channonyarrow

I have a seriously tempting, crazy idea.

I'm thinking of joining the Tea Party. Like, all officially and shit.

You can hit your away buttons now.

See, though, the thing is this: they claim this, on their website. "Tea Party Nation welcomes all patriots, regardless of gender, ethnicity or national origin to join us and help save this great country."

We can quibble about whether this is a "great" country or one that's really, really fucked up, but the thing is - there is utterly nothing about my politics, which are, at best, liberal, that makes me not-a-patriot.

According to Merriam-Webster, patriot means "one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests".

The fact that I'm not waging revolution in the streets suggests that I support America's authority and its interests. I don't love this country the way I love, say, gin, but I'm pretty sure it's preferable to living in Chad. Let's face it: all those things that people currently dismiss as "first-world problems"? I have those, and I have them because I live here. And I like them. So I'm happy living here.

I'm certainly happy living here because I don't have to deal with armed insurrection in the streets. I may not like the people who choose to become police officers, but I find a police presence is better than no police presence. I respect all significant laws of the land. I, in actions if not in words, respect America's authority by allowing it to have some say in what I do as I conduct my daily business. I don't, for example, evade my taxes, and I do carry the state licence that proves I can operate a motor vehicle.

So that's the first part of their statement out of the way.

They are concerned with gender, ethnicity, and national origin next; not a problem for me, since I'm Whitey McWhiterson, born right here in the US, and they don't seem to, on the face of it, have a problem with women in the ranks. That's out of the way.

To save this great country - well, again, we can quibble about whether it's great, but on the face of it, I like living here. So I'll concede that one on the basis of the rest of the argument.

See, I think this country needs saving too.

I think it needs saving from our pollution. I think it needs saving from fiscally-irresponsible corporations. Hell, I think it needs saving from corporations period. I think it needs saving from the fear-mongers and the hate-mongers, and the people who preach something they don't believe because they get money for pandering to the fears and hates of morons who can't figure out a gimmick to make a buck when they're smacked with it. I think it needs saving from people who think that the right to bear arms means the right to bear them right into Wal-Mart. I think it needs saving from the companies and individuals that tout America First and yet manufacture and sell products made overseas, to the detriment of the American economy and the workers at the bottom of the food chain. I think it needs saving from people who don't understand that what we pay for now is what we get later, and think that it's not worth paying for the health care or the education or the feeding or the support of someone who is not-them. I think it needs saving from greed, from hate, from inattention, from me-first, from not-in-my-backyard, from a national posture of arrogance, from the belief that enough armed people can effect a change somewhere we have no business being, from our dependence on oil, from the death penalty, from the people who want other people to shut up, from your god, and from Puritanism run amok.

I think it needs, above all, to be saved from ignorance, fear, and the beliefs of childhood. Life was easier when I wasn't making the decisions, sure! That doesn't mean that the 80s were a wonder time that should be brought back.

I think, therefore, that the Tea Party had better reconsider their welcoming statement on their website and think about whether they want me in their party - because you bet your ass I wouldn't be working for their definition of what will save America. I'll be working for mine.

And I'll be doing it under their umbrella. In their names.

Why not? They're doing all kinds of shit in my name - I want my name back. I want the right to call myself a patriot back. I want people to not assume, if I call myself a patriot (I generally don't, but that's not the point) that patriot means I want to burn the niggers and the fags and the ragheads. (And the Tea Party had better not try to argue that they don't, because their actions speak otherwise.)

Most of all, I don't want to see their America. Their America is not one I know, recognise, or love, but I seem to be trapped here with a significant number of total blowhards who think they get to dictate out of their own fear and moronic idiocy what I think and do and know and care about. And that shit cannot stand.

So, since the Tea Party and I are in agreement according to their welcoming statement, I think I should join them. I want to save America too.

I feel compelled to make this post a good 'un because I have new people on my flist who have evidently friended me because apiphile says I'm even angrier than she is. Also, I haven't said much about politics in a LONG while (here's how long: my real political posts are on my website, which I haven't updated in donkeys. Also, they're all bitching about GW.). So politics + anger should make for some fun times.

I am blatantly cribbing some of this from a conversation I had with graeae over the weekend, but since I have the memory span of a goldfish, it's possible that I will forget things. But some of the ideas come from that convo.

I was reading spam today, as one does, when one is unemployed and single and the apartment is already mostly clean and one's issues with contacting people are making getting a new job a bitch. I've had a few emails from some group called MomsRising.org; imagine my confusion when I realised that this was, actually, a forward from my semi-pro email account. Evidently, despite not being a mother, and not giving one tiny shit that 1.2 million children have now lost their health care, I signed up for this at some point. I guess.

The premise of the email is one I've seen several times, and this is where I start to lose my shit. Tell Congress to move quickly to make this promise a reality on Day One of the Obama Presidency by a quick and fully-funded reauthorization of SCHIP.

I've seen this elsewhere on the internet. Right now, Obama is supposed to save children, Gaza, and *insert your pet cause here* by, at the latest, Day 100 of his presidency. I have actually seen someone call Obama's presidency "failed" because he's not doing whatever the fuck they wanted him to do - I don't think that was in the context of Gaza, but it might have been. Or it might have been because, yanno, he wants Reverend Wright to do his thing at the Inauguration.

This is insane.

1) Obama is the President-elect. Not the president. As such, he cannot do these things prior to taking office. Even though, as Barney Frank said recently, saying that we have only one president at a time is overstating the case on how many presidents we have right now, he cannot do anything other than what a senator may do right now.

2) There are other problems in line before yours. The economy leaps to mind. The environment needs to get started on - I say this, by the way, from Seattle, where we are completely cut off from the rest of the United States: due to heavy snowfall and avalanche danger, both US 2 and I-90 across the mountains are closed, and I-5 has at least three feet of water over the roadway south of Chehalis; it's expected to hit ten feet, even with pumping and a manmade levee breach, before it crests. Getting some of the more pernicious acts of our previous "president" out of the way leaps to mind, as well - as graeae pointed out, Bush has made it, currently, so that the documents relevant to his presidency remain secret, not only in his lifetime but may be held as secret by his heirs. Emperor Bush indeed.

3) Just because, as good liberals, we've endured eight years of the worst presidency America has had, with empire-building, a failed war, massive executive power increase and the sort of vice-presidential powers that not even Henry Kissinger dreamed of, that does not mean that it's now OUR turn and we get to fucking have ponies on the day that Obama takes office. For Chrissake, let the man figure out how to turn the phones on.

Now. Just to clarify one point: I take Gaza very seriously. I am pro-Palestine, all the way, and I can fucking back that opinion up; I did my Master's on the subject. I take health care (for ALL people) very fucking seriously indeed; as the child of a nurse, it would be hard not to. As someone who's lived for an extended period in England, it would be impossible not to. As someone who stands for everything that Reverend Wright opposes, I don't like his selection, but I'm not gonna kill anyone over it. So now you know my biases.

I drank the Obama Kool-Aid, and I drank it early and often. I was never a supporter of Clinton; while I would not have cried tears of blood at voting for her, I felt - and still feel - that Obama is a uniter, and Clinton is a policy wonk. We don't need a policy wonk right now. We need someone who can pull the two sides of this country back together and make ALL of us realise that whatever else we are, we are all Americans, and that we don't have to annex part of the county to get along. I also think that Obama is a very, very smart man who likes more than a little bit of Machiavelli in his politics; Clinton is a deal-maker who'll bargain to get what she wants, but Obama will convince you, and will make the gestures needed to get his point across: he is the president for ALL of America, not just the evangelicals (as Bush was not) or for the tree-huggers, or for the minorities, or for whatever sub-group you'd like to ascribe to him.

And now I'm watching his approval rating - 75% - with a lot of trepidation. Not because I think that Obama will do something wrong with that, but because he could. That's higher than Bush came into office with; that's higher than Bush had at any point in his presidency other than during 9/11, when he polled 90% (and let's be honest: he didn't look presidential then; it could have been Bozo the Clown in office and he would've scored that high.). He tapped 75% again with the declaration of the war, and it's been downhill ever since for ol' Bush.

Source.

Obama could use that approval rating to do anything. Anything at all. Keep the changes in executive power over the last presidency? You can have them! Refuse to reverse some of the policy decisions made by the Bush administration, such as family planning overseas? Go for it!* Want to nuke Pakistan? Knock yourself out!

I believe - because of the Kool-Aid - that Obama will do the right things with that rating, things that I approve of and can get behind. I also think that this addresses why he selected Wright for the Inauguration - if he'd not reached out to the conservatives who believe that his election mean that they're gonna get witch-hunted for not being pagan queers, he'd get nowhere. Whether liberals like it or not, there are fundamentalist conservatives in this country. And they're not going away.

But do you really think that Obama can fix everything on the first day? He's just gonna sign a bunch of legislation and that's it, we can all have a beer for the next four years? No. We did not get into these problems overnight. We're not getting out of them overnight, either. And the economy is the 800lb gorilla.

This is why all these calls for Obama to fix this on the first day/first 100 days drive me bananas. They don't recognise a basic fact. The man may be able to walk on water, without even having Air Jesus shoes, but he can't do everything. And - quite frankly - he would be fucking insane to try. Not merely because it can't be done but because he needs to do two things first: fix the economy, and unite the country.

There is no possibility that we could have a president left-wing enough for me. I am so far left I verge on communism, frankly. Perhaps that gives me some of the necessary distance here, but this pet cause business drives me nuts because it doesn't recognise reality. You are not the most special snowflake in the room. And expecting Obama to fix, in the first three months of his administration, all the things that Bush fucked up is unrealistic.

Anyway, if you didn't like it, why did you let Bush get away with it?

This is from the Declaration of Independence. Read it very fucking closely.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The consent of the governed. It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.

This means that we have the right to overthrow the government if we don't like it. If it fails to provide for our unalienable rights - and certainly, I would argue that the Constitution and Bill of Rights, both of which have been thoroughly skullfucked in the last few years, posit an entire constellation of unalienable rights - then we have the right, even the obligation, to overthrow the government and try something new.

The 33% approval rating that Bush polled in May of 2006 would argue that two thirds of the American people agree that Bush was a shitty president.

Why was there no revolution?

Why did no one choose to take power back, take it away from the hands of the madmen we've allowed to run the country (into the ground) for the last four years?

I didn't, I know that. No one else did, either, though. No one figured out that we had the power, and we had the right and organised around that. Instead, we sent petitions and marched in demonstrations and protested quietly and bore witness - in a media state that did its damnedest to hide the numbers of those protesting, marching, angry. Hell, that tried to hide that such things - such dissent - was occurring.

There is a reason that we have the right to bear arms, by the way. I would argue that Bush, Cheney, et al are not necessary to the security of the state. They seem to be doing too good a job, even now, fucking us all over.

And there's the answer. Obama can't fix everything in the first day or first hundred days, or even first term, because none of us said, in any effective way, that enough was enough. None of us demanded loudly enough that our government be accountable to us again. None of us exercised our rights - so the mess got worse.

The mess, in fact, became almost im-fucking-possible to see through.

And now, armed only with the joy of some portion of the country at the fact that we have gone against type and elected a smart, competent man as president, Obama is supposed to fix this? Right now?

Are people actually out of their minds?

Evidently so.

Do not come to me with a demand for what Obama "should" do on the first day in office. Do not outline for me a plan of what you think Obama should do in his first hundred days. Do not tell me that everything will be better now.

Let's borrow a business maxim. You can do it fast, cheap, or well, and you have to pick two out of three. My corollary is that generally, fast and cheap go together. Well is the redheaded step child in this.

I'd rather he did it well. I'd rather that he, and his team, and Congress, thought about things before rushing right into the briar patch. I'd rather that you and I and everyone have to deal with the consequences of our own fucking inaction for a while longer.

Because maybe that will remind us next time: we are not obligated to sit still for a president like Bush.


* I have to note here, I don't necessarily think Bush did a bad thing with that, frankly. I am pro-choice - but I also live in a society where the value of a fetus is not, generally speaking, determined by whether or not it's male or female. In countries where that is the context, the statement of "Pro-choice means no choice" is accurate. Otherwise, female babies are aborted in vastly disproportionate numbers. Just something to think about, there.

Fantastic. Someone in Pakistan has my phone number and is calling me. A lot. I'm going to have to learn to say "You have the wrong number, fuck off and die" in Urdu and hope they don't speak only Pashto or Punjabi.

But this always happens to me. I had a room in England where the previous tenant had been Chinese. Do you know what time China is, relative to the UK? BLOODY AWFUL TIME, that's what fucking time. They called me all year, too, and no one on their end spoke English. I felt bad about finally screaming "He doesn't live here, quit calling!" but it did end the calls.

My life, SO EXCITING.

Okay, look. Yes, Mel Gibson said a Bad Thing, certainly not the sort of thing that we would LIKE our celebrities (because we vet them SO CAREFULLY and obviously you can therefore explain every single starlet including Bai Ling) to say, let alone believe. And obviously, being a celebrity involves having large chunks of your brain siphoned out so that you do not offend your target demographic. And, of course, no one at all is capable of being two different people - this is sometimes called the Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde Theory Of Drunks.

And, obviously, what Mel Gibson believes is wildly important to my life and the consumption of his product. It ain't. If it were, I would be boycotting lots more people than just Tom Cruise because most celebrities have the morals of polecats and the brains of chihuahuas. If you doubt this, look at Hollywood's idea of an awesome and amazing new movie. They're remaking, apparently, The Hulk, because Ang Lee's version didn't tank badly enough.

But - and I realise this is asking a lot because we all care that Mel Gibson not express racist statements that some people in this country think are still acceptable to say - can we all stop caring? Seriously, everywhere I turn, Mel Gibson did this, that, and the other thing, and while he was at it caused global warming, cancer, and the death of kittens.

In a sane world, this would merit two minutes of interest. Alas, we live not in that sane world.

It's Mel Gibson, folks. Either we're going to have to kill him or we're going to have to accept that, when drunk, he's a racist conservative Christian bigot. Anyone surprised by this has not been paying attention to Mel Gibson's existence.

In the meantime, Rumsfeld essentially told the Senate Armed Services Committee (?) and/or Hilary Clinton and the American public at large to eat a dick about Iraq and shut up and quit whining before we're fighting hand-to-hand at the gates of our own homes on Court TV last night. Where is the outrage?

Oh, right, It's being directed at drunk!Mel Gibson who has all the personality charm of a Barbary Ape with IBS and who called a police officer "Sugar-Tits". Aside from the fact that anyone doing that to me in person would wind up looking for their genitals in the gutter, this is not something I can get that worked up about. I didn't invite him into my home, I didn't decide he was a marvellous person and that was why I could feel good about going to see Braveheart - it does not matter who he is as a person. Perhaps if we were looking at, you know, whether racism and sexism were still problems in this country, he might be interesting. But what we're looking at is that he's just OMG SO AWFUL and we have been all betrayed and shit because we bought into his behaviour by watching his movies. It's OUR anger, NOT justifiable outrage, and that pisses me off.

It also pisses me off that Rumsfeld can tell America to suck it and like it and no one seems to care - because Mel Gibson called a cop Sugar-Tits and got on his conservative Christian anti-semitic high horse. If life were perfect, sure, let's hang the bastard - but this is yet another bait-and-switch.

We got baited and we switched. Don't kill your television, kill the media and replace it with responsible journalism.