First, to anyone who expects juvenile humor akin to a swift and centered kick in the nuts, I heartily look forward to engaging in said idiocy, just as soon as I can find anything vaguely humorous or hopeful.
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Yesterday I hired a million monkeys (at a cost of two million bananas) to sit in front of a million keyboards, but instead of Hamlet, they produced a diary under my name that WAS about process and attitude, but absolutely wasn’t about priorities or policy.
Said ranting did not ask anyone to abandon a their views on the Iraq War or impeachment or Hillary Clinton or Israel or any hundred-thousand things that cause quick fingers to transform into pounding fists.
And it certainly did not mention ickray Arrenway (whom I ONLY bring up here because, I’m told, the less I write about him, the more he MUST be what I’m really referring to.).
The conjuncts and gerunds also didn’t suggest that those who blog on the left capitulate to Republicans (in fact, it didn’t address Republicans at all).
The diary DID say this…
- On a policy level we are not gaining any traction because the tactics that are so successful in helping to win partisan elections, are not working where getting legislation past is concerned.
- I believe, to the extent that we are part of the discussion, we are viewed as radical, not because our ideas our radical, but because our rage gets the best of us, causing us to embrace and engage in strident, punitive, politics.
- What we’ve been doing – in terms of influencing OUR side to do what WE want, which exists mainly of threatening and accusing and confronting (often by quickly pulling out thee atom-bombs of debate “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe”, and, in THIS context, “troll”) is simply not working.
But sure enough, when all those ideas (directed at no one in particular) were transformed from cyber 1’s and 0’s into letters and numbers, and one of the monkeys (with the big ears and the cherry red-butt) hit publish, what followed was a lot of threatening and accusing and confronting (often by quickly pulling out thee atom-bombs of debate “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe”, and, in THIS context, “troll”).
Not all, but a lot.
And yet there is a looking glass through which, I feel, all of this can be seen clearly and it is the state of the current Republican party, which accomplished a short term pillage and rape of this country (to be followed by a likely longer term exile) on the clarion-call of the yellers and the screamers and the dealers of spite (Rush and Sean and Bill and even, likely, Ickrey Arrenway), but I was quite sure, up until recently that we’d chosen our current President Elect partially because we understood that those times have ended.
The black-and-white and us’n’them and with-us-or-against-us having proven to be the road to ruin.
I’m not ready to reach a hand out to Republicans (especially since they seem to be embracing FARTHER RIGHT themselves), but I am wondering if it would be prudent to put our pitchforks and torches back in the shed just long enough to introduce ourselves to the only people who can DO the things we want DONE.
We don't need the battle-axes, nor the cannons, because our ideas, for the most part, ARE the ideas of a RATIONAL LEFT, which is, in reality, neither threatening to our representatives nor our country.
I submit the above as a second attempt, presented with a bowed head and keystrokes typed without malice,
Jeffrey
PS: Oh, and I swear, I'll never bring this up again.