John McCain announced that pulling the troops out of Iraq “would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”
In a recent poll, it was discovered that eighty-one percent of the American people are unhappy with the direction the country is going -- which direction I guess could be called "way downhill" or, in the parlance of our times, "fucked up bad."
Does John McCain realize that there has been a failure of political and moral leadership beyond compare in the history of this country for the last eight years?
Explain to me why I should be worried about Iraq, Iran, Al-Qaeda, and any other small group of people the paranoid fool in the White House says might conceivably be a threat to our safety when the country is fucked up bad because of serious problems with the economy, health care, poverty, education, pollution, food, water, land use, jobs, drugs, crime in the streets -- did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah -- denial of basic rights granted by the U.S. Constitution, torture, indefinite imprisonment, and spying on American citizens.
Explain to me why the Congress hasn't protected the rights of the citizens of the United States, protected the citizens of the United States from a President who has violated and ignored the law time and time again, protected the world from a President who has violated and ignored the law time and time again.
Explain to me why pulling the troops out of Iraq would be a failure of political and moral leadership. Am I to infer from that statement that McCain is the political and moral leader that will lead us to the promised land? Am I to believe that to kill and be killed for who-knows-what in Iraq for decades to come is successful political and moral leadership?
And then there is the hundreds of billions of dollars, U.S. dollars that are worth much less in other countries of the world than they were eight years ago, that the hypothetical War Against Terror, with which the President has terrorized the American populace, has cost, the trillions of dollars it will cost, the loss of prestige and credibility among other countries and peoples of the world and what respect was given to this country by others in the world, debts that will be left for our future generations to repay.
While our wise and knowledgeable President and many of his ilk have been denying that global warming exists, that the ice shelves in the Arctic and Antarctic are melting, that the environment is fucked up bad, the time to act to stave off environmental disaster, leaving the planet a mess for our posterity, might have passed by.
Back in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when people weren't anesthetized by 750 high-def, big screen TV channels broadcasting "reality" and video games played for hours and days across the ether against unseen players, when the news media really reported what was actually happening in the world, particularly, the War in Vietnam and its effect upon the country and not the propaganda and cowardly sound bites of today, blood flowed in the streets of America, the blood of protesters and revolutionaries dissatisfied with the direction the country was going.
Now, with the country fucked up bad, nobody really cares. And the people, anesthetized, hear only what they want to hear, isolate themselves from their neighbors, secluding themselves in an alternate reality. John McCain wants to maintain the status quo -- stay the course, so to speak. That phrase has a familiar ring to it. Where have I heard that before?
I'm just a stupid, stupid guy trying to make a living in the rustbelt. I see banks in financial trouble, victims of their own greed, being bailed out by an ineffective federal government, foreclosures at an all-time high, the victims of which are, unlike the money lenders, politically powerless and not being bailed out by an uncaring federal government, many people out of work, their unemployment payments ending and being uncounted in the government's unemployment numbers and jobs being lost to other countries and made obsolete by technology without re-training the workers, schools in need of repair -- literally and figuratively -- subject to the unfunded mandates of the federal government to improve test scores, but not turn out educated young people prepared for this strange, new world.
I volunteered to tutor an 11th grader who can't read. Not being able to read -- that constitutes a failure of political and moral leadership in this country. I give the homeless on the street the money they ask for, knowing that money is used to buy cheap drugs or cheaper booze, because I know that will alleviate their pain for at least a little while. Not taking care of the people in this country -- that constitutes a failure of political and moral leadership in this country.
And there are many out there who think I'm something other than bitter and angry, and that those who say I am bitter and angry are somehow out of touch with reality. Look out the window at the actual world instead of at a TV screen or at a crowd of hand-picked supporters; open your eyes and your minds to see what is really happening to this country.
Posted by Bill at April 12, 2008 07:20 PM