I wrote, last August, about my perception that certain audacious political acts were a sure sign of desperation in those who want to stymie progressive action in our culture.
Tonight, I commented:
"If I could give one thing to every progressive I know, it would be more confidence in the inevitability of human evolution."
This is not rhetoric for me. It represents my deepest beliefs.
I believe that progressive, expansive attitudes/action -- attitudes and action that lead us to ever-increasing connection with other humans, other beings, our planet, and the Universe that we live in -- are the natural trajectory of our evolutionary path.
I want to bottle that somehow, and give a big dose of it to every human I know.
I've noticed, lately, that many people near my own age have been popping up with the question: "What happened to us? We used to be so idealistic! We were going to change the world!"
I've noticed, lately, that many people older than I have been popping up with the question: "What can I do? I'm old. I'm glad I won't be around to see the fallout from this mess."
I've noticed, lately, that many people younger than I have been popping up with the question: "What can I do? I just have to deal with the crap these other generations have left for me."
I think that, in this culture, we are trained to believe that idealism, optimism, and hopefulness is the bailiwick of the young and the foolish.
I say: Fuck that.
For all progressives out there, regardless of age, who have swallowed the numbing drug of ennui/apathy/disenchantment, I want to say: "Buck up. Don't you recognize the screams of dying dinosaurs when you hear them? "
The people who want to drag us back to previous eras of oppression will not win the next election. They won't. They know it.
Isn't it time we know it?
Isn't it time that we stop acting like an entrenched, embattled minority, and step forward to act with the integrity and idealism that we want our government leaders to embody?
I want to encourage you to nurture your hope, your idealism, and your vision for the way the world can be -- to consciously feed this part of you, every day, as you would nourish a beloved child -- to vote, not for a candidate who is considered "electable", but for a candidate who actually represents your vision.
One of the things that I was painfully aware of during the 2000 and 2004 elections was this: Most progressives weren't really voting "for" anyone -- they were voting "against" someone.
Given what I understand of energy-dynamics, this simply isn't effective -- as the old saying goes: "Fighting for Peace is like Fucking for Birth-Control."
In my lifetime, I've witnessed: JFK's assassination, the Watts Riots, the Vietnam War, Watergate, Reagonomics, a major recession, several stock-market dips that everyone knew would destroy us, the First Gulf War, 9/11, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, etc., etc., etc..
In my lifetime, I've witnessed the vagaries of many economic and political cycles, and the surge and counter-surge of social movements that have changed the roles of people of color, women, and queers in daily life:
I'm trying to say: Things do change. Things have changed.
I believe that they changed because individual human beings had the audacity to remain hopeful, idealistic, and alive -- that they practiced their integrity, and insisted upon their vision, and refused the easy out that is despair.
It doesn't matter how old, or how young, you are. It matters that you remain engaged.
The world that you want to live in is possible.
And if that strikes you as completely idealistic -- sappy -- wev -- then take a big old slug from Portly's Everlasting Jug of Possibility, and give up your fashionable pessimism, already.The Awkward, Gangly Form of Hope
[cross-posted]
Hope is a teenager
who never learned to be cool,
or how to slouch with feigned indifference
against the lockers of my heart.
Instead, it drops its books
and stumbles into strangers --
pushes its glasses into place,
and proceeds to class despite all odds.
The popular kids may pass with derisive stares,
with skin-deep beauty that cannot hide their fear.
Hope just keeps gaffing its way along,
unfashionable, clumsy, embarrassingly authentic.
© Carol Steinel 2007
The Awkward, Gangly Form of Hope
The Wart On Christmas
"Nothing like a good piece of hickory."Did the GOP hire Dusty Springfield as their new Rove?
Because their new strategy seems to be wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'.
CNN just aired a segment with DANA BASH- who always makes me scream- about the GOP contenders and their thoughts on Benazir Bhutto's assassination.
John McCain pretends to be Presidential.
Rudy Giuliani shrieks 9/11.
Willard Romney believes in great earnestness.
Fred Thompson sees the end of civilization.
Mike Huckabee just wants to pray.
Watch!
Get Well Soon, Pam!
Send good thoughts to Our Bloggrrl of the Galling Gall Bladder, who is out of surgery and doing fine and probably tried to negotiate a local anaesthetic so she wouldn't have to miss a moment of blogging, because she's wonderfully nutz that way.
We love you, Pam! Get well soon.
Oh Shut Up
Benazir Bhutto hasn't been dead twelve hours and we're already getting this crap:
Obama Adviser: Bhutto Assassination Reminds Us That Hillary Made Wrong Call On Iraq WarHonestly, sometimes people just don't know when to STFU.
REPORTER: But looking ahead, does the assassination put on the front burner foreign policy credentials in the closing days?
AXELROD: Well, it puts on the table foreign policy judgment, and that's a discussion we welcome. Barack Obama had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, and he warned at the time it would divert us from Afghanistan and al Qaeda, and now we see the effect of that. Al Qaeda's resurgent, they're a powerful force now in Pakistan, they may have been involved -- we've been here, so I don't know whether the news has been updated, but there's a suspicion they may have been involved in this.
I think his judgment was good. Senator Clinton made a different judgment, so let's have that discussion.
Quote of the Day
"McCain: Crazy Warmonger For A Long Time" Edition
"Even I occasionally get suckered into thinking that McCain might not be so bad, so it's useful to remind ourselves that he was really into going to war with everyone before it was cool. He was Bill 'WAR EVERYWHERE' Kristol's boy in 2000. He really likes war."—Atrios
No Terrorism in America Since 9/11
That's what the Bush administration keeps telling us. Except, ya know, there has been terrorism in America since 9/11, but when it's terrorism against uppity women (and their allies) who have the gall to think they ought to be able to control their own bodies or be free from abuse, it doesn't count.
Via Vanessa, here's more terrorism that doesn't count, as two separate Albuquerque Planned Parenthood facilities were vandalized on Christmas Day:
Firefighters were called out early this morning to Planned Parenthood's medical offices in the northeast part of the city. The roof was on fire, but crews were able to quickly extinguish the flames. Fire officials have confirmed that some type of incendiary device was found on the roof.One city. Three separate incidents against three separate clinics in the span of one month, two of them involving arson.
Hours earlier, authorities responded to another Planned Parenthood clinic to find that its windows had been broken. Authorities say damage at both clinics was minimal.
The incidents follow a fire just weeks ago at Abortion Acceptance of Albuquerque.
But no terrorism, of course. That's only done by brown people, who do such things on behalf of a god who goes by a different name. Oh, and it has to affect men, too.
Straight men. Don't get your hopes up that a molotov cocktail through the window of Manhole and a dozen incidents of gay-bashing are going to be called terrorism anytime soon either, my little fagulas. I mean, you're practically women, anyway. Yuck!
Before and After
[O]f course, there are much, much larger political implications to Bhutto's assassination and so the news tonight will likely focus on the implications for us as a country and on the campaign and blah blah blah, yes, it's all really important. But, also, a lot of regular people died today, too. Some of them were poor, some were old, and they died taking advantage of their (current) right of free assembly, which most of us probably take for granted. They died and were horrifically injured participating in the political process of their country, even knowing that in the end it might not make any difference because they might still end up under the thumb of a dictator. ... They had families and lives and probably jobs when they left their houses this morning to see a political candidate speak who probably half-suspected she wouldn't make it to the election alive but ran anyway. And it makes all the backstabbing and machinations of our candidates trying to plant stupid rumors about drug use and out-of-wedlock babies and all the rest of it seem that much more nauseating and petty to me today.Me, too.
Below are pictures of the campaign rally before and after the suicide bombing. There are more with Megan's post, heartbreakingly illustrating how drastically things can change in an instant.
He Hates Muslims Best of All!
New Hampshire State Co-Chair of Veterans for Rudy, John Deady, supports Giuliani because he will chase Muslims, who are "smart, in their own way," back to "their caves."
Transcript: He has got, I believe, the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history, and that is the rise of the Muslims. And, make no mistake about it, this hasn't happened for a thousand years, these people are very, very dedicated—they're also very smart, in their own way—and we need to keep their feet to the fire, and keep pressing these people, until we defeat them or chase them back to their caves or, in other words, get rid of them.
Meanwhile, Rudy uses Bhutto's assassination to remind America that he should be elected president because he's the guy to win "the Terrorists' War on Us."
[TPM video originally from The Guardian. H/T Blogenfreude.]
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Fred Thompson gives us a lesson in how sexism works:
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson on Wednesday teased Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying "there is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year."Did you see what happened there?
…"Who are we going to set on the road — what man are we going to set on the road — to lead us and to stand against this assault?" he asked, emphasizing the word 'man.' He couched his comments by saying "I say the word man advisedly. Now I've got a daughter that's going to be president some day, I know it, and I am all for a woman president, just not this year, not next year."
Without saying Clinton's name, he added: "There is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year, let's all agree on that."
Thompson continued to refer to the next president as a man who should represent conservative principles and values, and should be examined "by what he believes and by where he's been and what he's done."
He wants to say that Hillary isn't fit to be president, but instead of critiquing her on the issues, or even naming her, he just goes after her sex. And in doing so, he impugns a hell of a lot more women, because there are certainly women "on the horizon" qualified to be president next year, even if they aren't seeking the presidency. Arlen has a few suggestions; I'd add Madeleine Albright to that list (though she can't run by virtue of her non-American birth) and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Nancy Pelosi, just for a start, and there are plenty of people in Thompson's own party who believe that Libby Dole and Condi Rice should be running. But Thompson pisses on all of them because he went after Hillary's sex instead of going after Hillary's record.
Then with a requisite "but I'm not a sexist" flourish, he notes he's got a daughter who will "be president some day." Only in a culture steeped in misogyny would asserting support of his grade school-aged daughter's hypothetical presidency be considered anything but stark evidence of the breathtaking amplitude of his prejudice; it's the ultimate exceptionalism—no woman but his own daughter is suited to the task. Instead, it's offered up as proof that he's not sexist. Amazing.
And providing the final touch to distance this overt display of sexism from its being called what it is, the story is reported as Thompson "teasing" Hillary. Ha ha—what a joker! It's especially funny to make jokes about "women" being unqualified since there's never been a female president! Ha ha ha! See, it's funny because Hillary's the only woman running! What a tease!
I wonder if it would be considered hilarious if Thompson had instead "teased" Obama by saying: "There is no black man on the horizon that ought to be president next year, let's all agree on that."
Something tells me not so much.
Sweetness, I was only joking when I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed…
Question of the Day
What end-of-year movie are you most looking forward to, or have most enjoyed thus far?
Every year, Liss' and my Christmas gift to each other is a couple of trips to the movies and some nice dinners. Tonight, we saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which was totally awesome. Liss' four word movie review is: Rollicking good fun, bitchez.
Happy St. Stephen's Day!
Because the Hoff's middle name is Stephen. Coincidence? I think not!
(Warning: The Hoff may cause seizures:)
I Write Letters on Behalf of My State
Dear Big 12,
You really shouldn't give Bobby Knight the time of day, no less a job. If you do, be prepared for this shit pretty flippin' regular-like.
Also, watch for flying chairs.
Love,
Indiana
Breaking News
Quote of the Day
"Liberal Fascism is such a transparently sloppy, shifty, intellectually rinky-dink endeavor that a show of anger would be a larger expenditure of emotion than a book this second-rate deserves."—James Wolcott, discussing a review of Jonah Goldberg's magnum crapus.
This Week In Tacky
Ted Nugent hits a (possibly NSFW) new low... This seems in bad taste even for Nugent. I was about to ask what it was about his love of preteen girls and subjugation of women that right-wingers like so much, but then I thought about it a moment.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Please enjoy this tender moment from the He-Ra and She-Ra Christmas Special, which is probably a lot like Christmas at the White House.
[Thanks, Michael K.]
Question of the Day
Please consider this your Christmas Eve open thread for virtual drinking, shootin' the shit, and/or wev.
Happy Hoffmas!
