The Beltway Sewer

Indeed. When the billionty-trillionty dollar windfall goes to (envelope please, *gasp*, *dramatic pause*; "Why, wonder of wonders, the OIL INDUSTRY!"), not a peep, not a stinkin' f*ckin' peep is heard from across the aisle. This is the final straw. No one stands in opposition any longer. The Democrats have not had a clear, straight-talking voice since James Carville, and there's good reason: the Dems haven't a thing to say. What the erstwhile opposition refuses to capitulate to is the need to encapsulate their ideas into nano-sized bytes. A statement like "Democrats raise taxes", regardless of truth or context, resonates in the empty scull of the American electorate. I could go on forever, from "Activist Federal Judges" to "Covert Homosexual Agenda", but I digress, and you, if you're reading this blog, already got the point.

But to illustrate, mostly to myself at this point in time, I just surfed over to both the DNC and RNC web sites. From the right, a large picture of the Missing Village Idiot with the American Flag, a white guy in a suit, and a woman of indeterminable ethnicity, and a large caption reading "Reforming Health Care". For emphasis, in case you don't get it, there is a video monitor behind HR Bushness which displays the message "Reforming Health Care for the 21st Century". Hello. This is your brain with a drill bit in it. Middle America vibrates with resonance.

But from the left, we find a headline in a text box telling us that "Fighting Dems Take The Hill", "Ensuring the Future for the Young" (the obligatory Black History article), and notice that Governor Dean is appearing on Face the Nation. Here's what I glean from this comparison.

The RNC focused on one stupid thing, and hammered it, and it's something that Joe and Jane Sixpack care about. It doesn't matter that the only reforming going on involves funneling copious profits to the Pharmaceutical and Health Maintenance industries, but hey, what the hell, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. (Am I skewing too old here, with 1939 movie references?) The DNC site doesn't blast "Fighting for Soldiers" and hammer it (you had to read the Fighting Dems article, and Messrs Sixpack et. al. don't particularly do that), and the rest is pap. Self serving pap. It's worse than ESPN plugging, well, the shows on ESPN.

Until the un-right side of the political house is willing to get into the trenches and play Spin the Perception with the big guys, nothing gets accomplished. The average American can only concentrate on 2 things per day, and they'd better be bloody simple.

Let's stop here, shall we?

Widespread, I'd say. The silence is deafening. New Orleans is destroyed. Millions of poor African-American citizens are abandoned in an obvious race/class scourge. Issue: forgotten. Hundreds of young Americans are brutally maimed each day in the largest corporate welfare scam in our country's history, and come home to a pat on the back and a wish for good luck from the gub'ment. Issue: ignored. The American Constitution? It went in the shredder after the Enron documents. Issue: dismissed. American citizens have been robbed blind, and all that seems to matter is who's winning the latest American Idol. Where is the opposition party? Frankly, who cares. The Democrats have become completely irrelevant, as have civic responsibility and social awareness. Somehow, those on the left can't seem to shake the image of the pipe-smoking Volvo-driving sycophant who looks on in appreciation at the great social experiment of the lower classes struggling against the corporate oppressors.

Where is MY voice? It's not on Air America. Hell, every single one of their presenters makes me squirm. Even as a life-long Dem, I find that Pat Buchanan and Jack Kemp are easier to listen to than that Clinton woman, or Nancy Pelosi. The opposition seems to half intuitively, half deliberately, position itself unfailingly to be the object of Sunday Morning Scorn, and the punchline for countless tasteless jokes in redneck barrooms across this great land that was once ours.

If it's not Politics as Usual, then how is it that the Republicans are running a successful regime in the fine tradition of Sam Rayburn, Thomas P. O'Niell, and Dan Rostenkowski? They don't even have to have the trash picked up on time. The only rational reason for this happening is ineptitude and apathy on the part of the other side of the aisle.

Or is it deeper? Was there a secret coups that ousted the elected leadership and installed a puppet government in it's place? Oh, that's right, the 2000 election... how could I forget... but I digress.

Have we come to the point in American politics that the next Democratic contender should be chosen on a "Survivor" type of reality show? Is that the only way to get the attention of the public? Can we really believe that Mencken was completely correct in his assessment of the intelligence of the American Public?

Is Joe Biden the closest we can get to Harry Truman?

Time for my prozac...

Well, look who's posting after a year. It's just that I've become mired in the same apathy that killed the Democratic Party in America. Last night, I went out on the 'net to all the usual and many unusual political sites and blogs expecting a deluge of opinion and reaction to the SOTU address. I waited until la medianoche, EST, figuring it would take a while for the punditry to produce. Nothing. A big, vast, gaping nothing. That's probably the new Republican strategy: numbness. Put them to sleep, they won't notice a thing.

I did not listen to the speech (you in the know will know that I wouldn't watch the damned thing). I was perhaps not alone in being underwhelmed by the prospect of listening to George II prattle on about, well, whatever it is he's on about this year. I'm sure it's staying the good, moral, Christian, righteous course, not backing down to the terrorists, hope and optimism... am I getting this right?... and energy independence from "foriegn oil". Like Texaco.

I even tuned in to the repulsive and dreadful "Air America" network today, hoping for a glimmer in the embers of opposition, but after 8 minutes of meaningless dreck, I tuned back to Jim Rome. It is, after all, Super Bowl week.

I am resigned to life without an opposition party, for at least the next 13 years before and until the Chinese march in and take over. It's just so saddening and maddening that this happened on my watch. Sorry.