À Cause De Moi, Le Deluge
There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens, yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.
- Bob Schieffer
The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.
- Abraham Lincoln
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
- "President" George W. Bush, talking about Homeland Security Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response Michael Brown's efforts in dealing with Hurricane Katrina
[Preface:
[The title of to-day's word-play, which should be French for, "Because of me, the flood," was meant as a pun on the famous saying, "Apres-moi, le deluge," which means "After me, the flood." It's a saying that I was always taught was said by Louis XIV of France. I remember this very vividly. In 10th or perhaps 11th grade, my teacher, the very young and quite liberal (in contrast to my thickskulled knee-jerk Reaganite conservatism at the time) Ms. Linda Thurston, a 22-ish-year-old Yale grad who was teaching at Freehold Township High School for some strange reason, was giving us a brief overview of European history, or philosophy, or something. Anyway, she gave us the quotes, "L'état, c'est moi," meaning "The State, it is me," and the other one. But in looking for a reference while typing this, I find the quote first attributed to Louis XV, not XIV...and then to Madame de Pompadour, XV's slutty mistress...and then I find some site saying it was said by Prince Metternich of Austria! Fuck! And it was "Apres-nous le deluge," and the context was slightly different, and I'm just fucking pissed off about this. I mean it's like my whole fucking life is a lie now. What else was I incorrectly taught in high school? To what extent has this fraudulent mountebankism determined the low and miserable road I've traversed in the 13 years since they foisted that sham of a diploma on me?]
To everyone who is shocked, just shocked, that this government "finally" made a big mistake and botched the response to Hurricane Katrina...finally, yes...after an unbroken string of successes...to all of you lost, blinkered souls, I offer a compassionate hug, a sad and knowing look, and a hearty, vigorous kick to the crotch. Whether your reproductive organs should lie nestled safely within your abdomen or dangle limply in sacks of skin, they'll feel the fury of righteous irritation, incarnate in a size 12 steel-tipped boot named Freedom. A crushing blow right to the babymaker. Hopefully we can pinch your addle-pated stupidity off with this generation. Just imagine, insignificant ol' me wandering this great land from sea to shining sea, leaving in my wake a groaning, throbbing mass of crushed ovaries and testes. A regular Johnny Ballstomper. Warms the old heart muscle, don't it.
My only hope is that the centrist Democrats finally stop fighting with Dean, who is after all their elected chairman, and let him do what he does best, which is tap into the anger and indignation and sheer fucking bile-choked frustration of American liberals whose hatred of this presidency seems to leave them incoherent and ineffective. Dean was brought down not by the right, whom he never had a chance to fight, but by the middle...the spineless, meaningless, soulless centrists who ape Clinton's tactics but not his passion, and certainly not his connection with Americans. We hate Bush for what he stands for, and the right loves him for that same reason. Because (he seems, anyway) he stands for something. It's as if the commitment is more important than the cause which that commitment serves, as if we'd prefer a dedicated Nazi to an indifferent small-D democrat. And sometimes I think that that's not at all an exaggeration. We've been numbed into such a state of apathy and ignorance that we'd mistake sincerity for good judgment. I'm sure Bush's people sincerely believe what they're doing is right. On some dim reptilian level of his brain, I'm sure Bush himself sincerely believes the things he's told to say and to do. And these people don't seem to realize how sincerely twisted those beliefs have made them. We, the Left, need to stop trying to make the Right like us. They are never going to like us. They are never going to respect us. We need to forget this Model UN bullshit and go after them with brickbats and crowbars. We need to go after Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al the Chicago Way. They pull a knife, we pull a gun. They put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the morgue. We need to recognize that we are at war, not with unemployed civil servants who can't feed their families in Iraq, not with mullahs and muftis squatting in a cave in Afghanistan, but with multinational corporations, with the religious right, and with Christian Capitalism itself.
I think if more people knew who Smedley Butler was, and what he did for this country, and were to read his pamphlet War is a Racket, they might at least begin to rub the sleep from the corners of their mind's eyes and look around and notice that things aren't as they should be. We are not living in the world we want. We're living in the world that they choose to give us. Every day I'm more and more convinced of that. They cut our jobs, they pare back our benefits, they tell us it's rough all over and we have to do the best we can. They poison our food and blame us for eating it. Some friends of mine are, or were, quite interested in the works of Ayn Rand, and for a brief time I was as well. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that her system is nothing but a huge apologia for the true Looters, the real Aristocracy of Pull...here in America, they call themselves capitalists, but strip away cultural barriers and they'd feel right at home alongside entrenched Chinese Communist apparatchiks, doling out contracts and property and money to friends, family, lovers, and simoniacs...nothing but a self-perpetuating kleptocracy of bribes and lawsuits and mindless, clammy obsequy...Christ...it makes me so fucking angry sometimes, just impotent with rage and helplessness, watching my country lining up to drink the Kool-Aid, and swallow the poison pill. Because they've convinced themselves that it's a benediction, and not the blandly indifferent execution of a death warrant.
People who say they don't vote because it's a waste of time, are lazy cowards. Yes, money rules this country, and politicians are corrupt, and blah blah blah, that's true but you're still a fucking coward. Our avenues to power have never been broad, they have been since the foundation of this country narrow, and winding, and treacherous, and it's getting harder and not easier, but they remain, and they're ours, and we have no one to blame but ourselves for the mess we're in. At this moment in time I sincerely believe that it's possible for the Republicans to lose control of Congress next year. I really believe that. This is a fuck-up of Biblical proportions, a sugary sweet irony given this President's alleged adherence to Christ, and it could not only cost him Congress, it could unseat him as well. Let's play a game of What If...and I know it's foolish to shoot so high, but if you stole a time machine and turned sidewise in time and found the me of 1995 and told me that the son of that has-been George Bush was going to be president someday, and that he'd plunge us into a war with Iraq, and that the city of New Orleans was going to be underwater, I'd have laughed and laughed and laughed and then asked you where this London police box came from. That would probably precipitate a discussion of what the hell a police box even is, and why did anyone ever think that that was a good idea to have.
[Doctor Who reference. Just forget it. If I tried to explain you'd respect me even less than you do now.]
Anyway. The point is that the wildest political fantasies of yesterdecade seem poignantly naïve and rock-stupid today. And if a President can be impeached during an economic boom because he lied about getting a blowjob from the girl in the mail room, he ought be horsewhipped to within an inch of life for a war and a flooded metropolis. And if we can give the Democrats the political will to retake the House and Senate, I think we can goad them into going for the jugular and unseating this demented boy-king and riding his ass out of Washington on a rail.
Alright. That's all for now. More soon hopefully.
[Update:
[I've compiled a list of suspect "facts" taught to me by various instructors in my high school years, and it seems thus far that they're all untrue:
[The value of Pi is not 58.
[Denmark is not a rectangular state between Wyoming and Montana.
[Hervé Villechaise in all likelihood never even met Ho Chi Minh, nor was he heavily involved with the Viet Cong's opium-smuggling efforts in Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle.
[There are not 22 planets in this solar system. (That's 4 too many!)
[As they were separated in history by almost 300 years, Charles Darwin and Leonardo da Vinci never used to go drinking and whoring together in Lisbon. I was really pulling for that one to be true, to be honest.
[The value of Pi is also not two-fifths.
[And finally, Theodore Roosevelt did not shoot William McKinley while playing poker. That's a total fallacy. That one really burns me up.]
- Bob Schieffer
The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.
- Abraham Lincoln
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
- "President" George W. Bush, talking about Homeland Security Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response Michael Brown's efforts in dealing with Hurricane Katrina
[Preface:
[The title of to-day's word-play, which should be French for, "Because of me, the flood," was meant as a pun on the famous saying, "Apres-moi, le deluge," which means "After me, the flood." It's a saying that I was always taught was said by Louis XIV of France. I remember this very vividly. In 10th or perhaps 11th grade, my teacher, the very young and quite liberal (in contrast to my thickskulled knee-jerk Reaganite conservatism at the time) Ms. Linda Thurston, a 22-ish-year-old Yale grad who was teaching at Freehold Township High School for some strange reason, was giving us a brief overview of European history, or philosophy, or something. Anyway, she gave us the quotes, "L'état, c'est moi," meaning "The State, it is me," and the other one. But in looking for a reference while typing this, I find the quote first attributed to Louis XV, not XIV...and then to Madame de Pompadour, XV's slutty mistress...and then I find some site saying it was said by Prince Metternich of Austria! Fuck! And it was "Apres-nous le deluge," and the context was slightly different, and I'm just fucking pissed off about this. I mean it's like my whole fucking life is a lie now. What else was I incorrectly taught in high school? To what extent has this fraudulent mountebankism determined the low and miserable road I've traversed in the 13 years since they foisted that sham of a diploma on me?]
To everyone who is shocked, just shocked, that this government "finally" made a big mistake and botched the response to Hurricane Katrina...finally, yes...after an unbroken string of successes...to all of you lost, blinkered souls, I offer a compassionate hug, a sad and knowing look, and a hearty, vigorous kick to the crotch. Whether your reproductive organs should lie nestled safely within your abdomen or dangle limply in sacks of skin, they'll feel the fury of righteous irritation, incarnate in a size 12 steel-tipped boot named Freedom. A crushing blow right to the babymaker. Hopefully we can pinch your addle-pated stupidity off with this generation. Just imagine, insignificant ol' me wandering this great land from sea to shining sea, leaving in my wake a groaning, throbbing mass of crushed ovaries and testes. A regular Johnny Ballstomper. Warms the old heart muscle, don't it.
My only hope is that the centrist Democrats finally stop fighting with Dean, who is after all their elected chairman, and let him do what he does best, which is tap into the anger and indignation and sheer fucking bile-choked frustration of American liberals whose hatred of this presidency seems to leave them incoherent and ineffective. Dean was brought down not by the right, whom he never had a chance to fight, but by the middle...the spineless, meaningless, soulless centrists who ape Clinton's tactics but not his passion, and certainly not his connection with Americans. We hate Bush for what he stands for, and the right loves him for that same reason. Because (he seems, anyway) he stands for something. It's as if the commitment is more important than the cause which that commitment serves, as if we'd prefer a dedicated Nazi to an indifferent small-D democrat. And sometimes I think that that's not at all an exaggeration. We've been numbed into such a state of apathy and ignorance that we'd mistake sincerity for good judgment. I'm sure Bush's people sincerely believe what they're doing is right. On some dim reptilian level of his brain, I'm sure Bush himself sincerely believes the things he's told to say and to do. And these people don't seem to realize how sincerely twisted those beliefs have made them. We, the Left, need to stop trying to make the Right like us. They are never going to like us. They are never going to respect us. We need to forget this Model UN bullshit and go after them with brickbats and crowbars. We need to go after Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al the Chicago Way. They pull a knife, we pull a gun. They put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the morgue. We need to recognize that we are at war, not with unemployed civil servants who can't feed their families in Iraq, not with mullahs and muftis squatting in a cave in Afghanistan, but with multinational corporations, with the religious right, and with Christian Capitalism itself.
I think if more people knew who Smedley Butler was, and what he did for this country, and were to read his pamphlet War is a Racket, they might at least begin to rub the sleep from the corners of their mind's eyes and look around and notice that things aren't as they should be. We are not living in the world we want. We're living in the world that they choose to give us. Every day I'm more and more convinced of that. They cut our jobs, they pare back our benefits, they tell us it's rough all over and we have to do the best we can. They poison our food and blame us for eating it. Some friends of mine are, or were, quite interested in the works of Ayn Rand, and for a brief time I was as well. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that her system is nothing but a huge apologia for the true Looters, the real Aristocracy of Pull...here in America, they call themselves capitalists, but strip away cultural barriers and they'd feel right at home alongside entrenched Chinese Communist apparatchiks, doling out contracts and property and money to friends, family, lovers, and simoniacs...nothing but a self-perpetuating kleptocracy of bribes and lawsuits and mindless, clammy obsequy...Christ...it makes me so fucking angry sometimes, just impotent with rage and helplessness, watching my country lining up to drink the Kool-Aid, and swallow the poison pill. Because they've convinced themselves that it's a benediction, and not the blandly indifferent execution of a death warrant.
People who say they don't vote because it's a waste of time, are lazy cowards. Yes, money rules this country, and politicians are corrupt, and blah blah blah, that's true but you're still a fucking coward. Our avenues to power have never been broad, they have been since the foundation of this country narrow, and winding, and treacherous, and it's getting harder and not easier, but they remain, and they're ours, and we have no one to blame but ourselves for the mess we're in. At this moment in time I sincerely believe that it's possible for the Republicans to lose control of Congress next year. I really believe that. This is a fuck-up of Biblical proportions, a sugary sweet irony given this President's alleged adherence to Christ, and it could not only cost him Congress, it could unseat him as well. Let's play a game of What If...and I know it's foolish to shoot so high, but if you stole a time machine and turned sidewise in time and found the me of 1995 and told me that the son of that has-been George Bush was going to be president someday, and that he'd plunge us into a war with Iraq, and that the city of New Orleans was going to be underwater, I'd have laughed and laughed and laughed and then asked you where this London police box came from. That would probably precipitate a discussion of what the hell a police box even is, and why did anyone ever think that that was a good idea to have.
[Doctor Who reference. Just forget it. If I tried to explain you'd respect me even less than you do now.]
Anyway. The point is that the wildest political fantasies of yesterdecade seem poignantly naïve and rock-stupid today. And if a President can be impeached during an economic boom because he lied about getting a blowjob from the girl in the mail room, he ought be horsewhipped to within an inch of life for a war and a flooded metropolis. And if we can give the Democrats the political will to retake the House and Senate, I think we can goad them into going for the jugular and unseating this demented boy-king and riding his ass out of Washington on a rail.
Alright. That's all for now. More soon hopefully.
[Update:
[I've compiled a list of suspect "facts" taught to me by various instructors in my high school years, and it seems thus far that they're all untrue:
[The value of Pi is not 58.
[Denmark is not a rectangular state between Wyoming and Montana.
[Hervé Villechaise in all likelihood never even met Ho Chi Minh, nor was he heavily involved with the Viet Cong's opium-smuggling efforts in Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle.
[There are not 22 planets in this solar system. (That's 4 too many!)
[As they were separated in history by almost 300 years, Charles Darwin and Leonardo da Vinci never used to go drinking and whoring together in Lisbon. I was really pulling for that one to be true, to be honest.
[The value of Pi is also not two-fifths.
[And finally, Theodore Roosevelt did not shoot William McKinley while playing poker. That's a total fallacy. That one really burns me up.]
posted by Patrick at 9:20 PM
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