On being of good cheer

[nancylebov]

When I just posted about an out(r)age, my tone was rather chipper, and there's a reason.

Earlier in the current administration (may its name be wiped out), it seemed as though a lot of my friends were despairing. America was on a vertical slide to dictatorship, though with some question of whether it would be mostly theocratic or mostly plutocratic. The country was in the hands of Rethuglicans, and membership in that party (past some date after which people Should Have Known Better) was proof of incorrigible evil.

After a while, it occurred to me that the country was showing signs of resiliance. Even a very bad administration isn't the whole story about a nation, and a political party is not completely defined by the people in charge of it. America has a lot of both individual and structural resistance to going completely bad. This was perceptible even before the balance in congress tipped.

So, while you can look at that news story and be primarily focused on how disgracefully the current administration is behaving, what I mostly see is that neither the public nor members of the administration's own party is putting up with it.

Comments

[whouseknecht.livejournal.com]

1. In the words of Bugs Bunny: "Remember, Doc: keep smiling!"

2. "stolen the country"? I'm not sure what you mean.

2a. New Orleans - If the Louisiana governor and/or the New Orleans mayor had managed to show even a modest level of competence, the disaster would have been lessened considerably. As it was, their main function was to dither and then blame the Federal government for being racist and incompetent. Nice glass house you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it...

2b. Iraq - perhaps we should not have gone into Iraq; perhaps we should. The problem is that the intelligence game is one which operates with incomplete information. If every Western intelligence agency (not just CIA) says, "Iraq has WMDs!", how can we expect the President to react? I do not buy that he was looking for an excuse, nor that he was "avenging his daddy", nor that it was just to fatten Halliburton, etc.

There is also the problem that, once we did go in, every single f***ing news service (except Fox, but Blue people don't trust them) and Liberal around has been howling "Quagmire! Vietnam! Imperialism!". Yeah, that's it, claim it's doomed from the get-go, present nothing but bad news about, play up the mistakes that must inevitably occur (there is no such thing as a "clean war") and then, when public support starts lagging, jump up and yell, "See! We told you! It's doomed!". We'd all be a lot better off if the press would just report what's happening and stop sifting the information for shit to throw. People on the ground in Iraq have been regularly reporting about the improvements that have occurred, the increasing standard of living, and the optimism of the Iraqi people for their being able to shape their own destiny. Remember when we heard about the purple fingers of the voters in Afghanistan? Amazing how the news just couldn't let a positive moment linger, what with immediately reporting about people being murdered when they went to vote, and people being assaulted after they did. How about the fact that these things didn't stop the people from voting?!?

3. Plutocracy? What about it? You sound as if you think this is a Conservative or Republican tic; it's not. If you haven't noticed, it's been demonstrated that the majority of contributions to Republicans come from small, individual contributors offering less than $100 each, whereas the Democrats receive the bulk of their funds from large organizations and the wealthy. Sounds like them that has want the Democrats in power to so they can keep on getting.

GWB wants to turn the country into Mexico? In what way? I find his policy on illegal immigration to be contemptuous, along with his apparent pandering to the President of Mexico who's presently stumping the country to convince us to let more of his poor, unfortunate people come here against the law. Hm... Okay, maybe I can see that one.

4. All I've heard from and about Obama is that he talks about Hope™ and Change© without specifying much about what he means. Hope? Okay, Blue people "hope" that a Democrat will be elected president. Change? Having a Democrat as president seems to be the major "change" he's offering. How about some specific policy suggestions? How about an Iraq policy that doesn't amount to "We're running like hell and the Iraqis can go f**k themselves!"?

I really wanted to be able to vote for Fred Thompson. He is an actual Federalist: the least government is the best, the rights guaranteed in the Constitution should be upheld, and the Federal government should be as small as possible so the States can get on with running their own business. Alas, he was too late out of the gate, and never caught on with the Republican base. I hope he is well enough and determined enough to try again in 4 years. He'd have my vote in a heartbeat.