.

Also got invited to join the folks at Net Politik . Now that, frankly, is an undeserved honor, since some of the best progressive political writing on the web happens there. I'm just a duffer, struggling for readership while trying to maintain integrity, grateful for every hit and revisit I get.

Anyway, by mid-week I was overwhelmed again . . . the debate, the awful news out of Iraq, new issues of Harpers and The Nation to read, just a whole deluge of information.

So I thought if I dug into a foxhole for a few days, I could clear my head, get refreshed. Didn't happen. Took a deep breath and got lungs fulla dust and toluene and bullshit and blood and lies and tears. Worse today than last week.

My reflection on the debate is pretty simple: they're both absolutely full of shit, but I have to admit that Kerry seems like less of an asshole than Doubleduh. Doubleduh is really fucking creepy, ain't he? The twit has only two facial expressions, neither of which are human.

I've gotta go with my gut on thisee here . . . I think somethin' very nasty is likely to happen between 11/2 and whatever the hell day it is in January that the prez gets sworn in. BTW, all you fellow travelers who're thinkin' 'bout runnin' for a border if Doubleduh's still around, fergit it. Read the current issue of The Nation . . . nowhere to go.

I'm getting more pessimistic by the minute. Not because of what the neocons are doing, but how little the Left is doing. The major advantage The Doubleduh-Cheney Gang has is that we're bewildered by the incredible mass of chaos and when you come right down to it, I don't think we've (1) learned a damned thing during the past four years or (2) even begun to suffer the consequences of our own half-assed "movement". Why the hell are y'all so shocked?? Where the hell y'all been?? Righteous indignation ain't gettin' us nowhere. Blamin' Bush ain't the point. I still don't hear very many of us calling for the fundamental changes we need. One basic principle I've been taught is that you can't criticize effectively if your don't have an alternative. I've also been taught that if somethin's screwed up and I was involved in it gettin' that way, I gotta clean up my own crap first. We Americans are really a buncha lazy wimps when it comes to politics. Yeah, we wanna vote, maybe organize, maybe have a fund-raisin' party, but we don't want to think and even the Left is convinced that we're "still the best country on Earth."

We're cowards. We're selfish. We are a nation of anti-social brats. We say we want a good, caring society, but we don't want to pay for it. Most of us, given a choice between a new toy and contributing money/time/energy to saving a life, guess what . . .

See what you get for pissin' me off?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Be at peace