As you can (no longer, as it's been edited) see in the title, this is my first diary here, though I've been commenting, recommending, and rating for awhile now, and have been lurking and reading for even longer. I've been trying to write diaries, but keep giving up due to in part to being a horrible perfectionist, and to how hard it is to dig deep into the issues I care about without wanting to just run away crying and screaming, or to get so angry that all I can do is curse (which I try to avoid doing here). But I feel the need to contribute to the site. I need to turn my anger into something useful, and after everything that's happened in the past 6 years, I feel like I've hit a breaking point. So I'm going to write about it. I'm sure it'll be disjointed, unpolished, that when it comes time to press the button to post it, I'll be terrified...but I have to write it anyway.
I started yelling at the TV during Countdown on Thursday night. I'm not a person who yells at the TV. I always thought it was ridiculously silly, when my dad used to scream at the TV during Duke games (sorry dad!)...I mean, who's actually going to hear you? So what provoked this uncharacteristic outburst of mine?
Keith Olberman was discussing the new ad from the DCCC. You know, the one where, for a split second, you see the rows of flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq. I just couldn't contain my anger anymore, when he showed the clips of the Republicans railing against what a horrible affront this little clip was to everything that is good in the world. I just started yelling, "Oh, stop it! Stop it stop it stop it! This so obviously just an act, just for show, just manufactured outrage and I can't stand it anymore! STOP!" (with a few cuss-words thrown in for good measure, redacted here because my mother is probably reading (hi mom!)). I guess this was just the proverbial straw that broke this poor camel's back.
How dare they keep at this act? How dare they manufacture such outrage about this commercial that realistically, very few people have even seen (and which even fewer would have seen, had they not made a huge fuss about it), when there is so much to be genuinely outraged about? How dare they not acknowledge that the true outrage, here, is that there are even coffins to show? How dare they pretend it's about protecting the honor of these fallen soldiers? How dare they be so two-faced as to pretend to be so horribly offended by the use of these coffins in a commercial when their own party has used images of the dead even more crassly for political gain (and no, Rep. Boehner, there isn't a difference)? How dare they?
Yes, it's an outrage to see rows of flag-draped coffins. It's an outrage because it's such a pointless waste of life. It's an outrage because we could have prevented this. It's an outrage because it's still going on and no one is doing anything about it. It's an outrage because we know that to many in this administration, these human beings who have lost their lives are nothing more than a number to be brushed over. So good on the DCCC for showing an image that stirs up this outrage over senseless death and destruction, because perhaps if we actually have to see the reality of what our policies have brought about, we'll do something about it. Maybe.
I'm just so furious and fed up with it all. I'm so sick of hearing these ridiculous speeches on the House and Senate floors. I'm so sick of hearing that flag-burning, or gay marriage, or whatever happens to be the next "rally up the base" pieces of appalling legislature is the most important issue facing our nation. I'm sick of the self-serving speeches, the blathering performances. When did it get like this? When did it become more about the marketing, about the image, about playing to the audience, than about actually doing an important job? Now, I may be young, but I'm not so naive (or at least, I hope not). I know it's always been about winning, to some degree. I know there's always been propaganda, hideous, misleading propaganda. I know. But I distinctly feel that in my short lifetime, things have changed enormously. The news I watched as a kid felt real; now it's flashy, it's entertainment, it's spin, and I can't trust it. I've watched as everything: music, news, textbook companies, groceries, radio stations...everything was bought up by a couple of mega-corporations. Everyone's been bought and paid for, and I can't trust anything. For me, this means I just have to think harder about things, dig deeper, pay more attention, and question everything. For a lot of people, though, I fear it means that they just give up and play along, like good little consumers of the products in question.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by it all. I've been bombarded with marketing, marketing, marketing, my entire life. I've watched, frustrated, as stadiums, sporting events, college campuses (mine's a Coca-Cola campus, how about yours?)...absolutely everything I see or touch on any given day is sponsored or branded. I grew up on advertising. I probably fell prey to it a few times when I was younger, though I'd like to think I'm not a person easily swayed by the pretty words and pictures that work so well on focus groups, that I'm someone who can almost always see through that crap. But everything is about the marketing. So why not politics? Of course it's going to be this way.
But it shouldn't be. Politics is different. It's not like picking a new toothpaste, or your favorite cereal, or the hippest pair of jeans. It's about choosing a government, and dammit, that's important. In electing the people we decide to elect, we are entrusting them with immense power to manage very important things, things we all depend upon. It is, as we have certainly seen in these past several years, an honest-to-goodness matter of life and death. So we need to know the truth. We need to know what they really think about things, when they're not spouting off talking points into a camera. We need to know you're really going to do something to make things better for us ordinary folks, and not just drop by to use us as a backdrop for your latest photo-op. It just makes me sick to see these fools playing at being politicians when there is real work to do. It makes me sick to see them manufacture outrage at some insignificant thing in an attempt to make their opponent look bad, and appeal to their base, when they're more than happy to help cover up the real outrages. It makes me sick to know that they see this as a game, that to them, beating the opponent is more important than serving the people.
I just have this to say to my "elected" officials, my supposed representatives: Just stop it. Cut it the hell out. Please. I'm begging. Stop with the melodramatic overreactions, with the lies and the talking points and the game-playing, and actually do something. Do something about the things that are making life so hard and scary for those of us out here in the real world. Do something about health care. Do something about the minimum wage. Do something about the environment. Do something for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Do something for the veterans of these wars you're so fond of starting. Do something about voting, about making sure elections are fair and uncorrupted and actually representative of the will of the people. Do something about the atrocious human rights violations and war crimes which this administration has commited. Do something to protect us normal folks for once, instead of the corporations. Most of all, do something to make it so that we don't ever have to see another flag-draped coffin again.
There. I've done it. Yet another outraged diary to add to the pile here. I'm sorry there are no pretty pictures, no graphs or charts or a poll, but all I have right now are words.