By Mark Drolette
I wrote this about the Democrats in an April 2006 column:
“…just what in the slimy, spineless, mush-mouthed, pants-wetting, knee-knocking, finger-in-the-air, thumb-in-your-eye, two-faced, CYA-ing recent past of the Democratic Party leads you to believe that in any way, shape or form these bipedal jellyfish can lead us to the Promised Land, or even the Suggested Parking Lot, even if by the most miraculous of miracles the GOP somehow forgets to throw the vote-conversion switch in the next selection and the Dems manage to regain a majority somewhere?”
However, given their actions since November, I owe an apology:
I regret the soft-pedaling.
In the same piece, I penned:
“In fairness, there are a handful of Dems who do have real guts, folks like John Conyers, Jr., Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee. But they’ve all been marginalized to one extent or another by their whore, er, more ‘practical’ political sisters and brothers.”
So much for Conyers, who shot from the short to the shit list with the unceremonious July 23 arrest at his office of nearly fifty pro-impeachment folks foolish enough to believe him when he’d publicly bellowed about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney days earlier: “Let’s take them out!”
Speaking of Democratic doublespeak, how about that July 11 97-0 Senate vote on the belligerent Lieberman Amendment -- yes, that belligerent Lieberman -- essentially accusing Iran of murdering American military forces and of “contributing to the destabilization of Iraq”? (Change the responsible party in the amendment to the “Bush administration” and now you’re Tonkin.)
I’m no mathematician but I’d assume the clutch of forty-nine Democrats who endorsed this taunting double-dog-dare-ya might include some of the same solons who’ve done fractured forked-tongue contortions trying to explain away their previous support for the Iraq fiasco.
It’s something, isn’t it? Millions of us plied the streets before the Iraq invasion screaming to the high heavens the whole thing was bogus yet were sneeringly dismissed by the chimp-in-charge as a “focus group.” Now that it’s become obvious to all but the rock-headed, rock-solid “twenty-nine percenters” (i.e. those Americans who’d support Bush regardless if he were videotaped spraying a group of Grandmothers for Peace with an AK-47) that everything we predicted would happen has happened, former cheerleading politicians and whoreporate media types have frantically issued non-stop mea culpas about their culpability like they bought ‘em at a friendly fire sale at War-Mart. Yet here we are in the run-up to a nuclear attack on Iran and the (ir)responsible parties are doing the same damn thing.
And who’s co-signing the pending déjà vu debacle all over again? That’s right: the Democrats.
Slithering from one jaw-dropper to the next, their most recent outrage was the wiretap bill they tremulously sent to Bush that authorizes his toady nematode of an attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and sundry fellow henchworms to monitor, sans warrant, all communications that you -- yes, you, you terrorist sympathizer, you -- conduct with anyone overseas.
For any reason.
Too bad, too, ‘cause I always kinda liked the Fourth Amendment.
Yet in light of all this and so much more, otherwise well-meaning and intelligent people massage the fantastical belief that hope for America’s salvation still lies with the Democrats. They focus, Pavlonian-like, on November 2008 when Americans next engage in that strange neo-tradition of pushing electronic buttons on screens connected to, well, nothing.
I’m curious: Who out there believes the 2000 election was not square? 2004’s? Wow, that’s a lot of hands. Then what on earth makes you think the 2006 vote was on the up-and-up? Because the Dems “won”?
Hmm… Might it be possible another explanation exists, that the announced balloting results were instead tied to an “arrangement” between America’s two controlling political parties, parties now virtually alike? (After feeding at the same military-industrial complex-filled trough long enough, one war pig resembles another.)
At the risk of appearing like I’ve cheesily fattened a column by quoting myself (even if it’s true), I also wrote this in April ‘06:
“We are entirely on our own, folks, and have been for a long time. If we are to ever survive the pure hell in which America is squarely mired, it is up to us -- and only us -- to pull her out.”
So, given the Dems’ pathetic complicity in America’s ruination, what to do? Well, here’s something guaranteed to get the ruling corporatemeisters’ attention since it would affect the only thing they truly care about (their wallets): a general strike.
It’s worked before. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States records that in Seattle in 1919, “a walkout of 100,000 working people brought the city to a halt.” The five-day strike ended after “[t]he mayor swore in 2,400 special deputies…” and “[a]lmost a thousand sailors and marines were brought into the city by the U.S. government.”
Granted, a successful nationwide general strike has about as much chance of materializing as does a decision made by a Clinton not based on self. I’ve an idea, though: Maybe we could lure our notoriously apathetic fellow citizens into the event by naming it American Idle and awarding a lifetime’s supply of Big Macs to those who successfully cast votes for the most-bludgeoned participant.
If the tabulation is done by Diebold, though, forget it.
It was bad enough when Democrats weren’t doing what they should’ve been doing. It’s far worse now they’re doing what they have no business doing.
The whole thing’s revolting. Say, that gives me another idea …
