So I had to file the column before I knew what the election results would be, and rest assured next week’s installment of Inside Athenae’s Offline Brain will consist of nothing but the words “whoo” and “pwned,” but given all the bipartisan jibber-jabber going around yesterday, here’swhat I think of all that horseshit:
There’s plenty going on in America today that deserves to be talked about in partisan terms and talked about with the passion due its importance. Six years of near-unfettered Republican rule have brought this country to this point — mired in an unpopular war, shortchanging our military, secretly detaining our own, purporting to fight terrorism but spending far more time fighting gays. People who are angry about this state of affairs aren’t being partisan — they’re being awake.
If people vote against aid to Katrina victims, as 11 Republican members of Congress did a year ago, they deserve to be called heartless. If people aim to gut Social Security, as the Bush administration has done, they deserve to be called thieves. If people call war heroes lying cowards and grieving parents media whores, they deserve every name the English language can invent for them and a few borrowed from Latin as well.
If a president describes months of mayhem in Iraq as a mere “comma” in that nation’s history, he should be denounced in the strongest terms.
If career politicians find that too rough-and-tumble for their delicate sensibilities, they should seek employment elsewhere, in a job that doesn’t require that which they clearly believe to be beneath them.
A.
Yes. Absolutely. Amen. Bono Athenae! (That’s the only Latin I can think of at the moment that *isn’t* a nasty word for these evil people)
I also think it’s time for the public to grow up. If your candidate for the house had an affair 20 years ago, BFD. Let it go. If he smoked pot in college, who gives a rat’s ass. If she went through bankruptcy after college because of the ridiculous expense of higher education, that’s just a good reason to elect her, ’cause she’ll be extra motivated to fix that problem.
Politicians never have been and never will be perfect. And every time we let a negative attack ad about “character” change our minds, we’re just telling our politicians they need to lie and hide shit if they want to get elected.
That said, since I missed most of the thank you thread from last night, here’s my thanks:
Y’all are about the best thing that has happened to me in the last six years (after my marriage). Honestly, I was so depressed after 2000, and it just got worse and worse. And what kept me going was knowing that I was not alone.
It just feels so damned good to finally win!
Thanks particularly for the live chat. I had to step away from the computer last night because I was starting to get sucked into Eschaton. Part of the reason I came over here as my commenting home was because it’s so easy to spend way too much time commenting. Live chat was like that. So while I would love to see that for special events, if you make it regular, I’d be, well, fucked.
i don’t think much bush will be involved much.
but then dickie will have to tell him to be an asshole.
Echoing Buggy’s praise for your chair-rending, and especially the thanks for allowing us to come together here. At the risk of sounding like the Cheers theme song, whenever I have to log in and go to the profile page, I get a warm feeling seeing that “since 2004” under my name.
It’s nice to have a place to belong.
Concise and to the point, Athenae. I’m sure you could have gone on for paragraph after paragraph, but it’s best that you didn’t (this time).
–rudeboy
Very well said, A.
.
that was me, virgotex