THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION...EVER
Yes, it is true. To borrow a page from the Republican playbook of declamations, a vote for Republicans tomorrow is a vote for the beginning of the embalming of the Constitution. Are we better off than we were 2 years ago? No. Four? No. Six? No. Things have only gotten worse in the last six years; real wages have stagnated; the middle class tax burden has increased; the deficit has skyrocketed; corporations have raided employee pension funds; CEO salaries (before the CEOs go to jail) have become stratospheric; the environment has been raped by Gale Norton and the thugs at the EPA; influence peddling, bribery and kickbacks - all involving Republicans - has infected the Congress to such a point that there is now a cancer on it; dissent has been stifled, as has science and thinking; we've been scaremongered, fearmongered and hatemongered by a President who is the most divisive President in history. Billions of dollars have beeen wasted on a "war" for which no plans were made, for corporate welfare, on drug companies who wrote Medicare Part D; on a failed "war on drugs" and on a failed effort to secure our borders. The value of the dollar has fallen. The trade deficit is at an all-time high. We're ranked even worse now than two years ago on measures such as infant mortality, and science and math ability. The poverty rate has increased. The percentage of Americans without health care has increased. Government has drastically cut back on student loan funding while the price of a college education has soared. No Child Left Behind is a joke.
What has our President done? He's bleated, blurted, bungled and barked his way through six years as outsourcing has become a national pastime for his administration; as oil companies, gas companies and lobbyists have been stuffed with so much pork that they've turned porcine; as truth itself is now seen as "spin"; as we are losing the war in Afghanistan, and losing the Cold War aganst Korea and Iran. Of course, we're losing the real war in Iraq. Along with that loss is the loss of billions of dollars in government fraud and waste incurred in the Iraq invasion unaccounted for; the loss of Presidential respect for people who can string a sentence together, who can read and be articulate; the loss of 3000 American lives in Iraq - an amount that has eclipsed the number that died on Sept.11; the loss of miners' lives due to lax safety encouraged and awarded by this administration; the loss of a great city because it is predominantly black; the loss of manufacturing jobs and indeed all service industry jobs except for jobs in the health care industry.
Americans work longer and harder than they did six years ago for less benefits and less job security. Meanwhile, crime rates and the abortion rate, both of which were reduced in the Clinton years, have experienced a cutback in diminution. Our intelligence services have experienced a cutback in diminution of idiocy. Our military has stretched to the breaking point. Our Congress and Supreme Court have flatly obligated their constitutional responsibility to check the Executive Branch, which shits all over them and tells them it tastes good. The other two branches in turn reply, "Please Sir, may I have some more". More college and high school dropouts, more unwanted teenage pregnancies, more teenagers experimenting with drugs, more Presidential secrecy, more executive signing statements, more torture, more Constitutional raping.
I've just touched the tip of the tip of the iceberg here. If one or both Houses does not revert to Democratic control tomorrow, God knows what will become of this country. These people must be stopped. Get out and vote to throw the fucking bums out. To wipe the smirk off Karl Rove's and George Bush's faces. To give Dick Cheney something to really scowl about. To metaphorically bash these people's fucking lizard brains in. Because that's the only way they'll "get it" - and I don't mean ACTUALLY get it - but rather just "be forced into a position where their ability to increase the pain they've inflicted on this country can be reduced".
If you vote for two more years of this, don't you DARE complain to me as your misery grows and your freedoms disappear. Don't complain to me how the President, who believes it is his doing that there hasn't been attack on American soil since 9/11, has decided to punish us for this "victory" by hating us for our freedom. Yes, that's right - the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom. But George Bush does, and don't blame me when his hatred waxes to the point of mouth-foamitude.
Gore Vidal has been around since 1925. He's just written his last book. He is, of course, demonized by the right-wing slime machine because he dares to suggest that America not engage in foreign entanglements. Because he suggests this, he is branded anti-Semitic (anyone who knows about the man's career knows that he is certainly not, but for some reason, people today don't associate anit-Semitism with hatred of Jews but rather only with failure to be totally, thoroughly and mindlessly "pro-Israel", whatever that means). How typical of a hypocritical culture that enjoys not thinking and non-thinking.
Gore has some words about what is now today's election. While he tends to, as an English teacher once told me I did, "get caught up in rhetoric", his words are stark, solemn, serious and true:
"We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime—which does not quite extend back to that of Abraham Lincoln, but it’s pretty close. There’ll be nothing more important in the voting line that one can foresee that will come our way while any of us is still hobbling around. This will determine whether we regain the republic which we have lost over the last five years.
The coup d’etat was so rapid that even I, who am ready for such things ... I thought, these people are going to make a grab for it. But I thought, my heavens, there’s still the courts.... Even a shameless Supreme Court is not going to back up the loss of habeas corpus....
So, my fellow countrymen, as I sit here, not yet at Gettysburg, I have a notion that this is the most important vote that you’ll probably ever cast. Because should this gang of thugs continue in the two houses of Congress, there isn’t any chance of getting the Constitution back....
This is the last chance, really, by getting some new chairpersons to head committees in the House ... to have a clean sweep, which, in normal times, if we’d ever enjoyed them, would have happened by now. Now it has got to happen, or welcome to the Third Reich".
*********************************************************************************
The Third Reich was as much a way of "governing" as it was a system that operationalized who should be exterminated. Bush is not Hitler. But. Read about what fascism is - truly is. We're creeping closer to a fascist state every day, and as we do so, the terrorists ARE winning. The notion that we can't fight the terrorists AND maintain our civil liberties is a false choice. There are so many false choices thrown out by this pustule of a Congress. But today is our chance to make the right choice: for the love of God, for the love of America, for the love of ourselves, throw the fucking bums out!
What has our President done? He's bleated, blurted, bungled and barked his way through six years as outsourcing has become a national pastime for his administration; as oil companies, gas companies and lobbyists have been stuffed with so much pork that they've turned porcine; as truth itself is now seen as "spin"; as we are losing the war in Afghanistan, and losing the Cold War aganst Korea and Iran. Of course, we're losing the real war in Iraq. Along with that loss is the loss of billions of dollars in government fraud and waste incurred in the Iraq invasion unaccounted for; the loss of Presidential respect for people who can string a sentence together, who can read and be articulate; the loss of 3000 American lives in Iraq - an amount that has eclipsed the number that died on Sept.11; the loss of miners' lives due to lax safety encouraged and awarded by this administration; the loss of a great city because it is predominantly black; the loss of manufacturing jobs and indeed all service industry jobs except for jobs in the health care industry.
Americans work longer and harder than they did six years ago for less benefits and less job security. Meanwhile, crime rates and the abortion rate, both of which were reduced in the Clinton years, have experienced a cutback in diminution. Our intelligence services have experienced a cutback in diminution of idiocy. Our military has stretched to the breaking point. Our Congress and Supreme Court have flatly obligated their constitutional responsibility to check the Executive Branch, which shits all over them and tells them it tastes good. The other two branches in turn reply, "Please Sir, may I have some more". More college and high school dropouts, more unwanted teenage pregnancies, more teenagers experimenting with drugs, more Presidential secrecy, more executive signing statements, more torture, more Constitutional raping.
I've just touched the tip of the tip of the iceberg here. If one or both Houses does not revert to Democratic control tomorrow, God knows what will become of this country. These people must be stopped. Get out and vote to throw the fucking bums out. To wipe the smirk off Karl Rove's and George Bush's faces. To give Dick Cheney something to really scowl about. To metaphorically bash these people's fucking lizard brains in. Because that's the only way they'll "get it" - and I don't mean ACTUALLY get it - but rather just "be forced into a position where their ability to increase the pain they've inflicted on this country can be reduced".
If you vote for two more years of this, don't you DARE complain to me as your misery grows and your freedoms disappear. Don't complain to me how the President, who believes it is his doing that there hasn't been attack on American soil since 9/11, has decided to punish us for this "victory" by hating us for our freedom. Yes, that's right - the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom. But George Bush does, and don't blame me when his hatred waxes to the point of mouth-foamitude.
Gore Vidal has been around since 1925. He's just written his last book. He is, of course, demonized by the right-wing slime machine because he dares to suggest that America not engage in foreign entanglements. Because he suggests this, he is branded anti-Semitic (anyone who knows about the man's career knows that he is certainly not, but for some reason, people today don't associate anit-Semitism with hatred of Jews but rather only with failure to be totally, thoroughly and mindlessly "pro-Israel", whatever that means). How typical of a hypocritical culture that enjoys not thinking and non-thinking.
Gore has some words about what is now today's election. While he tends to, as an English teacher once told me I did, "get caught up in rhetoric", his words are stark, solemn, serious and true:
"We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime—which does not quite extend back to that of Abraham Lincoln, but it’s pretty close. There’ll be nothing more important in the voting line that one can foresee that will come our way while any of us is still hobbling around. This will determine whether we regain the republic which we have lost over the last five years.
The coup d’etat was so rapid that even I, who am ready for such things ... I thought, these people are going to make a grab for it. But I thought, my heavens, there’s still the courts.... Even a shameless Supreme Court is not going to back up the loss of habeas corpus....
So, my fellow countrymen, as I sit here, not yet at Gettysburg, I have a notion that this is the most important vote that you’ll probably ever cast. Because should this gang of thugs continue in the two houses of Congress, there isn’t any chance of getting the Constitution back....
This is the last chance, really, by getting some new chairpersons to head committees in the House ... to have a clean sweep, which, in normal times, if we’d ever enjoyed them, would have happened by now. Now it has got to happen, or welcome to the Third Reich".
*********************************************************************************
The Third Reich was as much a way of "governing" as it was a system that operationalized who should be exterminated. Bush is not Hitler. But. Read about what fascism is - truly is. We're creeping closer to a fascist state every day, and as we do so, the terrorists ARE winning. The notion that we can't fight the terrorists AND maintain our civil liberties is a false choice. There are so many false choices thrown out by this pustule of a Congress. But today is our chance to make the right choice: for the love of God, for the love of America, for the love of ourselves, throw the fucking bums out!
posted by EnterCenter at 9:09 PM
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