Come back from vacation, and the place goes crazy. One can only answer the furor of internet trolls with silence or silliness, and the silliness at least can be amusing (see last post for a wild ride).
More on that later, but in the meantime, here's some of that serious stuff that's been brewing somewhere near the amygdala:
It's getting harder and harder to care about politics. Which is a bad thing, of course–without the lights on, the place gets looted even faster.
Personally, I only got really deeply involved in the political scene when it became clear that George Bush and Co planned to declare themselves masters of the universe and jettison the whole Enlightenment business that created this nation. The Democratic Party offered the only chance at meaningful opposition to Bush, but supporting Democratic candidates has, at least as long as I can remember, been a case of playing Charlie Brown to Lucy's football.
So yet again, those of us with leftward values find that the political process delivers tepid results at best, even when politicians embrace those values on the surface. I voted for Obama and was happy he won. I couldn't bring myself to place on my car, however, the sticker a friend gave me that said "Yes We Did." I posted back then about not drinking Obama's Kool-Aid either, and now he's gone and pursued some of the most fundamentally wrong policies of the Bush administration. Health care reform is being watered down to nothing, as always, by a talented bunch of corporate perception managers.
So I bet the enthusiasm gap will indeed spell 2010 trouble for Democrats. And if we get of more of the Republican nightmare, we'll have to trot out yet again to oppose their excesses and get back to the Democrats. Who will yet again slip rightward despite the demands of their base (just witness Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln, opposing major parts of health care reform that her constituents overwhelmingly support). We're stuck in a wonderful time when the expressed desires of consituents don't really ever get addressed in a meaningful way. It takes a right fool of any stripe to think otherwise, and it's just our luck that there are so many of those around.
The trend is consistent: the interests of the corporations with the largest lobbying budgets get advanced, and everybody else goes begging. So why are mere citizens supposed to get fired up about the political process, exactly? It's crazy-making. Yet not caring just makes it worse. What a glorious age we live in.
I mean, choose between feckless Democrats, hobbled by Emperor Joe (I-Quicksand), and this:
Exhibit A– Today Michele Bachmann (R-Loony Bin) compared the tea partiers to the Charge of the Light Brigade (you know, the one in which the Light Brigade was decimated while following an erroneous order).
Exhibit B–
