It Rains Downright

You who are regular readers here know that I am skeptical of the health of our Republic. Nothing I read, hear or see suggests to me that we are not far along in the process of becoming more of an oligarchy than any time in our history since the late 1800's. The brief spasm of populism and reform that began with the Progressive Movement right after the turn of the century and culminated in the New Deal has become sclerotic, calcifying into a corporatist menage of deal-making, influence-peddling and outright crony capitalism spiced with imperial dream-sauce and marinated in debt and easy credit.

I gave up on the Republicans long ago. Bush 43 wasn't a disease, he was merely the symptom of a group so incestuous, so vapid and crepuscular, so greedy and venal and stupid - exalting their own moronity because it wasn't "effete" and "indecisive", preferring to be decisively wrong rather than delay a moment for reflection - that as a group and as individuals they literally cannot govern. Their hatred and contempt for governance has resulted in hateful, contemptible government. Fortunately they consist of a slowly-dwindling group of white and Christopithocene Luddites, corporate magnates and power-worshippers whose disconnect from the world around them is making them the titanotheres of politics.

Here's a perfect example of the only sort of thing you can expect from them GOP circa 2010:

"Congress is preparing to enact legislation to pass a law with $4 trillion more for more bailouts. Should people who write the financial reform laws be the same ones who helped cause the crisis? Should taxpayers be punished and the big banks and credit card companies be rewarded? The time has come to take a stand. Oppose the big bank bailout bill."

This is a man called Frank Luntz, and what is he urging the GOP to demagogue?

This.

"The House bill would create a new federal agency dedicated to consumer protection, establish a council of regulators to police the financial landscape for systemic risks, initiate oversight of the vast derivatives market and give the government power to wind down large, troubled firms whose collapse could endanger the entire financial system. The legislation also would give shareholders an advisory say on executive compensation, increase transparency of credit-ratings agencies and set aside billions of dollars to aid unemployed homeowners."

This is the sort of thing the 2010 GOP finds detestable. Why anyone making less that 250K/year would vote for this is inexplicable beyond the simple conclusion that the American public is an utter ass.

Sadly, the Democratic Party is a fucking mess. It elected a callow sloganeer based on the mantra of "Change" who is demonstrating more each day that given the people and the factions currently in place inside the Beltway there is no possible "change" that benefits the polity as a whole. The most recent federal budget is almost a parody of the criticisms widely leveled against the U.S. government. Vast, bloated with deficits, and anchored on an immense military expenditure, larger than the largest of the Cold War defense budgets, larger than anything the U.S. has spent on its armed force since 1945.

The "health care reform" bill should stand as a monument to the ineptitude of the Democratic Party, 2010. Gutted and stuffed, eviscerated, leveraged, delayed, neutered, twisted and burned, the resulting mess does too little for too many, and almost nothing to effect the engine driving health cost increase, the pernicious fee-for-service setup and the feckless insurance outfits that can simply pass the costs on to the sucker - I mean, consumer...

And the current legislative setup is neither amenable to minor parties nor are the American people apparently capable of accepting the notion of coalition government.

In fact, given our apparently acephalic acceptance of moron-grade overseas filibusters and a domestic politics that combines the thoughtful gravitas of a schoolboy fart-lighting contest with the frenetic gotcha of a sorority bitch-queen eye-clawing catfight, We the People seem incapable of finding our own ass with both hands and a flashlight.

Christ, what a mess.

No, at the sunset the earth may drizzle dew, but at the sunset of my country's sun it rains downright.