I suppose that since this has (somehow) topped the rec list, I should say a few words:
This was not supposed to hit the top of the rec list. Or the bottom, for that matter. I envisioned it less as “talking to a bunch of other people” and more as “standing on a rooftop screaming at the clouds for a few minutes to regain my composure before coming in to rejoin the group.”
I suppose I should not be surprised that so many other people were in earshot. That’s gratifying, in the sense that misery loves company.
Way downthread there someone said that this diary was hyperbolic.
I mean...yeah. That’s sort of the point of screaming at the clouds until you can’t scream anymore, ain’t it?
The Dems in the hearing did a good job; I thought a somewhat better job in this hearing than in Comey’s, to be honest. I am glad. I am very pleased to see that they’re taking it seriously. I am very pleased to see them taking advantage of social media to connect directly with voters and get their message out unfiltered and unhorseraced by the jackasses on the TV. I am also angry, because these tools are not new, because these ideas are not new, because people across the country have been screaming for years that the electorate is in the dark about what’s being done to them and by whom, and for years the collective response of the body politic has been, essentially, ¯\_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯...and that’s on the side of the people who actually do want a more informed electorate. (For the ASCIImoji impaired, I think that can best be summed up as “yeah, but whattayagonnado?”) The Republican party, on the other hand, has actually luxuriated in the warm glow of the bonfire they made of our country’s civics textbooks.
I am glad that this mess has finally, finally caught the attention of the MSM. They seem surprised to have discovered suddenly that people care about what’s actually going on, not just hearing some talking heads mindlessly gum over the transcripts for hours until the actual event is rendered meaningless. The fact that the Comey and Sessions hearings were so widely televised and so widely watched is both heartening and infuriating...heartening, because thank god the country is paying attention; infuriating because JFC, “news” organizations, where the actual fuck were you a year ago? Two? Ten? People all across the country have been screaming at you for years that people wanted actual news, that if you showed them the truth instead of vainly trying to dress it up in 90’s-era schlock sci-fi effects (looking DIRECTLY AT YOU, WOLF) people would watch it and be better informed. For chrissakes, Jon Stewart and his team showed you how to do it for ten damn years.
Cleanup on aisle 1600, media jackasses. Thanks so much for finally figuring out where you left the keys to the Oversightmobile. We’ve needed you to be the goddamn Batman-esque superdetectives exposing corruption and speaking truth to power that you’ve always claimed to be, but somewhere along the lines you decided that access and narratives and blindly mouthing the words “balance” and “both sides” meant you were somehow fulfilling your obligations to us. As soon as you decided that being objective witnesses meant being impartial witnesses you took off the cape Murrow and Nixon-era Woodward/Bernstein made for you and became little better than mall cops tooling around on the Segway of Punditry.
(That’s a super long and disjointed metaphor, and I stand by it.)
So look, here’s the thing:
These hearings really do give me hope. Against my best judgement, I find myself actually staring into the sea of social media and the noise of polls and the abyss of talking heads’ glassy stares, and I find myself hoping. Trump is historically unpopular. Support for him and the dead-hearted Lovecraftian monstrosities that rule over the Republican party is waning. I’m 35, right on the cusp between Gen X and Millenials, and the amount of way more liberal and compassionate and practical and engaged they are (generally speaking) than my immediate contemporaries is striking. I got hope. Maybe Trump and his band of miscreant toadies will fall, and maybe they’ll take enough of the Ryan/McConnell-led Axis of Evil down with them. I hope so.
If I am being honest with you, though, while I hope that happens...I can’t quite find it in myself to expect that it will. To believe that it will. To even believe that it’s probable that it will. The stress of hanging precariously between these two visions of our future is exhausting. Based on the response this self-gratifying exercise in upward-directed verbal exhortation has gotten, I think it’s safe to say that it’s not just me that feels the stress.
Sometimes you just gotta scream at the clouds.