True Blue Door (1,644 posts)
Forgive me if I roll my eyes at your precious outrage about torture.
My anger about this has been a long-smoldering thing, from the moment I could see from the attitude and language of the Bush regime after 9/11 that the "War on Terror" was a 2-front war with the Republican Party being one of the two implacable enemies this country faced. That came into perfect focus with the Iraq War propaganda/ domestic terror campaign, but had been a long time coming - Bush and his kind made no secret of their intentions. Watching those events unfold, the Big Lies and horrific atrocities under the flag and in the institutions of the United States was like watching a bunch of spiders be born from the corpse of your own mother.
While this was happening, what were we doing? What was anyone doing? We acted as if expressing our opinions was an act of courage, thus excusing the complete lack of follow-through on any of it. We held no one accountable, least of all ourselves. Maybe if the GOP had lived up to their constant threats to start rounding up political prisoners and crushing those who spoke against them, we would have done something. But they didn't really have to, did they: We didn't stand in their way at all. There was always some excuse, some ego-salvaging rationalization for why it was impossible, or why America was a conservative country and didn't deserve our sacred interference in its supposedly chosen course of destruction.
And the cycle repeats every time the subject comes up again: Always someone has to bash America to excuse their own refusal to sacrifice anything to change it, like a negligent parent who degrades their children as worthless to excuse never doing anything for them. Always it's someone else's fault that you've spent 95% of the last decade of political activism talking about other issues, and treat this one as if it were just like any other - torture and net neutrality, what's the difference? I'm angry when I think about torture, and angry when I think about cable companies screwing me out of my money, so I guess I'll just split the difference. Oh, but then there's fracking, and that makes me angry too. Say, what's the new flavor special at The Coffee Bean tonight? Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, I was talking about how much Obama really failed us when it comes to alpaca breeding regulations.
It's the media's fault for not supplementing your attention span with consistent coverage; politicians' fault for caring as little in principle as you do in practice; it's Obama's fault for not doing whatever hare-brained scheme you think is in a President's legal or even practical power because you were asleep the day they talked about that in Civics; it's Democratic Senators and Congressmen's fault that you failed to sustain their legislative majorities, meaning that we've been denied reports like this from the House since 2011, and will get no more whatsoever when the GOP takes the Senate in 2015.
And since we never do anything about any of it, we have to act perpetually shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling in this establishment! Every time the issue comes up, we pretend to have not known before. Either this is a case of Memento-like anterograde mass-amnesia, or a lot of people just have to rationalize to themselves why they never do anything about it.
I know why I don't do anything about it: Because I don't trust the rest of you to help me (or myself to help you, for that matter). And that's why politicians won't do anything about it either. Because you'll forget about the subject five minutes from now, along with both the contributions and disgraces of political figures. Every liberal who truly dedicates themselves to anything is constantly betrayed by your shallowness, and then you ask in surreal bafflement why these issues fail to advance.
But no one who's actually in government has this problem - they don't forget their friends and enemies. The CIA doesn't, the Pentagon doesn't, the GOP doesn't, and even the Democratic Party leadership doesn't, which is why they ignore you - because you are deliberately inconsequential. Because being consequential is too much responsibility. So many of them seem to pal around with Republicans because a consistent enemy is easier to work with than a fickle friend with amnesia obsessed with fault-finding in everyone who tries to serve them.
The contractors who profit from crimes like these don't forget their friends or their enemies. Nor do the Middle Eastern authoritarian states complicit in these crimes, the "allies" who participated or enabled them, or the bureaucratic trolls burrowed into federal and international institutions from the Bush regime. None of these people forget, but you do. They reward their friends, you punish your friends with moving goalposts and selective amnesia. They punish enemies, you reward your enemies with feeble opposition that makes them look strong and lets them claim you are not a viable alternative to them.
This is what you do - what we do. We grow our own villains like garden vegetables, and then take a big bite to savor the taste of outrage. Because just being rational and responsible enough to simply defeat them wouldn't be fun enough, we have to die on the cross every six months in our own imaginations.
Talk about your plans to obtain justice. Talk about ideas that might work where others have failed. Talk about how you intend to mobilize the amoral and corrupt to achieve this, because nothing ever happens unless they find it advantageous. But if you plan to belittle the American people, the President, or Democrats, or piss and moan about fate, save it for the Rand Paul rally. And if you just want to talk about how shocked and angry you are that the Bush regime was evil, email those sentiments to yourself in 2001-2005 when they might have mattered and just focus now on the practicalities of achieving justice in a meaningful timeframe.
They seem to be upset about something.Upset, nothing. They love this stuff. They get to relive the good old days of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025935916
I ain't reading all that shit.
Damn it, DUmmies, can't any of you write clearly, concisely, and sparingly?
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Not sure of original, but attribution Rush Limbaugh.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Not sure of original, but attribution Rush Limbaugh.
Only a DUmbass can use that many words to say nothing at all.
I have noticed that you guys keep pulling threads from another forum. Can someone tell me what thats all about? Do you have a feud or something going on with another forum? Like the Hatfields and the McCoys or something? I want in on the fun.
Others can explain better, but it's a liberal site, named "Democratic Underground", that's referred to as "Skin's Island". It's inhabited by primitives and often called DUmmies, because their threads are posted in the Dumpster forum, sometimes called the Dump.
There is a lot of history with the DUmmies, here and on other conservative boards. Observing them is kind of like going to the zoo.
I have noticed that you guys keep pulling threads from another forum. Can someone tell me what thats all about? Do you have a feud or something going on with another forum? Like the Hatfields and the McCoys or something? I want in on the fun.
I have noticed that you guys keep pulling threads from another forum. Can someone tell me what thats all about? Do you have a feud or something going on with another forum? Like the Hatfields and the McCoys or something? I want in on the fun.
I have noticed that you guys keep pulling threads from another forum. Can someone tell me what thats all about? Do you have a feud or something going on with another forum? Like the Hatfields and the McCoys or something? I want in on the fun.
That's a good way to describe it, Dori.
Terry, Skins' Island, also called "the DUmp", is the DLC's DUmping ground for the insane and antisocial. It was bought and paid for by the Democrat Party after the 2000 elections. DUmmies operate under the delusion that they are important to the party, and their opinions are relevant.
DUmmies are terribly tribal creatures, and they scramble for dominance on the Island. At any point in time, the militant ballbusting feminists known as the Ku Klux Klams may be having a knife fight with the sexual deviants, the multi-culti whitebreads; or the geriatric hippies; while the paid Obamanauts try to distract them from Inconvenient Truths and keep them all facing the same direction as they race off the latest cliff of poutrage.
Skins' Island has a touch of 1984. Oceania is at war with Eurasia; Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Posters who display thoughtcrime become unpersons. George W Bush is their Emmanuel Goldstein, the target of the Two Minutes Hate. Obama is Big Brother.
Foor good and decent people, DU and its DUmmies really serve two purposes: as living examples of how not to live; and as material for political comedy. A writer couldn't make up a parody that compares to the real DUmp.
Fascinating. Thanks for the info. I would ask if we have any agent provocateurs over there, but I guess if we did they couldn't admit it in the open. That would be fun.
Terry, there's this thing called "OPSEC." As in, "Operational Security." Not only do I, for example, not know who is a mole over there (except for . . . maybe I have one now . . . :-) ), I don't want to know. Loose lips sink ships and all that, ya know? :whistling:
Fascinating. Thanks for the info. I would ask if we have any agent provocateurs over there, but I guess if we did they couldn't admit it in the open. That would be fun.
Only a DUmbass can use that many words to say nothing at all.
Loose hips can get you in a lot of trouble too.