I’ve always sneered at people who claimed they were going to pack their bags and leave the US if their candidate didn’t win an election. But now I find myself eye-balling other nations the way someone in a down-sliding city neighborhood looks enviously at suburban developments. And my candidate did win the election.
The unfortunate facts are that both of our political parties are controlled to an unacceptable extent by the wealthy, and one of them is completely under the sway of vicious demagogues.
It’s shameful that GOP politicians must prostrate themselves before a depraved, racist, sexist villain like Rush Limbaugh. It’s shameful that our stupid media pretend that a “movement” animated by a hysterical kook like Glenn Beck has a meaningful role in our politics. It’s shameful that the Facebook edicts of an unaccomplished, empty-headed fool like Sarah Palin are taken seriously. It’s shameful that the insipid, Rand-inspired “economics” of pols like Ryan and Paul are hailed as the “intellectual” underpinnings of that party as if their theories hadn’t been utterly discredited both in the US and abroad.
And it’s shameful that the vast majority of the people who vote here don’t have the vaguest idea what’s going on, even though it affects their lives in the most direct, fundamental ways. This kind of shit makes me despair:
Two-thirds of those polled think the Republicans in Congress are not doing enough to cooperate with Obama, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday.
The majority of those polled said the Democrats should take the first step toward bipartisan cooperation and they want the Democrats to give up more than the GOP to reach consensus.
Emphasis mine. No one who has paid even cursory attention to the proceedings could hold such a stupid opinion. Bill Maher annoys me a lot. But he was right about one thing. This is a deeply stupid country. Our “exceptionalism” is of the short-bus variety.
