Opol had the composure to put together the diary that I wanted to.
Wise Up and Rise Up – or Kiss It All Goodbye
So the best I could do is cross-post my sub-rant that he inspired in me that flowed out in the comments of his most excellent thump to the head.
This place is my therapy; I tried to quit cold-turkey last week when I found myself becoming dangerously unhinged in public and thought I could just go back to watching movies and cartoons or even turning it off altogether and going back to wearing out my iPod with Beethoven and heavy metal. (the good 70's and 80's kind, with real guitar heroes)
You may have noticed I failed in that effort. So here's one more swing with my angst: Thanks OPOL for winding me up...
OPOL, you inspire me. BUT, I think we may have already lost.
I wish I could be FP for just an hour to float my ideas in front of the 150,000 of us, and see if I can't plant a seed in the larger conscience of America.
The reason we can't sell the truth to the American people - even amongst many of the liberals on our team - is the lack of capacity for shame (or an overabundance of pride, take your pick).
We are supposed to be the shining city on a hill.
We are supposed to be the Gold Standard for freedom, justice, and government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Shit, we're so arrogant that we think it's a good thing to cram democracy down the throat of who we feel deserves it using the most powerful military humankind has ever assembled.
And we have the freedom to elect anyone who is qualified, we have the freedom to protest any irregularities in that election process and rectify them, and we also have a constitutionally mandated system for removing corrupt leaders without so much as one shot having been fired. And look at the unforgivable lying fraud we have left in power for almost eight years. If I were the world, I'd be pissed too.
And if I were a typical American, I'd be ashamed or in denial, one or the other. Guess which one of these two camps has more members...
So in the end, we're just going to keep masturbating ourselves with noble stories of how great our founders once were and hope that somehow our continued choruses of America the Beautiful and God Bless America and The Star Spangled Banner can still drown out the cries of "Not In Our Name!"
We can't handle the truth. Any country that can put a lie about a blowjob above a systematic perversion of the Constitution of the United States of America for the purpose of justifying a war for oil by hundreds of government officials and corporate sponsors, will eventually find itself in a world of shit.
Perhaps you've noticed that's the case now.
Our future lies in our yet to be discovered capacity for shame - like Harry Taylor asked of the Unforgivable W - can we admit that we screwed our own pooch, and have the humility to ask the world and even our own consciences for another chance to be the country we claim to be?
I'm in a terrible state, because I keep screaming truth to my neighbors, family, and friends. I can't be quiet any longer, I can't be polite just so they don't wince when they hear it, and I can't be quiet and pretend it doesn't keep me up nights and make my food taste funny.
I'm another pissed off merican - I don't care if I'm labelled liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, or zoroastrian. The one question I keep asking is why there has not been some inter-galactic trade council representative sent here in a space/time warp capsule to slap us with the mother of all fines for having the gall to still use the word "United" in the name of our country. The only thing that unites this place is the collective schadenfreude we use to claim we're still OK as long as we can find someone else who's worse.
Well, goddammit, claiming the higher moral ground means that you have to actually stand on that ground at some point. And in the last seven years what I have seen is that we are content to think we're still at the top of the heap as long as we can find someone else who's done worse than we have.
Doesn't work that way, nevermind the fact that there is no bottom to that race. If we're content simply because we're marginally better than someone else who's more despised than we are, there's no pride in that for a noble people who are honest with themselves.
I'm going to go on for another dozen pages if I tell you about the lies and the bullshit and the delusions that are taking hold on my town. McCain's gutter campaign is working, and working WELL with my family, neighbors, and former friends. I'm fucking sick to my stomach, enraged to the point where I cannot speak to anyone without losing control, and I absolutely will not put the brakes on so I can still be polite.
It was that kind of bullshit denial and delusions of nobility and just cause that got us here. I'm now fully committed to unadulterated doses of real truth and a ban on temper-soothing chasers until we wake up and realize that isn't coffee we smell.
Thanks OPOL. Proud to be APOL right next to you.