The Beltway Sewer

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...