When George W. Bush took office after the bitterly fought end of a tight race in 2000, he promised a consultative government of unity in which he and his opponents would work together. He then spent eight years behaving like King John without the Magna Charta.
Currently our President-Elect is making similar noises about reconciliation, moderation, including the opposition in government, and generally making nice and compromising. I don’t want him to be King John, but I myself have no interest in making nice.
I am forty-three years old. I came of age just as the Equal Rights Amendment died, Proposition 13 gutted services in my state, and Ronald Reagan was elected president. In the last 25 years the country has gone so far to the right that nobody remembers what it was like before. Words like “liberal,” “conservative,” and “moderate” have entirely different meanings.
In this world, an Eisenhower Republican is a Socialist who has come to take everyone’s hard-earned money. The middle class makes $300,000 a year. Endless war is a duty. Health care is a privilege. Basic environmental responsibility and a concern for the welfare of children are signs of creeping Communism. And the Bill of Rights is a “liberal” obstruction to the great tasks of war and policing.
The people who brought us to this place found Richard Nixon to be a dangerous internationalist and compromiser. They are extremists.
The idea that I should accept this state of affairs and sit down at the table of compromise with these phalangist maniacs disgusts me. They have never shown interest in negotiation themselves; they just take.
I am angry that my country has been shoved in the toilet for 30 years. I don’t feel any great need to accept the world of religious fanatics, demagogues, warmongers, police state advocates, bigots, and whiny billionaires. That’s not my America.
Fuck this conciliatory shit. I want my country back and I’m not interested in conciliatory arrangements with the people who stole it.
Be My Blog 
I don’t think there’s going to be as much making nice and compromising as Obama’s making it out to be now. At least give him the benefit of the doubt until he gets inaugurated.
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Oh, I wasn’t making a prediction one way or another. Just waving my own tiny fists.
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Scuttling claws here.
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that seriously rolls my trousers
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Can I have this on a sticker, please
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Absolutely. Amen. Jesus h, brilliantly said.
*applause and similarly waving fists*
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Yes, but…
“Manipulation, sloganizing, “depositing,” regimentation and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are components of the praxis of domination. In order to dominate, the dominator has no choice but to deny true praxis to the people, deny them the right to say their own word and think their own thoughts. He and she cannot act dialogically; for to do so would mean either that they had relinquished their power to dominate and join the cause of the oppressed, or had lost that power through miscalculation.
Obversely, revolutionary leaders who do not act dialogically in their relations with the people either have retained characteristics of the dominator and are not truly revolutionary; or they are totally misguided in their conception of their role, and, prisoners of their own sectarianism, are equally non-revolutionary. They may even reach power. But the validity of any revolution resulting from antidialogical action is thoroughly doubtful.”
from Pedagogy of the Oppressed
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Re: Yes, but…
Holy shit, an actual leftist. Are you one of those holograms?
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Re: Yes, but…
Don’t tell. They’d banish me you know.
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Being cranky that we got treated like crap for 8 years is all well and good.
But that crankiness translated into poor behaviour in DC will lead us right back into the sort of retaliatory reactionism that has been going on since Newt took off the kid gloves and put on the brass knuckles in 94.
If you want a kinder, gentler — dare I say more Democratic world — the incoming Dems have to start by being less a douchebag than the other guys.
Which, admittedly, shouldn’t take much.
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Yeah. Hence, I don’t want King John again. I’m just sick of this constant one-way ratchet to the right where we compromise and they just kick us in the nuts and take what they want. It has to stop and go the other way for a bit or there’s no point in pretending that change is happening.
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8 years? I seem to recall getting fist-fucked without lube by Clinton as well. We haven’t thrown the rascals out, we’ve simply brought the last batch of rascals back, this time with a new team captain.
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Agreed. Moreover, everyone reacts to the words without even knowing their meanings, contexts, histories or nuances anymore.
I imagine one has to negotiate with one’s thief because politics is the art of the possible. It is a very bitter pill to swallow. It is very bitter to see that exceptionalism has been divorced from being exceptional.
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What I’m Hoping we’ll see is this:
The lights go out, and The Republican Party breaks up in a shitstorm of internal knife-fights, mainly between the Mouthbreather Social Conservatives (eg Palin and those at her rallies) and whatever bits of the Bush/Cheney Republican Machine that can rally together. The lights come back on, and the Conservative Intelligentsia will tiptoe into the gory room cluttered with the back-stabbed, throat-slashed corpses of Today’s Republican Party. The Intelligentsia will find a working telephone, and call the concierge to clean up the mess. As the mops come out, they will then telephone Washington until they find somebody who will talk to them.
Then, the Democrats can be magnanimous and start talking to Republicans again. Though they might not be calling them Republicans anymore.
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I AM LOST
I have no idea who or what I should support. The Republicans crapped all over what I thought they were about.
Issues I need to reconsider:
Free Market – the idea that we let the market decide the price of good and services. I used to think that this was a good idea until it comes back to negatively affect my retirement, my job and the rich get richer. Now I want some control / oversight by someone or something.
Energy – Wasting gas was not a problem till Iraq. I still want my electric car though powered by the solar panels on my house. This would save money…remember guys, we used to like to SAVE money.
Health Care – Government has not had much intervention in the health care system. As a result, premiums get to rise 10% a year. WTF.
Team America – World Police – Stop it. Stop addressing every war with a shock and awe and then make the conquered country vote. Seriously.
National Debt – How the hell can the debt go up under Republican leadership? I read somewhere that is what Democrats do. Again WTF.
Government Bailouts – Do not give the money away, own the company instead. K thanks.
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Re: I AM LOST
Your problem is that you’re a moderate conservative. The Republicans have been neither conservative nor moderate for a long, long time now.
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Re: I AM LOST
yep. this is like looking back and seeing that nixon was better than the current republicans. who would haver ever thought I could say anything positive about nixon? (I’m 47, he was the antichrist of my youth)
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Re: I AM LOST
Nixon wanted single payer national health care, he ended the Vietnam war, and he normalized relations with China. Compared to the last 8 years that’s a hell of a resume. What’s a few burglaries and some madness and a few thousand tons of bombs?
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Re: I AM LOST
He also signed the envriomental protection act into law, iirc.
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Re: I AM LOST
Nation Dept
I saw a great graphic a few weeks back. About how the last 3 “fiscal conservative” administrations all racked up huge dept. Versus Clinton, a so-called “tax-and-spend” liberal, who saw a budget surplus.
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Yay! You’re awesome.
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Thank you! So is that PUMPKIN.
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Yeah. David carved it for me out of one of the tiny orange-sized ones.
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Please let things be different in our lifetimes. Like, at least let us see that it is getting better as we sound our death rattle. *sigh*
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I agree
with Republican family, Republican extended family, Republican workplace and Republican EX, I feel like I’ve been surrounded by the enemy my whole adult life.
You’re telling me it can actually be better than this, right? I guess it helps when you create a better foster family for yourself. 🙂
LIVER FOR DINNER TONIGHT, COME ON OVER
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Re: I agree
LIVER!! IT MAKES US PLAY BETTER!!
My actual family is fine. Orange County, however,
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“the country has gone so far to the right that nobody remembers what it was like before”
This is one of the reason I watch movies produced and set in the 1970s.
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he better make Manowar the combined Secretary of the Interior, or I’m fucking rioting.
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See also this post from Paul Krugman.
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Indeed.
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