"No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up." -- Lily Tomlin
Since I've started this blog, I haven't had too much to say about politics. I've been in a state of apathy or malaise. I still care about what's going on, but I just can't work up much outrage anymore. How do you sustain outrage when each day, it sometimes seems, brings some new horror? It's always something. It's like Reagan's "ketchup is a vegetable" times 365 days times seven years. At this point, I'm just marking time until January 20, 2009, when we can chase these rogues out of the White House and, hopefully, into oblivion.
How do you sustain outrage against a group, such as the Bush administration and their many apologists and enablists, that has such a sociopathic lack of values? Domestic surveillance, torture, the U.S. attorneys' scandal, signing statements, S-CHIP vetoes, secrecy, FEMA failures, cronyism, outing Valerie Plame, commuting Scooter Libby's sentence, Abu Gharab, the Downing Street Memo -- it just goes on and on until one scandal bleeds into another.
The only thing more outrageous than the scandals and disaster is the spin they use to try to justify it all. Just when you think they can't get any more brazen or hypocritical, they top themselves. It comes out of the White House Press Room and Faux News in a wave of talking points and obfuscations, and turns into news show after news show of repetition of the slogan of the day. The surge is working, we'll stand up when they stand down, weapons of mass destruction, bring it on, dead or alive, etc., etc. ad nauseum. It all becomes a big brain stew until you click off the TV in disgust or change it to "Dancing with the Stars."
Starting today, with the Iowa caucus, we begin the long process of choosing the person who, hopefully, will stop the bleeding, the next president. I've resolved to snap out of my lethargy and get more involved in the process, primarily by writing more about what's going on in my little blog. Stay tuned.
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