Getting more and more despondent

[jmatthan]

http://MoveTheUN.blogspot.com

As the days roll on, even such moral boosting Talk Show Hosts as Mike Malloy, Bernie Ward and others cannot lift me from the gloom that is descending almost irreversibly.

Sitting many thousands of kilometers away, and I watch the US rolling into total fascism, as seen with the farcical inquisition of Sam Alito, the spying on US citizens, even the best of the Liberal Talk Show Hosts are not able to raise my spirits.

Mark Levine's debate with a Republican last Tuesday on his radio programme is an example of how bad the situation is and no one is doing anything.

If it had been in a country where people value democracy, your present pResident would have been strung up on the street for violating the Constitution and for spying on innocent people in the US.

Being non-American, non-European, non-White, non-Muslim, non-Jew these are very sad days and seeing the inaction of American citizens and politicians and even Bill Clinton suggesting the war criminal Tony Blair should be appointed as Secretary General of the UN

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4611836.stm

when the present Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has stated that the invasion of Iraq ordered by Blair and Bush was ILLEGAL and a violation of the UN Charter

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm

Where is America headed?

[MissWaverly]

1. They are calling for Bush impeachment in Pittsburgh

the land of the steel, the home of hard work and conservative values. There are small
towns where bills are being passed calling for impeachment. The american people are
fed up and we are doing something about it. Diebold is being sued by their stockholders
and in Maryland where we have a Republican Gov., we passed a bill requiring Wal-Mart to
pay for employee health insurance over his veto. Our republican governor came out in
favor of stem cell research-which is a big fundy no-no. Tom Delay has been indicted and asked to step down from his position as Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, Bob Ney (Mr. Help America Vote Act) has been asked to step down from as Chair on the Administration Committee (US House). The Democratic party has collected
51 million in a year with no major elections which doesn't count the money Dr. Dean collected
for the states. I know that it's been a rough five years but 9-11 threw us a curve ball;
the country is slowing leaving the "bunker" mentality and starting critical thinking again.

[jmatthan]

2. I hope so FOR YOUR SAKE!

eom

[MissWaverly]

3. I understand

but you have to realize that George Bush is the son of a president and a Yale graduate,
the American people never thought they were going to have a brawl at the highest level
of government for 5 years. Bush told us that there were weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq and biological and chemical agents and there was no echo in the media that this
was questionable. We are beginning to see the truth but it is hard with a complacent
media. Our only real sources of truth are the newspapers, Sunday talk shows, the internet
and satellite radios.

[EuroObserver]

4. Clinton backs Blair as UN chief

No. No way.

Agree with you, Jacob. Very depressing.

(ed: heading further underground, it seems).

[MissWaverly]

5. UN post would change Blair from a warmonger to peacemaker

[EuroObserver]

6. (I meant me, myself, heading underground)

Bill Clinton said Mr Blair's future would earn him 'immense rewards'

[MissWaverly]

7. was not commenting on your "underground" remarrk

I was simply saying that if Blair was at the UN he would not be riding off with Team
Bush to attack Iran, etc.

[mdmc]

8. try watching the boondocks on adult swim

that ought to boost your spirits. Remember, karma is cyclical. The Dem party needs to burn through its negative karma before things will get better. An activist right wing supreme court may be powerful enough to purge the Dem party of all its negative karma, and then some!

[Lexingtonian]

9. I see it's mid-January in Finland

and the cheery, upbeat, sunny side of Scandinavian life is in full swing. :-)

We're in a wonderful little Mediterranean/Levantine phase over here at the moment, chaotic and mentally oppressive, all about very corrupt and vain old men lying and doing stupid things with ever more flimsy and very jealously held faux majoritarian power.

The part you're not seeing is that this is not about reality or the future. This is all about pent up social and economic and psychological frustrations from the Cold War, and it's the medieval European aspect of American society in a very ugly (and deluded) argument with Modernity- and incrementally losing that argument. If you know much recent American history, the five Bush years have been a recapitulation and rearguing of its issues/events starting with 1960 (the Gary Powers shootdown) to the American-Iranian crisis of 1978-80 now. The Right's present control of the American political system is based in the electorate's sense that revisiting and re-solving all the (now inadequate) domestic compromises of the recent past is the historical priority- and its support falls, slowly, as measures the Right hates are identified, tested brutally, and the deficient ones are broken up and replaced (the good ones don't break under the pressure). It's very painful stuff. And as the process continues, the perceived utility of the Right declines. In five years we've gotten up to nearly 60% opposition at a pretty constant rate of 12% per calendar year.

As foreign policy, the medieval European ('Christian Right', 'war hawk', etc) component of American society was there and caused American intervention when Europe refought its Roman Era internal divisions, the Continental Powers war aka World War I/II, and the Feudal Age fight of Europe's colonial feudalism ('capitalism') with the Asian Hordes ('communism'), aka The Cold War. Now these ancient fights are resolved, this component of American society has focussed on another ancient enemy, the opportunistic Arab Hordes fought down at Tours and Poitiers and the reconquest of Spain (presently 'terrorism', 'Islamofascism') and the countereffort that was the Crusades ('freedom and democracy' in e.g. Iraq).

For the U.S., you also have to understand that additionally 'terrorism' is in the eyes of the people who are paranoid of it not a matter of 300 middle class men from the Arab world who live on donations. 'Terrorism' is all about the provincial American fear of a world full of people they don't understand and can't dominate and to a large extent are unprepared to compete on equal terms with- an evoking of all their sense of inferiority and undue provincial entitlement and the way Modernity takes away all the easy selfjustifications and wounds fragile egos. This second, domestic, interpretation of 'terrorism' is deeper and roots in the Settlement/colonial experience- in fighting with American Indians, mostly, but also dim memories of fighting down the black slave revolts and the federal armies' destruction of the South during the Civil War. It comes out as domestic racism against Latino ('illegal immigration') and black people (the New Orleans debacle), and that grotesque hatred of 'liberals'/'government'.

There is only one thing to juxtapose to the behaviors springing from groups' paranoia for their psychological existence and role, and that is the social contract which their role and meaningful existence truly roots in.

So I'm not pessimistic. But I can't say I like how long it will take to finish this idiocy and recover from it here.

[EuroObserver]

10. Nice food for thought there!

Which crusade was it where it was somehow decided that it would be easier (and more profitable) just to sack and loot Constantinople (half-destroying Byzantium)? Ah yes: the fourth, 1202-4.

[jmatthan]

11. Thanks for cheering me up!!

eom

[wovenpaint]

12. Go find and watch the video of Al Gore's speech today

I think you'll be glad you did!