Fear And Shame in the Red Zone

I gave up trying to do political commentary on this blog some time ago.

I don’t have the resources that real reporters and pundits have. I don’t have the time. I don’t have fact checkers.

I’m a partisan and I can’t help showing it, but who really cares what I think? There are a lot of people who think like me — maybe not enough of them vote in national elections, but certainly my views are well-represented in the press and on the internet. No one is ever really convinced by argument, and my viewpoint isn’t needed to help you clarify your thoughts.

But keeping my mouth shut hasn’t reversed America’s decline into fascism, and now I’m scared, ashamed and depressed. Take a look at this video on Blue Girl’s blog, and read Vikki’s recent diatribe on her blog. These are among the reasons for my current malaise.

Beginning with the theft of the 2000 presidential election and continuing with the relentless right-wing political chicanery that has been going on ever since, the fear-mongering, and the corporatization of our government, and the bigotry and racism, and the spying and torturing and invading and occupying and the ransacking of the Treasury and the outsourcing and the union-busting and the profiteering and the subversion of Justice (both the department and the concept), my spirit has been beaten down.

I just want to play my music, hang with my friends, visit a little bit of this beautiful planet and be left alone. I grew up in what now seems like a more sane time. The political pendulum was swinging left. We the People ended the war in Vietnam, established civil rights as law, threw out a corrupt Republican president, created environmentalism. (We did some stupid stuff, too, but it was harmless, I hope.)

I don’t want to take to the streets and protest. It doesn’t do any good, since this administration doesn’t care what The People think. The opposition, whom we elected to make some changes, is not acting fast enough. They’re protecting their interests when they were sent to clean up the mess. I’m not the boss, and I no longer believe that enough of us can band together to force the authorities to change their immoral and self-serving ways. Too many of us are hypnotized in front of too many HD Plasma screens to even get a quorum on the streets.

But it’s not just about me and my shame and my discontent. A lot of astute observers are now certain that the U.S. will attack Iran, and soon. You couldn’t believe it when the Republicans stole that election in 2000? You withheld judgment for four years because you thought it just couldn’t happen here, right? Along the way you were shocked over and over again with the wiretapping, the torturing, the imprisonment without charges, the failure to respond to Katrina, the use of the Justice Department to further rig the electoral process, blah, blah, blah. Then the ’04 election was stolen, too, and it was too late.
Is it possible that this administration, which has so far exceeded the bounds of morality, which has destroyed America’s reputation and its economy, stretched our military to the breaking point and killed over a million Iraqis in its pursuit of ever more oil (and booty) — is it possible that they haven’t yet finished fucking things up? An attack on Iran might be the only thing this administration could do that would be stupider and more devastating to the security of the world than the crimes they have already committed.

A few years ago I’d have said you were crazy to suggest something like that. Now I think you’re crazy if you are not afraid that it could happen.