Keep The Lipstick Off The Pig
As we bask in either the glory of making history or the relief that the most loathed global figure since Hitler will finally exit the White House, it's tempting to follow Obama's lead and focus only on the positive, on 'where we agree', and to move past the partisanship of the past eight years.
And who can blame us? Scrolling through the endless slides of ecstatic Americans of every demographic, tears streaming down their faces as they hug their neighbors in jubilation, it's natural to want to forget the fetid stench of Ann Coulter's bile, Donald Rumsfeld's torture, Alberto Gonzales's spying and judicial racketeering, and George Bush's lies.
But this would be a mistake.
However badly we'd love to flush the karmic toilet, we should pause to ask ourselves how likely it is the forces that gave us Enron, Jack Abramoff, economic collapse, millions foreclosed into homelessness, Blackwater, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, waterboarding, economic collapse, abstinence-only education--the list really is endless--has been humbled into changing their venal ways.
Not a chance.
No, the party that still tries to spin Ronald Reagan into 'the Great Communicator' to make us forget his trickle-down economics and unprecedented deficit, nuns murdered by illegally funded contras, and battle stories from a world war he never fought, is already re-branding the rancid old GOP wine into a new bottle, hoping that in your history-making reverie you'll forget the policies that got us into the hole we're praying Obama can pull us out of.
The rewriting of history is already in full swing. For a week now we've been told incessantly Obama won because he ran 'a center-right campaign' in a 'center-right country' when only a week ago he was a Socialist. John McCain humbly delivered a 'gracious and heartfelt' concession speech, when only four hours earlier he was calling Obama a Marxist, a terrorist, a Muslim, and a liar.
And just this weekend, confessed drug addict and ACLU client-wannabe Rush Limbaugh declared the economy 'Obama's recession,' the plummeting stock market caused by a global 'fear of an Obama economy.'
Does this sound like a party suddenly chastised into soul-searching to you?
While you were running down the streets in exultation last Tuesday night, the largest taxpayer bailout to corporate America in history was being administered by no-bid Bush crony Reuben Jeffery, who lost billions of taxpayer cash in Paul Bremer's Iraq.
The next morning, while you mass-emailed cell phone pics of your Obama party to your friends, the Bush Interior Department looked into weakening the laws protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining, drinking water from mountain coal mining runoff, and gutting The Clean Air Act.
And just yesterday when Obama met with Bush, the most disliked president in history magnanimously said he'd 'consider' a bailout to the American auto industry if the Democrats in Congress will pas another disastrous 'free trade' pact, this time with Columbia.
Boy, does he sound chastened.
And what about the international joke that is Sarah Palin, do you think she's been discouraged by her two months of ethics violations, hate-baiting McCarthyism and blatant ignorance of American history, world geography, and international politics? Or do you think she's already putting her team together to come back at us in 2012 with a whole new set of Rovian catchphrases and winks?
Still feel like partying?
No, the values voters that booed John McCain when he mentioned the next president of the United States in his 'gracious' concession speech are not going to disappear because you took the time to pull a lever in a voting booth.
The thing we feared most these past few weeks was not that Obama would lose the election but that the Republicans would steal it. This will not change overnight.
So while it's great--indeed crucial--for Obama to appear to be above the fray of the ugly divide-and-conquer politicking that has poisoned this country for the past eight years, it's important for we the people to keep our outrage over these policies alive.
Because America did not end up here via mismanagement, mistakes or ineptitude; we ended up here via exquisitely executed policy. The largest budget surplus in the history of the world became the largest budget deficit in the history of the world, and as bridges collapse, hospitals and schools close and our economy implodes, let us never forget where our money went and how.
The honeymoon is over; not Obama's, but ours. We cried, we yelled, we screamed, we danced. Now we have to get to work.
Now we take that same fervor that lead us to man phone banks, campaign door-to-door, lick envelopes, hang posters, give money and wait for ours in the rain to vote, and we inject it into to Community Board meetings, Town Hall press conferences, and Planning and Zoning hearings.
We go to School Board meetings and address the lunacy of teaching our children in science class the world was created 6,000 years ago. We write letters to the editor correcting factual inaccuracies linking abortion to breast cancer, gay marriage to pedophilia, or global warming to natural causes.
And we correct people in conversation when they link the war in Iraq to 9/11. We complain to the police when our pharmacist won't fill our prescriptions. We immediately march down to the statehouse when a book is banned from or restricted in our libraries.
There is no triangulation with lies, suppression, greed, or discrimination.
Because the loonies will be back, and they will be bucking for the whole appalling mess to repeat itself, with new catchphrases, wedge issues and faces, carrying updated bios that say 'former aide to Stephen Hadley' or 'a key figure in WHIG,' or 'chief researcher for Alberto Gonzales.' There they'll be, delivering the updated, think-tank fresh versions of 'secure the borders,' and 'protect marriage' and 'the ownership society.'
Be ready.
As we embrace The Man Who Will Lead Us Out of Here let us not forgot the The Man Who Dumped Us Here.
And when some wide-eyed triangulator in a bar waxes pseudo-pundit and wistfully wonders if the former GOP presidential candidate might now go back to being 'the old John McCain,' rather than bask in the touchy-feely glow of the new political day dawning, ask him if he means the one from the Keating Five scandal.
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If we as a people ignore and refuse our most basic duty to expect, demand, and also practice accountability (and responsibility)--in ALL aspects--then we as a people have given over our rights to those who will continue to manipulate and control them for their interests, and NEVER for ours.
This blog should certainly be at the top of the list of them all on this website, and stay there until it has gotten enough attention and has been posted elsewhere, just like the Paulsen speech this morning should be the top headline story on this site - now he wants to quadruple the taxpayer's 'loan', and invest the money. If, as Paulsen said, waiting for a couple of weeks for the Senate to make this decision worsened the situation and created the need to quadruple the amount, how is investing the money instead of using it for what was originally planned, going to stem that downward spiral? Certainly if the money actually exists, it was already earning dividends.
I watch a few news shows... why is it that this is the only spot I have noticed this bit:
"And just yesterday when Obama met with Bush, the most disliked president in history magnanimously said he'd 'consider' a bailout to the American auto industry if the Democrats in Congress will pas[s] another disastrous 'free trade' pact, this time with Columbia."
The only 'trickle down' effect is going to be the effect of our ignorance.
Our ability to be transcendent and transformative of the stagnation of our inclination to underachieve is shocking and mind boggling. Mr. Obama has tapped into the right spirit -- that is inspiration. However, if he does not know how to channel it or if the people are unwilling to respond...
I agree with the sentiments completely, but would have preferred a little less vindictiveness. Althought it seems deserved, name calling gives the impression that those so referred to are stupid and not worthy of consideration. This detracts from what should be reasoned, logical discourse. The right-wingers who have left the mess for the rest of us to clean up are smart. They stay awake and alert while much of the general population and its elected representatives snooze. We can infer from experience that the right-wingers have had their ear to the ground constantly, were not surprised by the election results, and had laid careful plans. Even as the Huffpost, Daily Kos, and others exult in the great Obama Victory, billions of dollars are going out the door to the likes of AIG. (Oh, yes, we do hear that "legislators are outraged," at some expenditures, like AIG's outings, but by then the money is gone, gone, gone.) Plans are afoot right now to "rescue" General Motors and the left wing seems eeriely silent, as it did while a majority of Democrats voted to bail out some banks! These tactics have resulted in many of these right wingers becoming as rich as Croesus. They don't have to care what political steps will follow in the near future. Does anybody believe they won't use some of that wealth to promote their strategies in the future? A battle may have been won, but the war continues unabated.
...and this is why we continue to lose and yet we think that we have time to waste. Stuck on stupid, wallowing in the mire of our inability to escape our feeble nature and find a new way, a new course; innovation stimulated by a need to change...a realization of just how wrong we have been. Yes I can recite a long list of accomplishments but I was told to rest on your laurels is a sure sign of decline and becoming fat and lazy. I can also point to the ills and transgressions of the nation. I will be told that I should be more positive. Yet to forget where you came from is never to leave there -- which is only acceptable if where you came from was a decent place (think Holocaust museum and Auschwitz as bad origin transforming to different place with remembrance). In the case of America, the foundation has kinks and therefore we have kinks. That built upon the wretched shall be wretched until a full accounting, a full acknowledgement, and a full renunciation -- not just in words -- but also -- in deeds occurs. The Japanese Americans were interned, the Latino Americans were deported and played, and the African Americans were attacked at the spiritual level along with the native whose land was stolen -- even though the native did not think in terms of land ownership or contract law, you know, forked tongue expressions of humanity.
It’s all game!
Perfect post. Thanks.
The true extent of the crimes of Bushbaby Inc. are yet to be revealed. How fast these things will surface remains to be seen, but truth eventually rises to the top.
Meanwhile let's not forget that Obama cannot do what he's mandated to do without help from all the rest of us, the grassroots, self-organizing people who elected him. Working locally, neighbor to neighbor and within town, city, and county governments is at least as important as working at the State and Federal levels.
Thanks for the reminder that the work of recovery has just begun and that the mindsets that got us here will not go quietly into the night, never to be seen or heard again. We can pause for a moment of rest and appreciation, then it's back to the hard but noble effort of societal improvement.
Eternal vigilance always is necessary when dealing with the hate-mongers of the Far Right.
Wilbur
Great writing Tom, thanks.
An accurate reminder. I wish eight years of Bush hadn't happened because it is a huge chunk out of each American life. We stood by and watched our beauty and treasure age and disappear while the Hannity, Limbaugh, Oreilly and Coulter express rumbled through the countryside spewing hatred out its ugly smokestack and blaming anything "librul" for our demise. Obama has, however, asked for civility. But like Saddam Hussein, as long as we keep the public informed and keep them in check, they will be less of a threat. I don't think, for instance, that Keith is going to let up any time soon, reminding us of the the current destructiveness of right wing idiocy.
The Glade air freshener of devious plotting is not going to kill that smell. That funk is heart deep and it speaks of a rotting pus-filled core. Unless one sees signs of purification by intense and sustained fire, the damaging and tainted GOP mindset will never change; theirs will remain policies of decay and demise. A spark for the fire of purifying retribution would be public acknowledgement and full disclosure of the details of guilt and shame. Burn baby burn would be jail time, and multiple, decades long sits, in the corner, with the dunce cap on. Until they admit they are wrong, how can they ever be right? Until they pay for the crimes, how can they expect to be free from suspicion and the rise of the posse comitatus (us -- we the people), galvanized to bring’ em in when, finally, we have had enough of lawlessness and the fumes from heartless and hapless corpse like approaches to human governance?
Yes, we celebrate Obama, but the smell of what happened lingers, and that smell is the old and illegitimate approach realizing illegitimacy in the fire of a new day, a new mindset, a new approach..
Excellent, Tom. Spot on, indeed. As Rush The Gasbag Limbaugh noted post-election, "The game has begun." This is not the time for complacency or a collective kumbaya. The right wingnuts are not going away, nor are willing or able to grow a heart. We have to remain vigilant and relentless in promoting progressive causes. (In other words, what else is new?)
I don't know if the Rebublicans can afford to come back into power until civil rights, the economy and international relations have been somewhat restored. Not much left to plunder, but maybe I'm being niave.
This article is spot on. Moments after O won, I turned to my wife and said, "this is truly worth celebrating, but I sure hope that people don't forget how we got to where we are, and who brought us there." We've got to continue to connect the dots, out loud, so that the mythology of Reaganomics can finally die.
And, (as others have suggested) we need to win not only in the realm of domestic public opinion to do something about the nearly half of the country that was ready to sign up for more by voting for McCain. We've got to show the world that we are willing to hold Bush and Co. accountable for their violations of law. Conservatives will say we're just being vindictive, but we shouldn't cave in. Karl Rove should finally be arrested for contempt of congress. Rumsfeld should be held responsible for authorizing torture. Gonzales should be prosecuted for violating FISA laws. If America wants to have real credibility around the world, it will take more than a new president. We'll need to demonstrate a willingness to hold our own government accountable. When America does good in the world, we should be proud, but when we do bad, we must take ownership of that as well. And there must be no confusion about who made (and supported) the decisions that led us so far off course.
Thank you so much for writing this! Constant vigilance is the only way to keep order in a democracy like ours. With so much freedom, the greedy and corrupt are bound to abuse the honor system to enrich themselves as much as possible, so it's our duty to keep an eye on our representatives in government, from the newest Representative to the latest appointed-for-life Supreme Court judge.
Even Obama himself, although he appears to be the last person you'd expect to be corrupt, should be watched by everyone, liberals and conservatives, just as closely as anyone else. Now that we're in the YouTube era, it's much easier to hold our representatives accountable, and they need to know that we will do so regardless of party affiliation or popularity or even winking sex appeal.
Of course the attacks from the Fox News crowd have to stop--oversight is in no way similar to idle speculation, wild rumor, and fearmongering. Just the facts, please.
George Bush fostered a climate that gave rise to Sarah Palin. Palin represents every thing that is wrong in America. ..........
http://the
These are all the facts I know them to be since Reagan was elected, too, and I'll never forget and yet I, too, feel that the world around me has already forgotten. It's nice to see there is at least one other person in the world who sees this history as it is, unvarnished and ugly. And, you're right, McCain was never McCain. The article about him in Rolling Stone, "Make Believe Maverick" should be required reading any time someone says "that's the McCain I knew." The concession speech was all touchy-fealy and fuzzy and it would have been nice to believe -- fairy tales. We didn't get a fairy-tale ending on Election Day. The Obama Administration has a mandate and so does every American who cares about this country.
"For a week now we've been told incessantly Obama won because he ran 'a center-right campaign' in a 'center-right country' when only a week ago he was a Socialist.
Spot on -- and by some of the same people (e.g. Bill "Klueless" Kristol).
The cure for this, of course, is for Obama and the Democratic Congress to implement progressive reforms and let Americans (who have forgotten the lessons painfully learned in the 1930s) see that they WORK and that right-wing laissez faire and dribble-down crap DOES NOT WORK.
Its not that it doesn't work. It just doesn't work for you.
Say it with me.
Trickle Down.
Trickle Down.
Trickle Down.
Trickle Down.
There, don't you feel better now ?
Everythings going to be fine trust me.
What you said, Right on. Especialy the first sentance.
Here is a fact that will never change.
Fools and A-Holes are born at a far greater rate than one every minute.
WAKE UP, Stay awake and suffer neither one gladly or otherwise.
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