Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Apathetic is as Apathetic Does


(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari Goldstein.)

I suppose I should be a gracious loser and express the usual pious platitudes about how great it is to be in a free country, a democracy where every person has one vote. I suppose it's also incumbent on me to respect that democracy, accept last night's brutal results and say, "The people have spoken."

But the people have not spoken.

Most of them don't during your typical midterm, largely because the presidency isn't at stake. Typically, a midterm will bring out anywhere from 30-40% of the vote and last night wasn't much of an exception. The final national numbers aren't in, yet, but I think it would be safe to say that voter turnout last night still didn't get above 45%, if that.

So, no, the people have not spoken. They are the biennial, post-Nixonian Silent Majority.

And these people who'd decided to stay home have nothing to complain about because they forfeited their right to do so by saying home and pissing and moaning about attack ads, dead-catting, mud-slinging and name-calling. At the bottom of all that filth there were still the issues and they didn't dissolve beneath all the muck and mire. The issues, like our unpaid bills and terminal disease, stubbornly remain.

So let's take a look at what we will have come New Year's: With all but 10 House races decided, our only bright spot in the country is that southern New England (RI, CT and MA) made a clean sweep. Add to that Blumenthal's victory over Linda McMahon in the CT Senate race, former liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee winning his Dad's old Governor's seat and Deval Patrick easily winning re-election as Massachusetts' chief executive. We did our part but the same can't be said for the rest of the country.

At this moment, Republicans now have 240 House seats and almost took the majority in the Senate. And, most disheartening, while we lost liberal icons Russ Feingold and Alan Grayson, not one Republican incumbent of any consequence lost their seat in either chamber. Even Lisa Murkowski, as one of 1600 qualified write-in candidates in Alaska, beat Joe Miller by 7 points. Yes, Joe Miller was so repulsive to even right-leaning Alaska, that "One of the 1600 above" was preferable to him.

Meanwhile, we now have psychopaths like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul about to enter the Senate and we were treated to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner weeping before a plexiglass podium like a bi-polar Oompa-Loompa.

Here's an idea: We ought to make an Act of Congress that permanently rescinds your right to vote if you sit out two elections in a row. How one can call oneself an American while refusing to vote yet whining about who gets in, who gets tossed out while accepting federal benefits in a countless variety of ways is loathsome, despicable and ought to be grounds for a recission in citizenship or at least some of its benefits.

And while the will of the people who did vote ought to be respected, since voting is the very heart of a democracy, one must nonetheless marvel at the sheer disconnect, the panic and the absolute fingers-in-the-ears, head-shaking, stubborn ignorance that went with sweeping back into power the Republicans, the very same people who'd gotten us into this mess, the very same party whose entire strategy boils down to, "Less regulations, less taxes and No to everything Obama wants."

And when the inevitable gridlock get us even less reform and protection over the next two years, we're going to take it out on Obama twice as mercilessly as we did last night. And, like the last midterms in '06, voter dissatisfaction had victimized the President's party as if the legislative and executive branches were the one and the same.

Except in '06, we at least had a point. This time around, we didn't. And many of us chose to stay home.

Russ Feingold stood up to Obama and his excesses in Afghanistan and foot-dragging in Iraq. So did Alan Grayson, who also stood up to the evil banks and the Fed. But Russ Feingold and Alan Grayson didn't lose to other men: They lost to ultra right wing corporations too ashamed and cowardly to admit who they were financing. They lost to the US Chamber of Commerce that openly champions hollowing out the American workforce by outsourcing jobs to foreign countries that pay pay them "dues". They lost to the US Supreme Court and their stupendously brazen and pro-corporate decision named, ironically, Citizens United vs the FEC. Consider last night's results a test drive for Citizen's United in 2012.

The citizens of this country have been anything but united since 9/11 and the SCOTUS's decision only proves that even 45% of our citizens united with the common desire to vote is no match for a handful of corporations and their political arm in the Chamber of Commerce.

You have only yourselves to blame and I have nothing but withering contempt for every single last one of you.

You just put back in power a party that is largely if not entirely responsible for everything that is wrong with this country, as if the GOP learned their lessons from their "thumpin'" of four years ago and will finally get things right this time, as if this wasn't the party that also voted for the bailout that allowed executives to resume handing each other billions of our tax dollars as bonuses, the GOP that called you a bum for needing UI extensions because your job was outsourced by them to Asia or Mexico, as if the GOP actually has a plan to help you keep your house after that same party repealed Glass-Steagall (with new Senator-elect Pat Toomey's help) and took away your right to file for bankruptcy.

The same party that started needless and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to no appreciable benefit to either of our three countries and eventually cost us trillions bloating the military-industrial complex, the party that wanted to deport over 11,000,000 hard-working brown people, wanted to spy on you without FISA court warrants, that strive to make our children more ignorant in schools, to make abortion illegal even in cases of incest or rape, the same party that is bound and determined to remove the very last sinew of regulation on any industry even as they're polluting our ecosystem and killing us. The same party that demonized African Americans after Katrina, wounded veterans when their neglect was revealed and the newly unemployed and homeless when they understandably looked to our government for help.

These are the people to whom you've handed back the keys to our seat of government. We took a half a step in the right direction away from the Bush-era fireball of failure and are now about to take ten steps back into the Low Dark Ages. They have learned nothing, never will learn anything and months ago were already vowing to impeach our president for spurious reasons and to block his every objective that isn't named after Afghanistan.

Bravo. Well done. And I hope you all rot in the hell you've just accelerated. Because if you thought this midterm election was brutish, long and nasty, imagine what things will be like in two years.

3 comments:

  1. Ahhhh....I have news for you, jpork.

    Blaming those of us on the Left who saw through the BS behind the Obama/DLC Democratic Dog and Phony Show for what happened yesterday might make you feel better...but it misses the issue.

    The fault plainly rides with Obama and the Democrats for breaking promise after promise after promise; for treating his most valued and fervernt supporters like so much toxic waste while treating his mortal enemies (those who would rather kill him..and US) like allies to be wined and dined, and for basically playing "bait and switch" with our most cherished progressive principles.

    From the "public option" transformed into the Big Insura "forced mandate" bailout, to TARP without any bit of real accountability, to the refusal to indict and convict the war crimes of the Bush era and even going as far as to EXTEND and EXPAND those same policies; to the epic shadow boxing of DADT and ENDA, to the Repubican-lite stimulus package which still managed to get not one vote from even the "moderate" Republican he so often wooed; to the frequent slamming of legitimate progressive critics and collorary pandering to the most reactionary; to the inaction and waffling during the BP Oil Spill....need I go on??

    This administration and the leaders of this party simpy took a supermajority offered it by a majority of the American people and simply booted it away to benefit the Wall Street/Pentagon/DLC cronies...while simply allowing the Tea Party and the New Old Right who has always dominated the GOP to not only set the terms of debate, but also supply the table, the chairs, the microphone, and even the script.

    And with all that, they still couldn't improve the economy, and were still abandoned by the very corporate people to whom they were so busy brownnosing.

    In other words, the Democrats attempted to pretend to be snake charmers, and simply got bit.

    [continued -- Anthony]

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  2. I love you Pork and you’re not wrong but I also have to agree with Anthony. I did vote, so I can complain. Obama lost me when he made the 80 billion dollar, behind closed doors, deal with big pharma. Another thing that really pissed me off was the credit card reform. There are millions of people like me that are now paying jacked up interest rates on pre-existing balances. The bill passed but didn’t go into effect for months, allowing the banks to rape all the customers like me who were never late on a payment. The Democrats blew it. In this post Citizens United world democracy is owned by the corporations. I'm glad that I'm old and have no grandchildren.
    Mike

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  3. Oh, I didn't forget how the Dems have stabbed us in the back time and again and that that's the biggest reason they got trounced last Tuesday. But I've been screaming about that for months, if not years. I just thought focusing on the voters' non-involvement was more germane to this post. And anyone on the left who didn't vote, IMHO, doesn't deserve to carry our banner. If they were really representative of the left, they would've voted. Yet they didn't.

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