“It’s shameful either way, Sol.”
“It’s life either way, Seth.”
— Deadwood
So the three posts directly below, ie Holden’s poll/speaks posts and Scout’s video clips, illustrate pretty nicely what the Democrats gave in to this week. (Not all of them, and John Kerry, you’re back on the boyfriend list, and Russ, you never left it, but most of them.) It can’t be said often enough now: Democrats caved to a president the American people despise, in order to continue a war the American people want ended.
And it’s things like this are what make me want to tear my hair out. Because you’re going to get fucked with it anyway, guys. You’re going to get called pussies and worse. You’re going to go home to a Memorial Day weekend and be criticized for trying to stop the war. You were gonna get slammed with it anyway from the moment you were elected. So long as somebody, somewhere, sometime, might have maybe smoked pot and listened to Neil Young you’re gonna get nailed for being a military-hating hippie. I thought you’d all gotten over it, guys. I thought November might have been the national therapy session you fuckers seem to need, in order to feel confident in the size of your governmental cocks again. I guess you need more than that.
Maybe you need the White House, too. And a veto-proof majority. Oh, but then, there might be someone on talk radio or GOD FORBID Fox News who’d call you a chump, so you still would have to compromise yourselves in order to “get something done” and “restore civility” and a whole bunch of other shit that nobody really cares about as long as you’re making their lives better. News flash to the known universe. The Bush administration didn’t lose its shine because it was rapacious and merciless and nasty and mean and people were oh so tired of that. It lost its shine because people’s lives started sucking and they connected that to their crappy leadership.
Nobody cares what they call you so long as you’re improving their lot in life. Nobody cares what they call you so long as they can feel good about being represented by you. You do stuff like this, and it doesn’t matter what Republicans say, because even if they were civil and fair (and they won’t be), you’re still the guy who got taken by a dude who says things like, “They need to be eating US beef. It’s good for ’em. They’ll like it.” You just got hosed by THAT GUY. You are now the equivalent of Goliath, only instead of being slain by David, you just got slain by Flounder from Animal House. Nobody, and I mean nobody, feels good about being represented by that guy.
What keeps killing me is that the way around this is so EASY. Just be the people we elected you to be. Be obstinate. Be unreasonable. Be good goddamn right for once in your miserable lives because this is a time when you’re either right or you lose your fucking soul. Be steadfast. Be the people we elected you to be. Good God, it can’t be that hard. I can think of a thousand jobs in the world that are harder than following your conscience and the dictates of your office, and most of them involve walking point in various hellholes in and around Iraq, and if those people can get up every day and do their jobs where they are, there’s no reason you can’t do your jobs and bring them home.
Schmucks.
A.