Dems the Breaks

I am feeling wildly grateful for my apartment at this moment. It is cool and breezy when it's hot and sticky on the ground. It's a mekhaye...that's Yiddish for pleasure.

I am rarely wont to write about politics, mostly because, though my instincts are in the right place, I don't consider myself articulate enough on the subject. My leanings leak out here and there, for sure, mostly as snide asides, as asnides, if you will, but I prefer writing about Naples and that time at sleepaway camp when I dressed up as Boy George and looked EXACTLY like him. Plus, I am not all that well-read or, rather, I don't remember what I read when I read about politics. When I was living in the Bay Area, I spent a lot of time listening to KPFA and reading The Nation. My then-not-ex and I got pretty obsessed for a while there, him more than me since, you know, he is worse than me in all ways, and it started to feel awful, hearing about all the news that doesn't appear to be fit to print in the mainstream media and then going about our driving, water wasting, 12-dollar margarita swilling ways. We composted and (mostly after we broke up) I rode my bike, but I was still most definitely part of the problem. Now moreso than ever here in Naples, home of burning garbage and diesel fumes. Not that I burn garbage or ride a moped, but you get the point. I am contributing to the downfall of humankind. Sorry folks.

I am working on it, however.

All that said, the caving of the Democrats on the Iraq spending, no pullout timeline meshugas (more Yiddish...this time meaning madness) is something I need to write a bit about. Firstly, no surprise. In the 2000 and 2004 election years, to say the Democrats and the Republicans are basically the same at the end of the day and it was better to vote your conscience than for the lesser of two evils was to commit heresy. Nader voters were blamed for Bush's first win (instead of the Florida Supreme Court and myriad other imbrogli). Abortion was a hot topic as in, "If you don't vote for Gore/Kerry, abortion will be banned!"

This is what I think: high level Democrats and the Republicans are basically the same (not all of them, e.g. the late Paul Wellstone, Kucinich, Barbara Lee) in that they are career politicians out to keep their jobs at best and to make a killing on killing at worst. They all lie, they all cheat, they all look out for number one (and that is not the homeless shelter or the women's clinic in your neighborhood, in case you were wondering). They represent the political status quo and the economic elite, so the far left and far right who vote for them are hardly being represented. Still, we fear the extremes, so we vote center. Now I am a bit lost. Please clarify my point...Doug! Oh wait, you already have, here.

As for the fear of the illegalization of abortion. Note that, yes, Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act into law, but it is unlikely that he will get around to banning abortion completely with all that fun, I mean, work to be done in Iraq. I am not being flip here. I am vehemently pro-choice, but am currently way more afraid of how evil and/or numbed out the US government officials are over the daily carnage in Iraq. And the widening gap between teeny tiny group of super rich and mega jumbo group of poor. And our schools. And so many other things.

My point here, foggy as it must read, is that I am disgusted by the rollover and play dead Dems, the roll them over and make them dead Republicans, and sad for all Americans, those who feel like me and those who don't (and sad for everyone the world over). We all have to live with the legacy of this administration and the repercussions of a western world gone completely mad. If someone cannot tell the difference between the right to free speech and the right to own an SUV, we are in way way lots of much oodley trouble.