Yeah, shit happens. -- So do Republicans.

[Cyrano]

But who could have predicted the tsunami of shit we’ve been drowning in for almost seven years now?

Actually, we should have seen it coming. The Republican Party spent more than three decades building an infrastructure with which to grab and hold onto power. And it paid off for them big time in the stolen election of 2000.

But they didn’t build their politically malignant machine in some dingy backroom. They did it right out in the open. Corporate America bought up the major media conglomerates while we just sat there, watched them and did nothing to counter it. And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams with The Republican Broadcasting Network – otherwise known a Fox News.

They founded right-wing “think tanks” – an oxymoron if ever there was one – for the purpose of grooming future politicians, talking heads, “experts” of various stripes, and tactics for framing issues and winning/stealing elections. In short, they built highly sophisticated schools for spewing and spreading venom.

And let’s not forget our homegrown Taliban. If religion is “the opiate of the masses,” the Republicans have spent the past few decades as the dope peddlers.

While we were trying to reestablish our FDR-New Deal roots, they were honing the madness of their three Gs -- God, Guns and Gays. Sure, it was all hypocrisy and opportunism, but you’ve got to hand it to them. They sure as hell knew their audience.

Many moons ago, a famous reporter for the Baltimore Sun named H. L. Mencken said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” We are living with the incredible accuracy of that statement today. Even with stolen elections, what sane, thinking person would have gone along with the madness that’s engulfed us ever since the first day the current maniacs took office claiming that the Clinton administration had removed the W’s from all the computer keyboards in the White House?

Compared to the villains of the 20th century, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, and their ilk, Bush-Cheney & Co. seem like second-rate, would-be tyrants. But that’s not so. They have committed momentous crimes.

The United States has long been considered, by many in the world, to be a bastion of freedom. (And if you don’t agree, think how your forebears must have felt when they sailed past the Statue of Liberty.) The criminals now running our country have destroyed that image. Put another way, they’ve destroyed the hope of a better world for countless millions who may have viewed America as an island of sanctuary in an unjust, unstable world.

Assuming our next president has the will to start rebuilding, he or she is facing a monumental task. It took many centuries for civilized, socially and scientifically advanced societies to come into being. Given today’s weaponry, it can be destroyed in an hour. And given the “intelligence” of the human species, it might be.

So yes, shit happens. But we can’t let it happen to this country again. I believe that it’s our moral imperative to adapt the vow made by Jews who survived the Holocaust – “Never again.” And what I mean by that is that never again can we allow ourselves to be lulled into being ruled by those who know nothing and could care less. The world won’t survive it.

[liberalmuse]

1. Amen. Many have predicted this shit and worse, but...

I could have never predicted how complacent Americans would be through all of it. THAT shocked me. It still shocks me.

[superkia]

2. We can vote for corporations or for the people, its our decision.

[AuntPatsy]

9. That is exactly how I feel, I did predict this from day one, a constant

fight within my home from day one and what was going to come if people did not come together to stop it, they didn't and it was not stopped. Complacent is exactly what far too many Americans have become not because they don't care but because thier every day lives have become too overwhelming. whomever planned this I must say planned it well.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

3. Excellent post.

"Never Again" is actually a good motto that we should use IF we manage to wiggle our way out of this current mess. One thing's for sure is that we need a true progressive leader that doesn't fear tearing down the status quo. That's the only way we can ensure this doesn't happen again.

[Lugnut]

5. Never Again

I thought we all learned that back in the early 70's. Obviously not enough of us did.

[Hutzpa]

4. Don't forget the

MOFO just bought Wall Street. Rupert Murdock is a criminal, he has someone that does his dirty job for him, a fly on the wall once told me, you sure do not want to know what he threaten his ex-wife with.

I'm not sure whether sleeping would help in this case, but if it can so be it, he is systematically owning and destroying the world as we know it.


:evilgrin:

[Raster]

6. I lived in Texas from 1981 to 1996. When Clinton won the Presidency and then Ann Richards won the

governorship, I chided a gay rethuglican friend that the Texas-American Petroleum Cartel had taken a hit they would not recover from. I boasted it was a new day for Texas and a new era for America. He told me that Ann Richards was a one-term wonder and that another conservative rethuglican would soon be in the White House. I laughed and asked who the hell were the 'thugs gonna find to work these electoral miracles. He just smiled and said "George W." I laughed until I cried. I'm not laughing anymore. And just to clarify, my friends mother and father were both very high in the Texas rethuglican party. His father worked with Richard Rainwater. When I say very well connected, I mean very well connected. My point? This (mis)administration has been in the works for quite awhile. I have repeatedly said that when dealing with cheney*/bush* there is no such thing as coincidence. Take that, my friends, to the bank. BTW, I'm still crying.

[Bitwit1234]

7. Another thing...Who would have believed that the people of this country had lost their spines

You didn't see them running for plastic and duct tape. You didn't see them run and hid instead of defending their country. You didn't see them give the government permission to curtail our every movement, to spy on us, to cut off free speech.

Who am I talking about. The real Americans. The ones who stood up to the Germans and the Japanese during World War II. We didn't hid. We didn't hid in some basement because the vice president told us the "Terrorist are coming" "The Terrorist are coming" that is if you didn't vote for him.

The American People during the Second World War showed the world what we were made of. And is it a damn shame that the children they raised didn't turn out to be like their parents. That they turned out to be a bunch of lily livered cowards that let the cowardly crooks who stole the white house bully them into acceptance of the fact that this administration had not only stolen the white house, they stole our government also.

WHEN ARE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHOW THE WORLD WHAT THEY ARE MADE OF...And kick the damn republicans out of office. If we could get rid of bush and cheney the republicans in congress would melt like wax.

[Cyrano]

8. There was a time when the country of which you speak existed.

But the world has moved on and the sense of what is considered to be "outrageous" has shifted. In so many ways, "THE AMERICAN PEOPLE" you speak of don't exist anymore. You are living, (as are millions of others), in a world that has changed beyond what it could/should have been.

You are dreaming of a place in which a Bush/Cheney could never hold the levers of power. Yeah, we know they stole it, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, for the time being, the criminals who hold it -- as illegitimate as it is, and as much as it sucks.

The idealism you express won't drive them from office, nor will it ensure that those who replace them will be different.

Most people alive today have no concept of what FDR accomplished and established for this country. Perhaps we need another horrible "Great Depression" before we see things like universal health care, freedom from desperation and hopelessness, fear of losing our homes and everything we own, and all the other nightmares that haunt us. Not to mention the hopelessness of those who have nothing and have given up. We can not let this continue. And we can't keep turning our faces away from it.

[PDenton]

10. I have a more complex explanation

Republicans are riding off a 40 year disgust that average Americans have had with intellectuals, academics, and so on. It all started with Vietnam, when the Democrat party lost credibility on foreign policy and the military. The prominence of college (more people ent to college after WWII) and academics just muddied the waters- here were people saying America was evil, complicit in crimes, corrupt, and so on (so obviously Vietnam was the fault of liberal traitors, and not failed government policies). That was the little bit with which the Republicans needed to build the rest of their case against liberalism and the Democrats, to rewrite history and control the myths that America believes about itself. It also helped of course they had the money and bought up media and "think tanks" to spread their story, their gospel, to the average American. Meanwhile, Democrats and Liberals sat on their thumbs and assumed that the laurels and accolades from the FDR era would just hang around forever, and they didn't.

Republicans found chinks in the Democrat parties armor, and pretty soon, for the average American, the Democrat party was reduced to college-boy issues about who marries whom, Robert Maplethorpe getting government grants and how soon spotted owls should take your job away. A caricature but that is what happened. Republicans are now shaken, but they still have deep roots in America's soul.

[DarkTirade]

11. I predicted shit

just not quite as much or as bad as the shit we've had for the last 7 years. Back in 2000 my choice was between the guy who I thought would be okay, but not great vs. the guy who I knew for a fact would screw shit up.

In hindsight, I underestimated both of them.