Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"Press the politicians"! Ha! Yeah, that's worked out so well until now.

Jesus, don't these dimwits get that if they actually want to change anything that trying to "pressure" a bunch of entitled oligarchs is a huge waste of time? Fuck, they might as well just stage performance art pieces.

Here's my two-point plan, you feebs:

1. Figure out what you believe in and want to accomplish.
2. Find people who share your issues and opinions and convince them to help you build a viable third party and start campaigning at the local level and build your way up. Prepare yourself for decades of struggle and hard work, because no one is going to do this stuff for you, and if they do by some miracle of miracles do what you want without you presenting a real threat to their power, they'll only do the bare minimum to shut you up. DImotherfuckingY, you lazy Gen Y cunts.

If you'll allow me to translate, here...I'm a native Washingtonian, and grew up speaking fluent bullshit:

1) Move beyond single-issue politics and embrace a multi-issue, radical but practical, platform...

Radical but practical = don't get your hopes up.

2) Join up and help GNA build up a multi-million email list, a netroots army of multi-issue progressives and radicals, who understand the need to transform the System and literally overthrow the dictatorship of corporations and indentured politicians. The Grassroots Netroots Alliance (with 200,000 people currently on our email list) is currently approaching a dozen or so large, like-minded networks with comparable lists to jump-start this process...

Give us all your friends' email addresses so we can spam the living shit out of them.

Don't forget, guys'n'gals; the "netroots" are what "astroturf" sprouts from.

(3) Press the politicians to take a clear stand on all the burning issues.at http://www.GrassrootsNetroots.org...

Waste your time slogging up to Capitol Hill one more time to beseech a gang of bought-off politicians and be ignored, ejected from the offices, threatened with arrest, roughed up, tasered, or worse.

(4) As we “press the politicians,” we need to consciously and deliberately integrate electoral insurgency and netroots lobbying with non-electoral resistance—including boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, and other pressure tactics. In the face of an unprecedented Crisis, we must move beyond polite protest to resistance.

"Press the Politicians"? Isn't that a bit like "Choke the Chicken?" "Baste the Bishop?" Oh, yeah; and he says "insurgency" here, too. Oooo-ooohhhhhh... And, what's this about moving from polite protest to resistance? Jayzus Keerist, has this guy been living under a goddamn' rock or something?

(5) Sign the Pledge of Resistance -- in the event of an attack upon Iran, send an email to pledgeofresistance@grassrootsnetroots.org

Pledge Of...Resistance? You can tell he's full of shit right there, in his thievery of the name of an organization I used to do guerilla postering with around DC during Gulf War v1.0. "DC Pledge Of Resistance", they were called.

Shit, man, how'd this guy get into CounterPunch? This sounds more like The Nation's variety of talking down to the Left and patting them on the head like precocious children or something.

Nice call, MotherFucker, I choked on the "radical but practical" horseshit while I was reading this, too. I've been getting used to Obama ever since I blew off his 2002 anti-war posturing at my alma mater, but this pseudo-radical shit is what really makes me blog consistently about cocktail recipes instead of politics. What the fuck, here's one for you... an aviation is pretty classic:
2-3 oz. gin
1/2 a lemon
1 tsp. maraschino (Luxardo, not red sugar syrup)
2 tsp. creme de violette

and here's a different take if you like campari:
2-3 oz. gin
1/2 a lime
2 tsp. campari
1/4 tsp. orange flower water

I was joking that I was gonna call it an "orangeviation,", but I guess I'll call it an "I've been coopted like a bitch-viation." Sigh... Maybe I can get a pimp GrassrootsNetroots bumper sticker for my car, just to show those fuckers in Washington...

Quite frankly, pressing politicians is the best we an hope for at this stage*-in the same manner "pressing" management is the only hope I have of improving, marginally, my working conditions until such time as the morality of work is abolished.

It's true the people who are conscious of being "on the left" are vis-a-vis action pretty ineffectual, but these lame efforts are the best on offer...and I don't think they are completely useless. The may help to keep the spirit alive, if nothing else.

I think the tendency to belittle these efforts come from fear-recognition of our pathetic situation.

*E.g., dissident bloggers aren't disappeared in the country, not do to the generosity of politicians, but do to public pressure. At the end of the day, rulers require broad acquiescence to carry out their programs and it is this requirement that defines the limits of their power.

key equation in crass gooks calculations

direct action = "pressure tactics"
radical but practical

kick em in the balls type struggle = no no

radical yes but..... impractical

What is this "netroots" - is it pronounced "knee-troots"? What is a "troot"? I know now that famous '68ers such as C. Davidson are watching this very space, so I want to be very precise. I think I grew up in a collegiate town around a whole tribe of troots. They were saving Tibet, dreaming of raising perfect angel children, debating the very future of humanity in fifth grade, and now - pushing keys while ex-fratmen sadists order global conflagrations.
Good comments, by the way - very funny.

Actually I think it's net-roots. There's this series of tubes called the Internet, see. Thanks to this wondrous invention we no longer need to struggle to win progress, we just need to sign online petitions and send email to Congress (where staffers scan all incoming email for return addresses that end in @citigroup.com or @exxonmobil.com, forward those on to representatives and delete the rest).

I need a recipe for brewing creme de violette at home.

If you google "creme de violette" you'll see the Rothman & Winter that was recently reintroduced into the US. It's not stupid expensive and is pretty good.

I made a lavender liquer at home, which is good with some vodka and sweet and/or dry vermouth, e.g. If you could get dried violets you could make something easily. This site got me started in with all that:
http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs.htm

Sorry for going off topic, as you were.