The American conscience, when it decides to act, is mighty—but it is also sluggish and vain. Americans are crushed by the weight of not fulfilling their own high expectations—so the shameful acts of one generation are often rectified by a subsequent generation unencumbered by their own complicity in such acts. So the compromise the Founding Fathers reached on the issue of slavery, in defiance of the spirit of the documents they authored, was eventually righted by the Civil War. The slavery by another name of reconstruction was ignored by a nation weary of conflict after nearly being rent in two—but eventually gave birth to the civil rights movement. The suffragettes were forced to accept a compromise on the 14th Amendment that denied them the vote—but they would ultimately prevail. Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans, Reagan gave them reparations. The American conscience is often slow to action, but not because it cannot recognize evil—but because our view of ourselves as a people guided by justice is so important to who we are that when confronted with proof of our own shortcomings, we recoil in shame and precious vanity. Eventually, with the big stuff, we usually find our way—we see this with our slow, staggering, but inevitable march towards full personhood for gays and lesbians. And while those who stained America’s honor with war crimes have escaped accountability for now, these American takfiris will eventually be judged by history with a clarity we cannot muster today. American Takfiris (via Hullabaloo) ☀
You may be a bit confused by this, thinking that the period between 2000 and 2006 was a real life demonstration of just that. But that never happened. The world was born in November of 2008 and the Democrats have been in charge of everything for as long as anyone can remember and all the problems have today happened under their watch. Isn’t it time to give the other guys a chance for once? *In case you were wondering, they would cut taxes, social security and medicare, do tort reform, allow health insurers to sell across state lines, keep Gitmo open, torture and indefinitely detail terrorist suspects, stay the course in Afghanistan and Iraq and continue to degrade the public school system. Hullabaloo ☀
There’s a long tradition of undercover muckraking that’s initiated many an important social change in this country. But this isn’t muckraking, it’s political theatre. The level of cynical deception in this “story” runs several layers deeper than anything I’ve ever seen before, tapping into some really nasty, subterranean veins of stereotype, prejudice and racism —- on everyone’s part —- to make what ends up being a completely distorted point. The fact that what should have been instantly seen as an obviously absurd proposition was taken at face value even by the US congress and the major media institutions of this country should inform us a little bit about how tenuous our racial progress might just be. This was a shameful episode deserving of more scrutiny than it’s gotten so far. Hullabaloo ☀
And Obama can say that you’re getting a lot, but also saying that it “covers everyone,” as if there’s a big new benefit is a big stretch. Nothing will have changed on that count except changing the law to force people to buy private insurance if they don’t get it from their employer. I guess you can call that progressive, but that doesn’t make it so. In fact, mandating that all people pay money to a private interest isn’t even conservative, free market or otherwise. It’s some kind of weird corporatism that’s very hard to square with the common good philosophy that Democrats supposedly espouse. Nobody’s “getting covered” here. After all, people are already “free” to buy private insurance and one must assume they have reasons for not doing it already. Whether those reasons are good or bad won’t make a difference when they are suddenly forced to write big checks to Aetna or Blue Cross that they previously had decided they couldn’t or didn’t want to write. Indeed, it actually looks like the worst caricature of liberals: taking people’s money against their will, saying it’s for their own good. —- and doing it without even the cover that FDR wisely insisted upon with social security, by having it withdrawn from paychecks. People don’t miss the money as much when they never see it. Hullabaloo ☀
…in our alleged democracy, Senators who represent 3% of the population have the power to decide something of great national import like health care reform —- and routinely do on the basis of narrow parochial interests. For those of us who live in great big states like California, one of the most frustrating things have to put up with is this constant refrain from rural and small population states that they are victimized when they clearly have veto power over the whole damned government and whose residents have far more power relative to their population. Hullabaloo ☀
There has to be a reason that the US, of all the industrialized nations, the richest country in the world, is so hostile to social welfare programs. There are a lot of contributing factors, not the least of which is our vaunted individualism. But one of the fundamental reasons America is so resistant to programs that provide for the common good is that there is a long tradition of rejecting any proposal that taxes white people to pay for programs that benefit non-whites. Hullabaloo ☀
And by the way, if anyone wants to see some real incoherence on this subject, consult the right wingers who are defending the policeman today, but who also believe that anyone has the right to shoot first and ask questions later if they “feel” threatened in their own home. By their lights, Gates should have been arrested for behaving “tumultuously” but would have been within his rights to shoot Sgt Crowley. This is why conservatives have no standing to discuss anything more complicated than Sarah Palin’s wardrobe. Hullabaloo ☀
The Bush Doctrine is the source of all this horror. The idea that you can invade another country simply because they might pose a threat someday is nothing more that than the illegal concept of preventive war (which the Bushies simply rebranded as “preemptive” war.) And it’s what leads to the idea that you can torture and imprison indefinitely in the name of that war. You don’t need a real ticking time bomb, just the belief that there might be one someday. Torture, therefore, is an intrinsic feature of the Bush Doctrine. It all flows from there. Hullabaloo ☀
These wingnuts truly seem to believe that the reason people voted for a left leaning Democratic government across the board was because they actually wanted a far right government. If that makes sense to you, then you must be a conservative too. Hullabaloo ☀
feinsodville wrote:
azspot wrote:
The problem I have with the cartoon that appeared in the New York Post newspaper drawn by Sean Delonas depicting the police shooting a chimpanzee with the caption that now they will have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill is …
Obviously, this is interesting to me (read the post below this one to find out why) and I don’t disagree with it. Except for the part that cartoons can’t convey complex ideas. I don’t think that Sean’s does, but I do believe that it’s possible and has, in fact, been done before.
I was hesitant in posting this, as at first glance, I really believe this not to be worthy of all the hullabaloo — a great lot of hateful stupidity is flaunted all across various media platforms (and even so much more so in private conversations), and now in the 21st century, we should just tag it as avoidable spam tidings and move focus along to more meaningful bits.
My own thought about the cartoon is that it is indeed racist. Or based on extreme ignornance, at least for an individual working as a political cartoonist. Perhaps too, younger, less politically (or history) savvy folk are unaware of the long wretched legacy of dehumanizing racism that depicted blacks as monkeys.
Since I cannot peer into the inner moorings of Mr. Delonas’ heart, I can only conclude there exists some mixture of hatred and ignorance, a point between 0% and 100% on those respective axis.
The NY Post needs to get with the times — and realize it’s not fashionable to mock black people anymore. Or even homosexuals. Instead, they should stick to ridiculing Muslims, torture victims and people who drive while texting.
/ducks from barrage of internet criticism…
George Bush should be tied so tightly around the Republican candidates’ necks they can hardly breathe. Every quote of support, every vote, every word of worship should be thrown in their faces and there is a ton of it. He is the most unpopular president, for the longest sustained time, of any president in history. He is the modern Herbert Hoover, a man whose name should become an epithet. Hullabaloo ☀
The Iraq War Vets are coming back to a country in which many of the military’s most ardent defenders demand they never allow anyone to see what they have been through or speak views that might force armchair generals to face the fact that war is not a game and that the American military is made up of real human beings instead of figments of a Hollywood screenwriter’s imagination. They fought for Rush Limbaugh’s fantasies. What a terrible thing to do to them. Hullabaloo ☀
Arthur and some others have recently called me out for being a ridiculous and useful idiot for the Democrats and it’s hard to argue with them. It’s certainly not that I cheerlead them for these police state votes, but it is true that I continue to support Democrats generally. I honestly don’t know what else to do. Hullabaloo ☀
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