Democratic Wimps To Let Ashcroft Slide
1-27-01
Hi, I'm mejeffdorchen, and this is the Real New Millenium's Moment of Truth, the one moment in electromagnetic broadcasting that pokes the complacent commissars of capitalism in the eye with a sharp stick.
It looks like Ashcroft is gonna be confirmed. This guy has to be one of the most rabid, fanatical bigots this side of the Taliban. He seems to have utter contempt for anyone who isn't white, heterosexual, male, racist, and pulling in at least fifty grand a year. And it's not so much that he has any kind of principled objections to queers and women and non-white people and poor people and anyone to the left of Rameses the 2nd. It's not like he's got some criteria for his hatred, he's just a hater. His political career is an exploration of the profitability of hatred. I'm not even gonna back this up with examples, his record speaks for itself. He's positioned himself in the party of haters, the haters' party, for strategic reasons. He likes to hate, and he's found a place where exploring and exercising and developing and articulating his hate is considered a worthy endeavor. Effective hating is rewarded in his world. He doesn't give a rat's ass if a fetus is a person or not, if abortion is murder, what God wants. You could gut a six-year-old boy in front of him and if he couldn't figure out what it had to do with his career he wouldn't even have a feeling about it. He doesn't think homosexuality is an abomination. He's undoubtedly imagined, when his thoughts have wandered, the sensation of the silky, oiled head of an erect penis pressing gently against his lips, with a kind of disinterested, lackadaisical fascination. He's no crusader. To him Jesus and Satan are like Santa Claus and the Boogie Man. Just fairytales the childish Christian Right believes in, and which he pretends to believe in too, so as not to startle them into anything resembling critical awareness. No, John Ashcroft doesn't oppose things because he thinks they're wrong or evil. He just knows how to hate and has come to inhabit a machine, the Republican Party, that rewards enthusiastic and strategically employed hating. Hatred is his constituency, his audience, his customer base, his bread-and-butter.
So how can the Democrats, who are certainly not the party of hate, allow his confirmation without a filibuster, with barely a whimper of tangible resistance? How. Simple. They're pussies. They're lame, they're weak, they're cowed, they're stupid, they're players, they're triangulators, they're Dick Morris hirers. They're feeble. They're shrunken. They're spineless.
Yes, indeed. There are certainly differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. Ralph Nader was wrong in saying otherwise. Republicans will try to appoint an anti-abortion attorney general. Democrats won't do that. Instead they'll just float the idea of banning certain late-term abortions. See if it'll get them a few more votes, a few more points in the polls. They don't want to hate their way into power. They want to slip into power unnoticed, as if it were embarrassing to take a stand on anything that polls don't show at least fifty percent of Americans agreeing on. They're embarrassed to take a stand on anything at all.
And this is how an adult human being, supposedly with an entire working brain in his head, could go into a political debate determined to appear to agree with everything his opponent says. A debate. Does anyone remember what a debate is? I mean, even a presidential debate, irrespective of its cartoonish uselessness in elucidating the logical flow of salient argument, is still supposed to be a forum for attacking a position with some kind of rhetoric, however empty. But to go into a debate and feel obliged to begin each supposed rebuttal with the words, "Well, once again, I think we actually agree on this." It's like Alice in Wonderland. Al Gore actually said to himself, well the polls show that Americans are buying this uniter-not-a-divider stuff from Bush, so I'm gonna go into tomorrow's debate, and not sigh in impatience with my opponent's slightly-distorted statements. I'm gonna go into tomorrow's debate and AGREE WITH EVERYTHING MY OPPONENT SAYS. That's Alice in Wonderland. That's down the rabbit hole. Al Gore IS the rabbit hole.
And that's why he lost the election. No spine, no guts, no brain, no heart, no courage. I don't think we should stand for it anymore. And I think most people agree, and the ones who did vote for Gore voted out of fear of a Bush presidency. Well, y'know what? We can survive a Bush presidency. And you can say that because I'm a white male that that's easy for me to say. Well, eat me. I have attachments of love and community that were brutalized during the Reagan/Bush years, and ways I'm vulnerable that you don't know anything about, so BITE ME! We're not gonna get anywhere allowing the Democrats to hold us hostage with fear. If we don't demand more we're not gonna get it! Cuz it's not better to have Clinton sign off on NAFTA than to have Bush do it. It's not better to have Clinton bomb Afghanistan and Sudan instead of having Reagan do it. It's not better to have Clinton sign away welfare than to have had Bush do it.
DON'T VOTE FOR SOMEONE WHO ISN'T GONNA DO WHAT YOU WANT! OUR RIGHTS ARE DETERIORATING AS WE SPEAK. We can fight and get these rights back. But giving our okay to a Democratic party that doesn't have the guts God gave a butterfish isn't gonna reduce the insanely accelerating incarceration rate of black men that 8 years of enlightened obsequiousness, however stylish, hasn't done a damn thing to impede. GOD DAMMIT! You cannot vote for Dick Morris and Indonesian brutality and Nigerian helicopters mowing down villagers for an oil company and the free market vampirism on the throat of the communal human! Listen, US aid isn't the only source of condoms in India, okay? Their community health initiatives, including reproductive health, rely very little on US aid, and to think that voting for Gore would've made any difference in the health of the developing world – as if US federal dollars were zooming around the developing world curing famine. Famine and disease in the developing world is given a much greater boost by the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the oppression supported by US policy under Reagan Bush Clinton Bush than could ever be counteracted by throwing pocket change and a few condoms at the poor. And if you deny that, then YOU'RE deluding yourself, you're a coward, because you not only won't take a stand but can't even confront your own weakness and cowardice and the lack of efficacy of your so-called moderate stance. You're a SUCKER!
Hey, I don't think it's funny that we're going into four years of possibly gruesome rightwing debauchery. You think I'm gonna enjoy that? Bite me. And I know that a Bush administration is gonna pull off at least a couple really sickening successes. And I'll bet there'll be plenty of Democrats who, in their hearts, will oppose those sickening policies. But until a Democratic candidate for president SAYS he's against sickening policies, until one SAYS and CONVINCES ME he's gonna oppose his opposition, I'm not gonna vote for one. I'm not gonna vote for someone who goes into a debate with a yahoo bonehead drunk driver who got handed political office through a dynasty of perversion, I'm not gonna vote for someone who goes into a debate with a nitwit determined to agree with him. Because I don't agree. And I'm not voting for these spineless suckers anymore, no matter what kind of Supreme Court they threaten me with. And if you do, you're part of the problem!
I'm mejeffdorchen, and this has been The Moment of Truth.
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