Guys, please salute DUer Lugnut - she and I made Huffington Post!

[calimary]

It was a line from her that gave me the idea for another column. Tace posted it yesterday on behalf of World News Trust. HuffPo picked it up today!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-lyon/if-youre-not-angry-and-bi_b_96829.html

Lugnut - you are loved! And I am grateful!

:patriot:

We all jump on each other when the comment is not agreeable. So let's jump for joy when someone knocks it out of the ballpark!

[MethuenProgressive]

1. You're anti-immigrant, and anti-people who aren't like you, because you're bitter.

And that's a comment to "celebrate"?

[calimary]

16. Kind of hard to be anti-immigrant when your lineage came from that...

Actually, though, I AM against some people.

I am against republi-CONS.

I am against neoCONS.

I am against the liars and quislings in the media who ignore the matters near and dear to the middle class and the poor, just to cut the rich and already-advantaged and cheaters and corporate corner-cutters a little more slack.

I am bitter that the people who most deserve to be heard keep getting pushed to the end of the line and the back of the room.

I am bitter that MY Congress has put me on ignore, too - and won't hold these monsters fully accountable (or hell, even PARTIALLY or MINIMALLY accountable).

I am bitter every time I think of the many war protests I attended - hell, that SO MANY of us attended, that hardly got any coverage, when WE were the ones telling the truth and and trying to stop the war and warning about what did indeed come to pass.

I am bitter every time I hear of another outburst of renewed violence in Iraq, and another fleeting mention of yet another American war casualty - who will be denied the honor of news coverage of their funerals, whose so-called commander-in-chief won't even do them the honor of meeting their returning coffins at Dover Air Force Base.

I am bitter thinking of another mother who will sob. Another little brother or sister who'll be distraught. Another toddler who'll never know his or her lost parent. Another freshly-minted widow or widower who has to go on alone, with little help from the VA.

I am bitter thinking of another American - and many more Iraqis - who will die unnecessarily - because they've died for A LIE.

I am bitter thinking about the profession of which I used to be so proud - broadcast journalism - and about which I am now sorely ashamed, because of its utter failure in its "coverage" of bushco - and its GROSS DERELICTION OF DUTY.

I am bitter thinking about what could have been prevented, and avoided, because we had no voice and were both passively ignored and actively suppressed.

Yeah. Deal with it, my friend. The people responsible for the lies, the distortions, the suppression of dissent, the neglect, the abuse, the criminality, the cover-ups, the collaboration, and the excuse-making are indeed not like me (or anyone else here on DU and elsewhere in progressive and liberal circles). I AM VERY MUCH INDEED anti-people-like-them. I don't hesitate to admit it for a nanosecond. And I certainly won't apologize for it, either.

[papau]

26. Very nice - congratulations - but story subject is not being bitter - it's about religious folks who

per Obama turned to religion because they were bitter.

[calimary]

29. Thanks! It was about that, but also about people so embittered they turned to guns

also, or the lesser splinter-issues about which they evidently felt more comfortable or more in control. When you're drowning, you grab for any piece of wood you see floating by - even if it's toothpick-size.

I think you'll see the overall bitterness increase as long as the deep-down feelings and injustices that drive that bitterness are not addressed. As long as the people in real need keep getting ignored. As long as the people in real need keep getting the short end of the stick and the kick in the teeth, while the fat-cats get fatter and the system becomes more and more rigged in their favor.

I think you'll see the overall bitterness remain, and become more aggravated, as more people who bought, and swallowed whole, the trickle-down bullshit that started being shoveled at them in earnest with the rise of ronald reagan. They trusted him. They thought he was wonderful and that he really understood and that he was one of them. The results of his policies left them completely screwed over. As that cold, hard, sad realization dawns and sets in, the bitterness will grow. They trusted. They trusted with all their hearts. And they were thoroughly betrayed. It's just human nature for the most part. A lot of people turn bitter and sullen and angry when that happens to them. Especially when they see no way out - or they become convinced that there won't ever be a way out because nobody's listening to them, or really hearing, them anymore.

[papau]

51. The bitterness - while true - is a discussion that doesn't get you elected as optimism/hope is the

only theme Americans will elect.

[calimary]

56. Well, it will be MOST interesting to see how this plays out. You remind me of the last time

we had morose versus sunny - when Carter was beset by a lousy economy, the hostage crisis in Iran, and the fallout from his having gone up to the mountain to ruminate (Camp David) and then returning with his "national malaise" speech. Times were tough, things were really gloomy, and he didn't attempt to sugar-coat anything. He was being honest and speaking some very deeply-felt truths. But then along came ronald reagan with his smiling and joking and aw-shucks and kindly-old-uncle schtick talking about it being "Morning in America" and that we were really a "shining city on a hill." And everybody fell all over themselves for it. I remember it well - they gushed about the breath of fresh air, the welcome change, the upbeat demeanor, the can-do happy-talk stuff that I guess everybody was just really yearning to hear for a change.

Do I think the exact same conditions apply here? I think the GOP may try to make it seem like that, but I don't know if it's gonna work this time, or if the same dynamics even apply here.

In his own way, Obama is NOT dour and glum. He's not acting like that or embracing that or letting himself get mired in it, even while talking about the bitterness and agony that he sees and hears from Americans everywhere he goes. These are shitty times, too. With OUR version of The Foreign Policy Crisis - the damned war, and a lousy economy, too. But it seems somehow different in timbre this time. And we don't necessarily also have the GOP adversary as this Mr. Sunshine pleasant-looking, seemingly harmless former movie star optimist who reads off cue cards well. We have this old, lumpy, anemic individual who offers one-liners and wise-cracks, but somehow just doesn't have the "authenticity" of reagan (if that can even be said!). john mccain is no ronald reagan. He'd sure like to be but there's too much wrong with him, and with his white, thinning hair, he telegraphs old in a way reagan with his nice full head of dark hair did not. And mccain just sounds smarmier than reagan did.

Furthermore, most people were really coming off of nixon/ford's pardon/Watergate back then. They'd never had a ronald reagan offered to them before. And reagan came with all these glowing platitudes and nice-sounding, simplistic sloganeering about quick-fixes and fast feel-goods. THIS generation of voters has already been through all that. We've lived through the reagan era, and slowly-increasing numbers of us are seeing the impact of reagan-era policies and big ideas and political bromides and watching the whole reaganomics thing proving out to be an abysmal failure for most Americans. We've already been through one "and the rich get richer" era - the era when "trickle-down" was introduced as an economic concept and as such (as so packaged, I guess I should say) it hadn't been tried before. So it all sounded good and was such a relief from that morose ol' Jimmy Carter that a majority of voters said "YEAH! That's for me! Let's try something new! Let's try the old dude with the fun personality and sunny disposition!"

Fast forward to now. "Trickle-down" has blighted us AGAIN and I think many of us have seen enough, at last. It didn't work back then, NOW being the proof of that pudding in the long-term, AND IT AIN'T WORKING NOW, EITHER!!! As a matter of fact, it's working out even worse than before by a factor of about umpteen billion.

That's what I think the bitterness is all about. All those years of republi-CON CON-jobs and pie-in-the-sky and just-be-patient-while-we-rich-insiders-get-ours-because-you'll-all-get-yours-someday-too have turned to pure shit in front of our very eyes. We were sold such a slick-sounding, sure-fire, easy-does-it bill of goods the first time around, and we trusted it because we trusted reagan, the Salesman-in-Chief or Huckster-in-Chief I suppose, and because we liked him personally. People voted for him because they liked him and what his ideas and policies and apppointees were doing to this country just were somehow not connected to him. You trust. You come to like and admire. And the object of that trust and simpatico and admiration were for nothing. He got everyone's hopes up with his smooth, soothing happy talk and adorable old jokes and scripted one-liners, and it was all a house of cards. A fraud. And when you trust and come to like and admire someone who turns out to be a fraud, and you have to face that you willingly climbed aboard and rode along with him as he rode you over Niagara Falls, well - that kind of thing can make a body feel kinda bitter about everything. Especially when you're stuck at the bottom of st. ronnie's shitty the-rich-get-richer compost pile - that you believed was actually going to work out quite differently for yourself.

I think now we're sadder and wiser. We've been served this shit before. And it didn't taste that great back then, either.

[dionysus]

35. leave it to you to willfully not get the point.

or maybe, just maybe, you really ARE that stupid...

[calimary]

40. Sometimes it might be a case of denial.

Sometimes there are those who don't want to know the truth - probably because deep-down, a tiny voice inside them is telling them it'll hurt too badly.

[rhett o rick]

2. Bravo. Whatever scale bitter is on I am waaay past bitter.

I am in the let's get even stage. I want to run the corporatists (read fascists) and there gullibles into the sea.

[calimary]

17. Some of them need to be run into the tribunal chambers in The Hague.

Others should just be run directly to jail. Without passing "Go" or collecting 200 dollars.

The fabled Howard Beale said it most beautifully: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

And we absolutely ARE there as a nation.

[rhett o rick]

19. I so agree. We are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore. nm

[calimary]

20. And I don't think we oughta forget, either - OR let THEM forget.

I think we ought to hound these people about this until they're ready for their dirt naps. NO rest for them. NO peace for them. NO sanctuary. I hope it follows them to the ends of the earth.

[rhett o rick]

23. Count me in. nm

[calimary]

32. I'm with ya!

:toast:

[thevoiceofreason]

3. Excellent work!

[calimary]

21. Thank you!

I do NOT presume to speak for Lugnut. But her statement sure spoke for (and to) me.

[Me.]

4. Well Isn't That Something!

Good for you

[calimary]

24. Thanks!

It was just such a great line. So basic. And bumper-sticker simple. I hope somebody does make it into a bumper sticker. We already have one version of it that's been out there for a long time - "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

Statements like Lugnut's need to be said, read, and SPREAD!!!

[jaxx]

5. Congrats to you both!!

Ya make me proud.

[calimary]

25. There's a lot of commotion here on DU that's been rather painful and irksome

during primary season.

So it's very pleasing when something is said here that's so outstanding that it really does merit repeating.

More people outside DU need to hear us when we roar like that. I think most of the problems in this country have become such problems precisely BECAUSE we, and statements like that, have NOT been heard.

[lisa58]

6. Excellent!

[calimary]

30. Cheers, lisa58!

Remember - some of the really good things that come out of here deserve to be said, read, and spread!

Repetition! Repetition! Repetition!

"...you know, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

[futureliveshere]

7. Great lob Lugnut and Calimary.. More power to you!!

[calimary]

31. Thank you so much!

I sent Lugnut a message - I hope she sees this. She deserves the "attagirl."

[L0oniX]

8. K&R ...perfect

[calimary]

34. Cheers, LOoniX!

Thanks!

[kentuck]

9. Also, DU and Emit got mentioned in this link on Huffington

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/16/stephanopoulos-left-field_n_97136.html

[calimary]

18. See, I think this ought to be trumpeted! And celebrated! Because it means our words and

our thoughts and yes, OUR spin, is getting out there to a wider audience. Which is as it should be, as far as I'm concerned.

I will never forget former MP George Galloway testifying before smarmy normie coleman's Senate committee and turning it on its ear (coleman was all set to flay him alive, and instead got his head handed to him on the end of a pike):

"Everything we said about Iraq turned out to be right, and everything you said turned out to be wrong, and (at the time) 100-thousand people have paid for their lives - including (at the time) 16-hundred of your own troops."

That's paraphrasing a little, but that's the gist of the statement he made. And it floored coleman and company. Galloway was one of those who had the backbone to speak out and hold nothing back, WAY back when it was still fairly "uncool" to object openly to the war in any forum of prominence. I remember how the first thing coleman did after Galloway reamed him a new one was to call for a "brief recess" in the committee hearing. I don't think they ever regrouped much, either.

[yellerpup]

10. Kick and Recommend!

Off to the Greatest Page for you! Wonderful article and kudos to you for citing your inspiration. :kick:

[calimary]

33. Hey - why not leave a comment there? That way YOU get showcased, too!

I think we DUers have a LOT to say that deserves to be heard and seen elsewhere also.

That way we all get more mileage out of it! And somebody out there who hasn't found his/her way here yet just might gain a little more solidarity.

I think we're struggling with the bitter feelings primarily because we don't feel like anyone's hearing us.

THIS is a way around that.

[Bensthename]

11. Wow, good job... K&R

[calimary]

36. Thank you!

I think many of us here are well worth quoting. Especially since WE were correct about all this stuff all along.

[npincus]

12. Props!!!

:yourock:

[calimary]

37. Thanks!

:yourock: too!

[Coexist]

13. that's awesome!

[calimary]

38. Glad you liked it. It was just overwhelming to me - first to read Lugnut's one-liner

and then to let it sink in - and THEN, to read all those comments into Jack Cafferty's file on the "bitter" question. Some of these people's responses and stories are enough to drive one to tears.

THIS is what we've become? No wonder there's bitterness out there. It's completely understandable. As a matter of fact, it's inevitable.

I'm with Lugnut when she wonders how we can NOT be outraged and bitter over what's happened to our country!! 'Cause I wonder that same thing myself.

[City Lights]

14. Kudos to you and Lugnut!

:thumbsup:

[roguevalley]

15. bravo to both of you. :-D

[calimary]

43. Hugs!

And that's such a cute pup!

:hi:

[calimary]

39. Pretty damn cool, 'eh?

At least we're being heard - a little bit.

I say we keep yelling, screaming, and roaring! It sure worked for the squeaky wheels in the Xtianist minority. A few million of them control the whole damn thing for hundreds of millions of the rest of us. And I'm never gonna stop shouting in outrage about that! One of these days, WE'RE gonna be heard, too.

And I'm thinking it'd be in the elitists' best interests to pay a little bit of attention. After all, there is a price to pay for not doing so. Just ask the Romanovs.

[blm]

22. nods to both.

and a KandR.

[calimary]

41. I'm utterly thrilled, I tellya!

When one of us is heard, all of us are represented.

[blm]

46. That's how I feel - and proud to share any space with you, calimary.

.

[calimary]

60. Likewise!

:pals:

[EFerrari]

27. Good going!

:applause:

[calimary]

42. Yes! And let's keep on making noise, 'eh?

"...and the people who knocked this country down will hear from all of us soon."

Paraphrasing from some jerk with a bullhorn grandstanding on a rubble pile while the rest of America sobbed.

[Swamp Rat]

28. WOOHOO!!!!

:woohoo:

:patriot:

[calimary]

44. LOUDER!

Til our roar outshouts 'em ALL!!!

[Swamp Rat]

48. KICK!

:kick:

[H2O Man]

45. Great!

Very impressive!

Nominated, with a lot of pride.

[calimary]

52. I mean it - wherever I go, I'm takin' DU with me!

Lugnut's statement was just so worth it! And then, considering all those other posts into the Cafferty blog - how heartfelt and anguished and angry and - YES - bitter - they just underscored it all, in the extreme.

Nancy Reagan once admonished the then-arrogant, pompous, and nearly out-of-control donald regan that basically, he'd better watch himself because "people are talking." And of course, they were - she probably paramount among them, because he WAS just a complete megalomaniac and Nancy thought he was serving her husband poorly. He was serving ALL of us poorly, never mind the addled old man. Yeah. People are talking. It appears Barack has been listening and paying close attention - and taking what they're saying seriously. ABC is still tone-deaf, of course. And that hopeless closet case, that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-VANITY, will NEVER get it as long as he and all his little friends on the wrong-wing remain obsessed with digging for political belly-button lint, clogged pores, infected zits, and ingrown toenails.

People are talking, alright. They're speaking loud and clear. AGAIN. And Obama seems to be the only one who gives a damn about what they're trying to say.

[phrigndumass]

47. Congrats to you both! Your article's title drew me in instantly when you posted it on DU.

Top-notch writing skills, as well!

:party: :toast:

[calimary]

65. REALLY appreciate this! Thank you so much!

The whole idea is rather riveting - and it sure does resonate. It's gotta be the Statement of the Year.

I feel like yelling - "Yeah! I'm bitter! I hate what's happened to this country I love, and I hate what the bastards in charge have done to it (and us)! DEAL with it!"

And the comments are most revealing. Seems like almost everyone, everywhere, is on the same page (well, except for charlie and georgie and all their little media friends, various political animals, the GOP, and shrinking numbers of die-hard CONs).

[applegrove]

49. Cool!

[calimary]

58. Thanks!

Thank you for the kick, too!

:hi:

[AtomicKitten]

50. Brava!!

Excellent work, mam.

:patriot:

[calimary]

59. I salute you back!

:patriot:


LOVE that cartoon in your sig line there! :rofl:

[ClayZ]

53. Yay! K and R

[calimary]

61. Thank you!!!

It's my privilege.

[Cha]

54. Thanks Mary...that's

very accurate essay on what' going on in our country and it looked very good on Huff post.

I went to the link for Cafferty files and saw this..

"Shirley from Weston, Florida writes:
Jack, I’m from a small town in Florida, and I can’t take 4-8 years of Grandma Billary and Grandpa McCain. And no, I was not offended by Sen. Obama’s “bitter” statement, I just think he should have used the word angry. As an American, I am just that. This is foolishness… Senator Obama holds us accountable and tells us what we need to hear. Like Grandparents, Grandma Billary and Grandpa McCain tells us what we want to hear."

Bitter, Angry? I think we need to get bitter out in the open and work on turning it to sweet.

[calimary]

62. I really like that oe: "Obama...tells us what we need to hear" whereas

Clinton and mcsame tell us "what we want to hear."

No wonder people are responding to Obama, and no wonder so many comments I've heard in praise of him are some version of "he talks to us like adults."

We DO have to get bitter out in the open. We DO have to talk about it and not shy away or spin it or parse it or call it something sanitized for your protection. That's the only way I think we're going to be able to confront our problems and actually start solving them like adults, rather than making excuses or trying to call them something different.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

55. Wonderful, Mary!

& Lugnut, too...

[calimary]

64. Yay! So glad you weighed in!

And equally happy that you liked it!

Hugs to you!

:hi:

[blogslut]

57. It was a great observation

I'm glad it got some attention. :hi:

[calimary]

66. It sure was. Pure, simple, and spot-on.

Hit the bull's eye.

And I think the more attention this gets, the more people will feel as though it might be okay to drop the facade, grow up and admit things have just deteriorated horribly, and that SOMETHING HAS GOT TO CHANGE!!!! And we can't possibly hope for a john mcsame type to bring us anything that even remotely resembles change.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

63. According to the comments, lots of people are 'bitter'. Go figure.

You both rawk! :yourock: for talking about it. Many thanks.

[calimary]

67. Yeah, funny thing - people are actually talking about having hard feelings about

the absolute crap to which these bastards have reduced our country. Like they actually find that to be a bad thing! Well, sha-ZAM! Whooda thunkit?

:banghead: :crazy:

[Heathen57]

68. Great Article

Very well said.

Proud to give you another K&R