Pissing in the Liberal Punchbowl-Again

By Joe Bageant
Created Nov 12 2006 - 12:13pm

-- The Democratic conga line in the American House of Lords

By Joe Bageant

Saw the talking heads today, speaking the priestly tongue. Saw them nodding
seriously, using words like 'gravitas' and a few others that originated in
the bosom of Americana. Heard one of the newly elected basically state that
things would be business as usual, don't expect a lot of changes. Rather
scornfully and testily the idea of impeaching W was dismissed. Well, why the
hell not? No answer, just the satisfied, mildly contemptuous smile. Oh, yes,
and there'll be a lot of 'bipartisan' things going on.
---Key Bugle, Internet denizen, retired army seargent

Democrats are dancing around the head of Donald Rumsfeld like a scene from
Lord of the Flies, heating up the tar buckets and plucking the goose in
eager, nay, wild, anticipation. Personally, I love the smell of tar and
feathers in the morning and am quite willing to march on the White House as
we speak. I like revenge as well as the next guy. But I also consider myself
a compassionate man, one perfectly willing to let Bush's cabinet choose
whether they wanna play the mommy or the daddy in the Big House, then move
on to the real problems, such as the fact that a gallon of Old Grandad is
nearly 50 bucks here in Virginia, or the fact that we are still a nation of
people, half of whom were happy to elect a bunch of war criminals --
TWICE! -- and still are.

Ah, but lo and beshit, the Democrats have rescued us. If you can call
running around like chickens with their heads up their asses while the
Republicans did what they always do--get caught stealing the national
silverware, while bombing the hell out of some miserable piece of dirt as a
distraction, thereby self-destructing in 12 years as usual, but getting
obscenely rich in the process.

Pardon my cynicism, but the view is pretty damned sorry from here in the
cheap seats. From down here it looks like every Yankee liberal north of
Virginia seems convinced they are now shitting in such tall cotton, that all
they need do from here on out is foist Hillary Clinton on the many poor
miserable bastards unfortunate enough to be called heartland Democrats
because we don't have the balls to become heavily armed libertarians.
Nominating Hillary might just drive us to it.

Meanwhile, we watch the only woman who can give the ambitious Hillary a run
for the money when it comes to "the sneer behind the smile," Nancy Pelosi.
(Sorry Nancy, I used to get hot in unmentionable body areas when you stepped
in front of the cameras, before I saw your financial reports and the shiv in
your stockings. Now, call me a chauvinist, but somehow, you come off much
the same as Condi Rice and Hillary.) Then it's on to the main act, in which
we watch Honey Boy Obama "pass" in elite liberal society as a goddamned
negro, for christ sake! Will wretched wonders never end?

I don't know a single black person who is nearly as impressed with Barack
Obama as they are with Bill Clinton, and yes, most of them DO understand
that Clinton fucked everybody who works for a living with his shell game
called NAFTA. Not to mention the cruel farce of "workfare." Obama, the child
of a black/white student tryst in Honolulu, (natural daddy was from Kenya
and a Harvard man) was raised in Indonesia by a diplomat step-father and
white mother, then he was sent off to Punahou School, Hawaii's equivalent of
Sidwell Friends in DC, where Chelsea and similar children of royalty go.
B.O. just doesn't fool American blacks into believing he sweats bullets
every time a police car lights up behind him in the traffic. Unlike Clinton,
he does not gain weight easily and does not even attempt to play the sax. To
Obama's credit, he does have at least as many body guards as any hiphop star
... and let's face it, he only has to pass with white urban liberals to be
deemed the great mocha hope of urban liberal Americans who swear they have
not an ounce of race consciousness.

Aw shit. Now I've gone and pissed in the liberal punch bowl again, so I
guess it's no more fancy little water crackers with brie and truffle
preserves for me at the next Democratic fundraiser. I'm too fat anyway.
I nevertheless rooted for the Democrats just like everybody else. How could
anyone in their right mind and possessing a smidgen of morals not have been
pulling for the Democratic Westchester Country Club Pussy Mafia, sheerly out
of revulsion for the other choice -- a real mafia. It's the old American
political pendulum thing, back and forth between parties.

Americans take comfort in the spoonfed "pendulum" theory of politics. No
matter that the pendulum smacks them in the goddamned head at either end of
the swing, because supposedly, it achieves some democracy preserving
balance. To my mind, it merely offers a different faux target for citizen
discontent every four years, so the same powers behind the powers can
continue to extract wealth and sucker the public into consumer confidence
and the latest Wall Street Ponzi scheme, or fighting wars to obtain more
wealth and to protect what the elites have already piled up. Yet American
tolerance for this pendulum bullshit, for this set of fake choices between
two powerful groups of political elites who are dancing in the Washington
conga line, asshole to belly button pretending they are alternatives to each
another, seems endless.

Just what on god's green earth do liberals think the Democrats are going to
do after they finish singing "This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius?"
Really? What to do after they spend a few more years indexing the Republican
crimes? The Republicans have the stolen geet, the Dems have a two-year
ticket to ride, and the working guy and the middle class are pretending they
are not about to get the worst reaming since Herbert Hoover was president.
What are the Democrats to do, dear Nelly, pray tell? Well, it would be nice
if they would immediately move to dismantle the police state that is so well
under construction. And ideally they might begin to address the real
problems that constitute the very shaky stage upon our delusional "American
lifestyle" movie is being played out -- peak oil and the collapse of the
environment. When it comes to the peak oil crisis, their best shot seems to
be Al Gore telling us to hang our clothes on lines and turn down the
thermostats, never once mentioning, much less blaming, the corporations that
keep our nation addicted to oil, and are responsible for bankrolling the
Bush/Cheney junta that brought us this ongoing national nightmare in the
first place.

If Dems have not learned from what nearly happened to America's constitution
in the past six years, we are in deep shit. We are still in deep shit even
if they did learn, but at least have cause for fresh false hope. But we may
assume, until they prove otherwise, that the elites of the Democratic
leadership are immune to the real life consequences of their economic and
political decisions. I seriously doubt that they will push for any of the
things inherent to a civilized post-industrial society, such as ABSOLUTELY
FREE universal health care, or ABSOLUTELY FREE universal higher education,
or even letting the tens of thousands of poor hapless fucking potheads out
of this nation's now privatized prison system. Or kicking McDonald's and
Coke out of the nation's school lunch programs. And do you actually think
they are going to address America's unspoken class system? Nope! But they
will use the word class a bit more, just for its resonance of authenticity,
but only should it become absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, the Democrats are going to raise the minimum wage. They
will do so because even the Republicans are willing to do it now. And they
will raise it to somewhere around seven bucks, which is half of what it
takes to eat and shit with any regularity in this country, and they will do
it in three timid steps stretching out over hell only knows how long.

To be fair here, the Democrats have fifty-one seats. Fifty-one ain't sixty,
which is what it takes to accomplish anything by fiat at the syndicate
headquarters on East Capitol Street. Still, they can accomplish much if they
have enough hair on their asses to fight the good fight. If they get out f
their limos and set out on foot without their entourage of royal eunuchs to
find the good fight.

Otherwise, they will or will not fight the good fight in the marble royal
citadel where three out of every 100 people are homeless. And in a fit of
high dudgeon, they will order blanket subpoenas for half the Republican
Party to testify, which is not going to put a single blanket over their
bruised asses of the nearby homeless as they rustle around on damp cardboard
under the watchful eye of the city's several thousands of security cameras,
cameras that manage to catch the average DC resident some 250 times a day
(nanny cams excluded), cameras that document protesters with facial
recognition software, cameras that make 81 percent of residents "feel safer,
according to surveys -- even though they do not reduce crime, according to
the police chief himself. Like the Republicans, the Democrats understand
that people now believe their chances of being attacked by swarthy
terrorists are greater than their chances of being mugged by the crackhead
on the corner. The residual fear of our 12-year ordeal will be there a long
time, if it ever disappears at all. Democrats believe they must continue to
play to that irrational fear to get elected. Which will only perpetuate the
fear. Meanwhile, President Sparky fiddles with his veto pen in the Oval
Office, while Rove and Cheney plot to leave the Dems with as many unpaid
bills on the table as possible. Nobody said it would be easy.

Internationally speaking, the picture is no better. It's pretty doubtful
anyone will publicly fess up to the fact that the whole damned world hates
us, and that a recent poll found that just about everybody but the Japanese
and the South Koreans consider us far more dangerous than Kim Il Sung's
North Korean nuclear zoo. The soon-to-come investigations of Cheney and
Rumsfeld may make jolly spectacle for the American public, even entertain
the Europeans for a while, with its examination as to how our illegal
invasion, complete destruction and occupation of a sovereign country was
"mishandled" -- if the actions of a rogue nation can be said to be
mishandled -- which will distract the citizenry for a while longer. But the
Democratic Party will never challenge the militarism that has made war the
resort of first option so acceptable to so many Americans. Cutting defense
spending by half remains unthinkable, even though it would still leave us
with one quarter of all the world's weapons and four fifths of the world's
viable nuclear firepower. Despite that the savings would rebuild every
school in then nation, or send every American child through college or
technical school, or wipe out homelessness in one fell swoop, or pay for
nationalized health care for all, (if the insurance company leeches are
dumped in the process) or public transit.

Democrats like being THE liberal party. They like being the only game in
town for anyone who thinks that maybe, just maybe, a police state might not
be the best idea we can come up with, or that the Bible may not have been
written as a physics or biological treatise. For anything to change at all,
Democrats are going to have to actually lead the liberal tribes, make
liberal Americans understand that there is too much as stake to let the
divisiveness of gender, identity, and single issue politics keep us so
divided. Otherwise, when the cheap oil fiesta is over, which will be within
most people's lifetimes, if not my own, when real economic collapse is on
the horizon, Americans will switch on the same reptilian survival brain they
did when they elected Bush. Assuming they ever turn it off.

If so many other nations can come to understand what is really at stake in
our times, and modify their national programs and ambitions to accommodate
the Kyoto Agreements or energy reductions, or cleaner fuel standards, or
land mine bans, or the need for a world court on atrocity, or even the
Geneva Conventions for crap sake, there is no reason we cannot do the same,
other than lack of international leadership by the people we elect (or
presume to elect.) Some domestic leadership would be nice too. Hell, 18
states have a higher minimum wage than the fed standard, 12 states have
tried to modify coal fired emission standards on their own (only to be
stymied by our elected government). Is there any will at all to do the right
thing?

It may be possible the will is exists within the American public to do the
right thing, a rather dodgy assumption given that they we been fed on a
complete diet of supremacy and misinformation for three decades. But even if
it is still possible, it will take leadership. And by leadership, we don't
mean such crap as "We will deliver a better plan than Bush for the war in
Iraq." We bombed the fuck out of a sovereign nation, killed hundreds of
thousands of innocents, instituted an illegal occupation that makes
Germany's
French occupation look like a bridge party (Really! Go read about it
sometime). And we made the world a more dangerous place in the process. We
don't need a fucking plan. We need to admit our guilt to the world, then beg
forgiveness and demonstrate our sincerity through reparations. THAT is the
right thing to do. But we won't.

The Democratic Party does America not one bit of good by sustaining the
hubris that has brought us to the point where our high officials and former
officials such as Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales (and others yet to be
charged, we suspect) cannot travel in countries like Germany because of war
crime indictments. Someone has to ask, "How did we come to this?" Ask "How
can we not only change our course, but also make amends and prove to the
world that we are worthy of trust?" It would be of great help if we were
actually worthy of trust.

It ain't gonna happen because, just like George Bush, we as a people never
admit our mistakes. Not as long as we are packing more heat than all the
rest of the world combined. We are the five percent of the planet consuming
a quarter of its resources on the grounds of divine entitlement as
Americans. And the heat we pack. Think the Dems are gonna address that?
Address that belligerent two-ton rhino in the sandbox called the American
Lifestyle? Nobody will, and that refusal will ensure our downfall. Rhinos
can be taken down, and you don't have to be Hemingway to do it. Ask any
12-year-old Syrian or Palestinian boy. It's their dream. Any bookie will
tell you that odds are good that at least one of those millions of boys will
accomplish his dream. Providence is like that.

We haven't got forever. So, come next election, every ordinary working
American should ask themselves this: "What have Democrats done that made the
world better? What have they done to make my life measurably and observably
healthier and more humanly secure, reduced my toil and increased my daily
happiness?" The answer probably won't be good. And the Democratic leadership
will not care anyway, except to the extent that it disrupts the party conga
line. Because they know one thing: You don't have any other choice. It's
either them or the Republicans, and we all now know what the GOP is capable
of, given the opportunity. In the end, it is only our indecisiveness and
misinformation, our lack of courage and our willingness to live smaller,
morally diminished lives in one political camp or the other, that keeps the
American public evenly split into the two non-choices that represent our
political system.

We let the Republicans bitch slap the hell out of us for a few years while
they pick our pockets, then we elect the Democrats who refuse to slap anyone
publicly, but allow the same corporate-military-financial gang to continue
picking our pockets while we are recuperating.
You know it. I know it. But until we unlearn our gratitude for momentary
perceived relief, unlearn our helplessness, until we quit the hypnotic myth
of the pendulum, and openly resist the pretense together, regardless of
whether we are white, black, queer, middle class or poor, tenured professor
or illegal immigrant student, Southern Scots-Irish redneck or well-heeled
New York Jewish professional, nothing will change.

Best to forget the conga line up there on the media stage -- this ain't the
dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It's just another rest stop on the long
march toward that too-well-known destination no free human being ever chose
of his or her own accord. Democratic victory or not, Americans still lead
ever-smaller lives, in belief that a low profile and the right party
allegiances will preserve them, and that someone else, someone with less to
lose, will take the risks necessary to right some of the most terrible
wrongs the world has seen.
Men live small lives because they believe it offers them safety. Nothing
could be further from the truth.

Ask any German or Old World Jew.

Joe Bageant is the author of a forthcoming book from Random House Crown
about working class America, "Deer Hunting With Jesus," scheduled for Spring
2007 release. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts
of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found at
http://www.joebageant.com [1]. Feel free to contact him at:

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson