A faithful reader here asks, trenchantly,
Meanwhile, I request some commentary on the actual topic of this blog. Crap, Zero has a quarter billion laid in already and the Dims are running no prez primaries.That about sums it up, and kinda answers its own question.Meanwhile, it looks as if Zero's strategy of being only visually black and squatting squarely on the corporate nest has already ended this "election," as Brand A (or is it Brand B) can muster only the Mormon from Mammon or Newt Fucking Gingrich.
I can't pay any attention to it at all. The whole electoral charivari seems to me, on the one hand, a freak show, and on the other, a bore -- though you would think a freak show might at least be entertaining. Not this one, though. Perhaps because it's just the same old freakeries we've seen for most of my life. Bite the head off a live chicken? Hasn't that been done to death? And the most exciting guy on the tube these days is... Newt Gingrich?! What's old is new again -- except it isn't; it's just old. Obie's a monster, and there are any number of other monsters hoping to supplant him. It would be a dire situation -- if there were anything one could do about it.
When I started this blog, back in the day, I seem to have had the idea that talking with people about electoral politics was a useful thing to do. I am not at all a recovering Democrat; I never had any use for those downmarket whores at all; but apparently I thought that trying to woo people like my liberal friends away from the Democrats might be constructive, somehow. Maybe I thought it would shake things up -- help move American politics out of its tight orbit around that strange, strange attractor, the Republicrat duopoly.
Now, of course, I can't imagine why I ever entertained that idea. For one thing, I've come to the conclusion that people like my liberal friends are just no damn good -- politically, I mean; many of them are very fine people in private life; but you just can't talk them out of zombie-ing off to the booth and pulling the donkey's dick every opportunity they get. They're convinced that by doing that, and talking up the Donks and decrying the Teabaggers, they're advancing the cause of humankind -- being "progressive", in a word. There's something deeply and fundamentally askew with their thinking on this subject; they just can't take in facts that ought to be obvious to the meanest intellect, though many of them are in other respects quite clever people.
I'm starting to chew the carpet here. Maybe I'll talk a bit more about recent conversations with some good-hearted liberals -- and even a few people who consider themselves to be Marxists -- tomorrow, when I'm a bit more calm.
Speaking of which: My son, when he was about five, explained to me that the opposite of a "wild animal" was a "calm animal". This story has nothing to do with the subject of the post or the mission of the blog; I just love to tell it.
Comments (18)
What? No primary challenge to Obomba? You mean Bill Fletcher hasn't sprung into action yet, like he used to threaten to do every other week or so?
Seriously, man, I don't think anthropomorphic climate warming or galactic global cooling is going to kill us all, or our descendants, or theirs. It looks like it's going to be campaign season and the heat death of the universe that'll do the deed.
Posted by gluelicker | January 24, 2012 9:39 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 21:39
"anthropomorphic climate warming" Please be more specific about this process.
Posted by lunch | January 24, 2012 10:56 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 22:56
Surely, lunch. It's on a par with panegyric ocean salting, rotisserie chicken deforestation, peak prime potash, and the like.
Posted by gluelicker | January 24, 2012 11:01 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 23:01
It's extra depressing to me to see MJS continuing to be so short-sighted about SMBIVA. Yes, he was younger (in the bad sense) when he started it. Yes, the reality under the microscope here is even worse than somebody back then might have ever guessed.
But what makes MJS think that it's not important to be documenting and discussing the original topic? In fact, an energetic host who still believed in the mission -- the thesis that voting is irrelevant -- would be posting-wise on fire at this point.
But we're getting harrumphs about Sesame Street?
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 24, 2012 11:38 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 23:38
Many thanks!
Posted by lunch | January 24, 2012 11:40 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 23:40
At one point, I knew a whole bunch of very nice people who had fled from one cult to another. Their reasons for doing so were perfectly good, once they got into the details of their mistreatment, but the last piece of the logic puzzle eluded them. The problem didn't lie in finding a cult that fit them. The problem was expecting fulfillment from a fucking cult. They knew, nevertheless, that if they just kept shopping around...
Posted by Al Schumann | January 24, 2012 11:42 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 23:42
MD, I really regret that I'm not being more helpful. But there are days -- a lot of them, now -- when I really feel I've said everything I have to say, and said it a million times.
Posted by MJS | January 24, 2012 11:45 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 23:45
MJS, that's cool, and I certainly know the feeling in blogtown, as you can only muster so much posting glue for unchanging trends.
Would it help to suggest that part of the purpose of SMBIVA is not just persuasion, but mere history -- a.k.a. making a record of noteworthy events? That's certainly one way I've always seen this operation.
I consider it important to make such records, and the blog form helps hone them.
One never knows when such resources will get tapped.
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 24, 2012 11:58 PM
Posted on January 24, 2012 23:58
dembo voting marxists
now there's a target of opportunity +
Posted by op | January 25, 2012 12:04 AM
Posted on January 25, 2012 00:04
i suspect the OCC has yet to mold itself
into 10 thousand ballot boxing demolition squads yet
so there are still tasks for SMBIVA
Posted by op | January 25, 2012 12:09 AM
Posted on January 25, 2012 00:09
OP and MD are both right, of course. Once more unto the breach!
Posted by MJS | January 25, 2012 12:20 AM
Posted on January 25, 2012 00:20
I too find it too disgusting and boring to pay any attention to.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | January 25, 2012 4:21 AM
Posted on January 25, 2012 04:21
The best thing for voting booths is to ignore them. Demolition lends the impression that something serious and even efficacious is going on there.
Posted by Jack Crow | January 25, 2012 9:14 AM
Posted on January 25, 2012 09:14
In the grand scheme of things liberals, like their "conservative" counterparts, are pretty goddamned privileged and their natural reflex is to defend that privilege from the barbarians outside the wall who threaten it. Liberalism is the (plain fact rejecting) ideological outcome of trying to reconcile being dependent on the exploitative, malignant existing power structure with feeling good about oneself apropos ones "role" in society for a certain class of people--project managers, art directors, teachers, "intellectuals", "creatives" in general, (certain) middle managers, nonprofitiers, (frankly) many union coordinators and others a notch or two above the proles who feel entitled to know what's best for their subordinates, "students", of constituents of "their" community.
Ultimately I think liberals are a false friend to the left. Whatever superficial ideological overlap their may be between liberals and the left when it comes to taking any kind of meaningful action liberals can be expected to stand firmly on the side of the status quo, perhaps even dropping the pretense altogether after a certain point.* If the revolution does ever come it won't be liberals (or even a lot of the so called left) but the people who truly suffer from the present arrangement who will bring it about.
*I do think that exposing the lies at the heart is liberalism is a useful though--not to create apostates of former liberals but in order to expose the fraud our self-appointed rulers, managers, coordinators and teachers use to justify their (relative, at any rate) authority and keep the rest quietly acquiescent. Plus there's a certain satisfaction in seeing people who wish to look like good guys backed into a corner and forced to look like bad guys.
Posted by Peter Ward | January 25, 2012 11:59 AM
Posted on January 25, 2012 11:59
Keep on keepin' on, SMBIVA. To those of us who visit here, it's an essential stop in the blogosphere (most of the rest of which is really the blathersphere).
Posted by chomskyzinn | January 25, 2012 5:32 PM
Posted on January 25, 2012 17:32
ward
nice stuff in your comment
exposing official liberals of all stripes
is a fit task for dembo bashers
like SMBIVA
Posted by Anonymous | January 25, 2012 8:57 PM
Posted on January 25, 2012 20:57
Well, MD, I would rather watch Sesame Street than vote, so I am not that much of an old grouch. Getting back to this blog's original subject matter, who will venture a guess at who the first leftwinger to come all out for Obama will be?
Posted by michael yates | January 25, 2012 9:13 PM
Posted on January 25, 2012 21:13
You mean the first who hasn't already? Cornel West.
Posted by MJS | January 25, 2012 10:12 PM
Posted on January 25, 2012 22:12