Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Daphne is frustrated, demoralized and fed up.
Hope Is Not A Strategy
A break was in order, a pass of a few days from my usual daily walk in this wired world of breaking news and streaming hot words. Ten seconds after I fired this baby up, surfing with the speed of light, I had a serious craving for a hit of good blotter to go along with my coffee.
Seems nothing has changed, the world is still strange and people continue to hash irate consonants about the strangeness of life. Fireworks flew, governments produced their usual bucketful of farce and we, the opinionated people, made a lot of pointless noise.
I can see November from my window held particular sway in the faux rebel wing of the conservative electorate this weekend. Children’s wishes blown on the fluff of dead dandelion heads, blind lambs placed in the lion’s mouth, the faith of a new-born saviour expected to rise from the dead ashes of a corrupt body politic.
The insane delusion that Washington will behave with prudent sanity once a new slate of fresh Republicans are seated seems to be predicated on a few gossamer threads pulled from gilded fairy tales. A wisp of nothing supports this ardent belief, but it has become the holy grail of conservative punditry.
Obama and his cohort of mendacious bottom feeders continued to live up to my low expectations. I’m beginning to wonder if the majority of his administration aren’t slightly retarded. Which made me consider the possibility that black folks in general might be wobbling on the shaky edge of low intelligence as they’re the only ones still enthusiastically singing on the president’s bandwagon. (But, hey, we still have Michael Steele.) Hell, even the rich West coast liberals are fleeing their infatuation with the golden boy like he’s a walking cholera epidemic and we all know they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs decorating the democratic plank.
I must say, I’m not familiar with this “insane delusion that Washington will behave with prudent sanity once a new slate of fresh Republicans are seated.” That’s a new one on me. Most of the people who are looking forward to November with cautious hope, like Yours Truly, are thinking more along these lines: Things are messed up and getting worse. Kiddies are in charge. They don’t seem to be planning a goddamned fucking thing anywhere — it’s all just “display the emotions we expect you to display,” whether you are in their administration, on their (my) payroll, or happen to be working in the custard shop offering to comp their orders if they’ll lower your taxes.
The kiddies running everything come from a world in which there is something sacriligious about saying: “I have observed A and B and I see A causes B. Let’s look at ratcheting down A if we want to see less of B, or bringing in a whole lot more A if we happen to like B.” In other words, no cause-and-effect thinking allowed. You might say they have established a religious order against it.
So let’s yank out that one element. If you don’t live in a world in which things happen because of other things, you cannot vote. Go home, watch television, grow up for four more years, and then we’ll see if you have made that first step toward handling real responsibilities.
This system is not quite that broken. And it is durable. It can handle people reasonably disagreeing about the facts, what is known from the facts, what is to be done in response to what is going on as has been derived from the facts. Dissent leads to discourse, and discourse is the lubricant of a republic like ours.
But it’s got to be discourse among adults who live in the real world. Purge the system of all the mental-kids who’ve consciously decided they can’t handle it.
How did I sum it up yesterday…
Anyone suffering from a self-destructive impulse can’t vote. Anyone carrying a large burden of guilt, which can be relieved only by pretending wet is dry and up is down, cannot vote. Anyone who’d rather watch American Idol than educate themselves about the issues so they can vote knowledgeably, should go right ahead. Fast forward through every commercial for all I care. Just stay home. It’s what you want to do anyway.
Then we can quibble about whether there’s such a thing as a Laffer Curve (there is), whether we should keep drugs illegal (hell yes), and whether our 51 bankrupt governments suffer from a spending problem or a revenue problem (it’s not a revenue problem).
But the — let’s call it what it is — BULLSHIT about apology tours, “Interstate Commerce Clause on Steroids”, global warming, suing Arizona, “Sit down and talk out our differences with our enemies,” and this-is-the-first-experiment-with-socialized-medicine-[that-will-work]-I-really-really-promise…will all come to a stop. As it should.
We lunged down this bunny trail of despair when we decided…I say “we,” because no one single individual living or dead seems to own this…that we are a “democracy,” and a democracy is more “robust” or something if more people participate in it. If the bar is lowered. If we pour some silly ideas into a great big stewpot to intermingle with the sensible ones.
It’s just not true.
We live in a representative democratic republic. One in which The People, not just the elected & appointed officials who serve them, have responsibilities they/we need to meet. It is a system that relies on a presumption that The People know how to think sensibly, and are doing so.
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