But it's not what Alec Baldwin and Dennis whatsisname want you to think it is.
It's not really that aliens are trying to turn your brain to mush to make you tastier.
It's that fearmongers are turning your brain and your conscience and your national policy to garbage in service of their commercial interests.
Fear itself is the strongest agent for raising sales known to advertisers. The current incarnation of the Republican Party is using fear -- pure unadulterated berating fearmongery -- to change the tone of our national discussion despite their recent overwhelming electoral loss.
We need to stop letting them.
Call it framing if you want. Call it the Overton Window
if you understand it better that way. What it amounts to is a refusal to stand up to the bullies, again -- or maybe still.
What results is the watering-down of our message as progressives, the acceptance of indecency, the defeat of principle, the continuation of the filthy agenda the rich and powerful, the greedy and cruel, never stopped pushing.
As my DI used to say, "Suck it up." Push back. Harder. Now.
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How are the Republicans
Doing anything different from Dems? Their agendas are almost impossible to differentiate at this point.
Sure, the GOP is tossing in a few hysterical claims about their counterparts across the aisle being Socialists, but that's just for old time's sake.
Stop using the GOP as a scapegoat
Last time I checked, Obama and the Dems run the show. That conservative ideas are still in the consciousness as viable is due to the Dems and the Dems alone. They had a mandate to change the discussion and are not.
Blaming the GOP at this point in time is ludicrous and only serves to give the Dems cover to slip further and further to the right. The GOP has very little sway these days without the explicit help of the Dems.
This isn't 2003 anymore and its time for "progressives" to stop pretending it is and using the GOP bogeyman. This *liberal* doesn't buy this nonsense.
From Steele's apology to Limbaugh to Obama's speech on
National Security, the drumbeat is away from anti-torture. The drumbeat is away from anti-fraud. The drumbeat is away from the differences Democrats voted for.
The drumbeat is endless and relentless. We need at minimum a new Fairness Doctrine (present both sides of the issue, don't give one candidate time but not the other) and enforcement of it.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
The big problem right now is that the Dems don't represent
an alternative side. What do Barack and Harry and Nancy stand for that is so contrary to what the GOP stands for? Damned if I know.
It would be funny to have Harry do a Fairness Doctrine-required rebuttal to the GOP on holding prisoners indefinitely without charges, and then having him literally borrow, say, Michael Steele's script. Why not -- at least it would save paper!
We really do need some place to go
The sooner the Democrats split into the Republicans and the Democrats, the better, so far as I'm concerned. Since the Democrats threw me under the bus in the primaries, I didn't expect anything of them, but the way it's playing out is even uglier than I thought it would be.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
The view from under the bus is depressing, lambert
hence my determination to crawl out, since lying still waiting for the bus to move is no guarantee against becoming roadkill.
Reality being an ugly thing, I've determined that, as usual, I don't get what I want.
I have to make what I get do what I want, or I have to change what I want.
Changing what I want seems self-defeating.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18