i have no energy but i must scream

[piranha]

if you failed to complete your own national guard service and your VP received five deferments to avoid service in vietnam, but you accuse political opponents who challenge your failed foreign policy of being cowards, you might be a republican.

if you believe the president should be entitled to jail anyone he decides is a threat, without recourse to habeas corpus, you might be a republican.

if you rail against "sexual predators" and castigate clinton for his sexual addiction, but secretly solicit teenagers and children for sex over the internet, you might be a republican. if you find out about this, but keep it quiet instead of taking steps to protect those children, you might be a republican.

if you institute policies that squander a budget surplus and create an $8.5 trillion dollar budget deficit, you might be a republican.

if your kids go to college and hang out in bars while you send other people’s children to die in war, you might be a republican.

the list goes on.

if this were my party, i'd be screaming bloody murder by now. if this were my country, i'd revolt against what they're turning it into. but i think that requires a conscience that doesn't just look out for me and mine. can one be republican and have such a conscience? it's starting to look doubtful. but maybe nothing matters as long as a majority of people are well-fed and got their faux-TV.

link via pecunium.

Comments

[topaz7.livejournal.com]

...maybe nothing matters as long as a majority of people are well-fed and got TV.

Don't forget SUVs! And lots of guns.

Yeah, I can't believe what's going on there either.

This concludes my drive-by comment ;D

[(Anonymous)]

if this were my country, i'd revolt against what they're turning it into.

what kind of revolt would you initiate?

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

please sign anon posts.

this is all predicated on feeling a country is "mine". since i don't generally feel this way, it's is a gedankenexperiment; in reality i would more likely leave a country if i started feeling how i feel about the US now. i have no patriotic feelings for any place; i'm a mostly-pacifist hermit, not a leader of revolutions. but let's say i couldn't leave. i'd probably go through the following stages:

i'd bombard members of congress with letters expressing my disgust. i'd express my opinion about how they should vote towards my own representatives regarding specific bills. i'd write letters to the editors of newspapers. i'd link, link, link to these ongoing travesties in my blog, trying to gather with other people who think this has gone on long enough.

i'd generally try to combine my brain and brawn with that of other people because there's power in numbers; hermiting be damned.

i'd start demonstrating, locally, and culminating in front of congress. often. hopefully in large numbers, but maybe small noisy numbers is all that'll happen. no matter. make noise. talk to lots of people. have a small number of important, well-thought-out and presented talking points. repeat, repeat, repeat those. i'd learn more about propaganda, and how to use it myself.

i'd seriously consider withholding taxes. some other acts of civil disobedience might be useful. it depends on how much i am willing to risk going to jail in a climate that leans towards fascism. alternatively i might drop out of the picture entirely as far as the government is concerned. i'd go for self-employment, greater self-sufficiency. i'd start preparing for things to get much worse.

it might be time to start forming an underground resistance movement (or get into it with people who were a bit faster about that). i'd take up arms and train in guerilla warfare. i am not a paranoid nutbar, but i do think what we're seeing in the US is the thin wedge of fascism, and i am quite wary of how fascism can creep. i don't expect there not to be elections in 2008. but if the republicans win midterms now and that one, i am no longer sanguine about 2012; also if there is another major terrorist attack on US soil.

[lynn-massa.livejournal.com]

sorry, that was me. Didn't mean it to be anon...

I think the most I can do is write letters to congresscritters (which I haven't done much of lately) and vote (which I do every single election).

Since I vote libertarian, it is, in the larger context, merely a weak-voiced protest against the current 2 party system, but I believe in the principles and agree with most of the platform.

I used to do more demonstration-type things as a younger, more idealistic person, but now the thought exhausts me. Truly, it takes a strong person to take on a task like you are proposing. Stronger than me.

I feel like the frog that is set in a pot of cold water, and doesn't notice as the heat rises until it is boiled...

Perhaps I will start writing letters again. I wonder if email is read and taken seriously?

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

email is taken more and more seriously, i believe, but it's certainly easy enough to print out a copy and mail it via snailmail as well.

yeah, demonstrations seem like a young person's thing, but really, the peace demonstrations i've been in crossed the gamut of ages, and that's the way it ought to be. still, if it exhausts you, there are certainly other ways to be counted.

work on the grassroots level to educate yourself and inform other people on important issues -- frex via organizations like moveon.org ... umm, maybe not considering how you vote :). libertarians are bound to have their own initiatives. though you might be interested in papertrails for elections as well, and join that effort. lick envelopes and put up posters for your candidate or issue of choice. write letters for amnesty international.

i don't know about you, but i feel the water temperature rising. so maybe it's time to hop out of the pot.

[emma]

Added you. You seem nifty. Very tired and overpeopled today, so not sure why I'm doing this now and not when I wake up. Will attempt to communicate more sometime later :)

And I'm not a Republican.