The Democrrats make me want to set my hair on fire

[lydy]

At the moment, really, the most rational possible reaction to the Bush administration’s national-security policy is to light one’s hair on fire and run down the street screaming about Jesus.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden in Electrolite, on March 14, 2003

I feel that way about the Democratic party. I've recently decided that the Democrats, whatever their flaws, are our only hope. Come November 2004, either the Democratic candidate is going to win the presidency, or George Bush the Lesser will. This administration has been so much worse than anything I could possibly have imagined. I can't afford a Quixotic campaign for a third party candidate. Not this time around. So, will-she-nil-she, I'm a Democrat.

Couple five days ago, possibly last week, "Talk of the Nation" on NPR had a show on the future of the Democratic party. It sounded about like you'd expect. Politicians who wouldn't know a direction from a hole in the ground talking about the new direction of the Democratic party. Guys who've never met a blue collar worker socially talking about getting in touch with the Democratic base. Criticisms of the current administration all carefully wrapped in cotton and swaths of plausible deniability. Outbreaks of bi-patisan reaonableness on all sides, assurances that Americans hate the left, and so do the Democrats.

I thought about calling in, and saying some true things. Things that can be documented. Things that are in major newspapers like The Times. Surveys that show that although voters say they don't like leftists, they are in favor of government assistance for health insurance for themselves and for the poor. Surveys that showed that the farther to the left Gore went, the better his poll numbers were. The fact that the Republicans won the presidency by insisting that the votes not be counted, and flying in operatives to ensure this by violence if necessary. More, inferences and obvious connections between Bush and the oil industry, the contract to Halliburton, the money that can be made "reconstructing" Iraq... and I realized that if I called in, I woujld be dismissed as a raving lunatic. For telling the truth. For having eyes. For reading the newspaper.

Really, the most sensible thing to do would be to set my hair on fire and run down the street screaming about Jesus.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

you want company?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

you want company?

Yeah.

But, you know, if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people setting their hair on fire and running down the street screaming about Jesus. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day setting their hair on fire and running down the street screaming about Jesus. And friends they may thinks it's a movement. And that's what it is, friends, the Set Your Hair on Fire Massacre Movement. (Apologies to Arlo Guthrie.)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

a) you owe me a keyboard without any diet coke in it.
b) marry me?

[pameladean]

I don't think you need to apologize to Arlo Guthrie. Just all the cats you made me scare.

Pamela

[supergee.livejournal.com]

And Howard Dean is a dangerous left-wing liberal elitist. Sheesh!

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

You might want your hair again later. These are the times I prefer to Go Somewhere Else. Like Ankh Morpork, or Pern, Oz or Komarr - anywhere else. Worry about someone else's problems for a change.

[pameladean]

I am too vain of my hair to set it on fire, but I'll carry a torch. I'd carry a pitchfork, too, but it would send the wrong message.

Well, maybe it wouldn't. I mean, sometimes being a peasant with a torch and a pitchfork is the only rational reaction.

Pamela

Completely off topic, but

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

You know, this is really really peculiar. LJ seems not to want for us to talk to each other. This is the 3rd or 4th post you've made to your journal that did not show up on my friends page. I discover them when I go to your actual journal to see if there have been further comments posted to things I have found interesting and want to follow. I don't do that with most of the journals I read. I wonder if other people are making posts I'm not seeing or if LJ just has it in for you.

MKK

Re: Completely off topic, but

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I think LJ has it in for me, personally. It does many things that seem to me to be weird and unproductive. However, since I don't absorb documentation very well, it may be that it's just doing what it's designed to do and I find it counter-intuitive. The one thing I know that happens that oughtn't is that if I post via the web at work using Opera, sometimes my post is very delayed, and sometimes it isn't put up at all. Sometimes, it's posted with no formatting, too. And no, I didn't accidentally hit the "do not autoformat" button.

All in all, LJ's ok, but it isn't rasff, which I miss. On the other hand, electronic fora have lifecycles, and rasff hit the point in its lifecycle where it wasn't any fun for me, anymore. All life's a bulletin board, and we are but posters to it? Never mind.