I’m bored with the election results — bad news for Democrats! incumbents beware! purity purges! — and I expect many of you are as well. So I’m sharing this excellent Chris Bowers post, which sounds a bit like our very own commenter mclaren:
I am outraged by this, because this is outrageous.
And yet, where are the street protests in response to this outrage? No, not those protests–we need bigger ones. There should be hundreds of thousands of people out there protesting this. Every day. In every city.
Even if there aren’t ubiquitous, massive street protests over this outrage, there should at least be ubiquitous, massive street protests in response to one or more of the many other ongoing outrages. Because those outrages are also outrageous.
Furthermore, the lack of appropriate outrage from the left on this is also an outrage. In response, we need to put together two simultaneous protests–one against the outrage, and one against the outrageous lack of outrage expressed by the absent left.
This new, pathetic, absent left is a shadow of the glorious American left of the olden days. What the hell is wrong with kids these days, anyway?
schrodinger's cat
Do you mean bit?
DougJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
I do.
Comrade Tank Hueco
I thought DougJ was mclaren.
mr. whipple
It’s the fucking video games and absent parents. No one is teaching the kids the art of flammable paper mache protest puppets.
DougJ
@Comrade Tank Hueco:
I think he may be a spoof, but I don’t spoof my own threads.
John Cain
Best Lambert impression ever.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Tank Hueco: I thought Church Lady was DougJ
Lev
He’s just pissed John Lydon isn’t returning his phone calls.
sbjules
Kids, I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today.
Paul Lynd sang that in Bye, Bye Birdy.
dmsilev
@mr. whipple: Large virtual puppets would seem to be the answer. That, or an iPhone app. The sight of a horde of 20-somethings milling aimless around waving iPhones in the air will inspire fear, or something.
dms
JGabriel
Chris Bowers:
What olden days, like the 80’s?
.
JGabriel
@DougJ:
Everyone else beware?
.
chuck
I am outraged that you would post something so outrageous!
Cat Lady
My young lefty bona fides:
Wore black armbands in high school for a couple of weeks in 1970 and 1971 to protest war.
Held signs and campaigned for George McGovern.
Shop steward who picketed own work site and then walked a picket line for another union’s strike.
Marched for Women’s Equality/Women’s Lives.
Children’s lefty bona fides:
Facebook delinking.
Redshift
Sadly, the comments on that post seem to mostly be a long stream of don’t-get-the-joke.
beltane
Um-kay. No what is it that we are supposed to be outraged about?
beltane
@JGabriel: Hey, don’t knock the ’80s. The Free Mumia drum circles started back in the late ’80s. Have we sold ourselves out so much that we no longer care about Mumia?
jwb
@beltane: Deictics.
Tim O
Is anyone watching the Dem turnout vs GOP turnout in all of these races? Dems are crushing the GOP in turnout!
KY with 90+ reporting 476,000 dems voted and 250,000 GOP.
More people voted so far for Mongiardo than Paul and he’s in second place!
Watch PA and AR; it’s starting out the same way.
Mike Kay
@Tim O: so much for the “dems won’t turnout” meme
DougJ
@Redshift:
That makes it that much better.
Redshift
@beltane: It’s a generic rant. That’s a little more clear if you click through, since it isn’t obvious that what’s quoted here is the whole post, not an excerpt.
El Cid
It’s funny because even among all the marches and vigils and meetings with Congressmen and lock-in’s and alternative press and all the huge time-requiring tasks I took on, you never particularly got the impression it was going anywhere or doing anything, until it occasionally did. I never had the slightest identification with the giant puppets, though, didn’t get that at all.
Kristine
Hey you kids–get on my lawn!!
Pauline
love it! love it! generic rant. thanks for the laffs.
JGabriel
@beltane: Talk about the passion.
.
Fr33d0m
Purity purge? Specter can’t really be considered a purity purge, he just recently switched. Lincoln either. Hers is not simply an issue of purity. I for one assume its okay to publicly argue against your President’s signature accomplishment on a matter of principal, but hers was 1. Not principal and 2. Used the talking points of the other side. Strategic ignorance does not a purity purge make.
handy
nearly 30 comments in and no mention of Whatshername? C’mon BJers, you can do it! Stay strong!
mclaren
This post is an outrage, and we need a massive protest against it.
:0
mai naem
@handy: You talking about Failin’ Palin? The stoopid woman was in AZ over the weekend and partying with her BFF Jan Brewer. They both look like they enjoy a lot of booze.
Chris G.
Somebody should do something about all of the problems.
Mike in NC
Tonight’s outcome was excellent news for John McCain!
handy
@mai naem:
Sorry, I was trying to make an oblique reference to everybody’s favorite ermmm…firey…blogger.
Unfortunately Palin
makes news often enoughis endlessly pimped by our mindless media that any mention of her here is regrettably inevitable.nwithers
The kids know that direct action is a losers move. Street puppets and protests? Nice for meeting other people, but unless the powers that be approve, it never gets out there on the media (look at the media coverage over the no war with Iraq, or even the Immigration reform protests, Vs. the Teabaggers).
Oh maybe direct action!!! yeah that’s the ticket!! WRONG!
Tasing people for not immediately complying with an officer’s request is a yawn these days, even if it’s taped and it’s obvious that the police just wanted somebody to lick their boots. Get arrested, that data gets into all of the databases out on the internet. good luck at finding anything other than a dead-end job unless you have connections, after that. Plus, you live so much on the edge these days, that the incarcaration and legal fees will almost certianlly put you out on the street as a permanently invisible homeless person.
Try something seriously stupid, even if the government hasn’t been tracking you for months, It’s just going to go out there as Crazy/Dangerous XYZ is a threat to America/democracy/mom-and-apple-pie, and whatever cause you were working for is now the next door evil to Al-Queda and the secret communist-homosexual-one-world-government conspiracy.
The kids are all right. They know that the obvious, old choices don’t work anymore. You organize, you get all of the facts out there where before they would have found an early grave, and you hope enough people see your cause is just. The “powers that be” (who are not nearly as powerful or as unified as they want everyone to think they are) are trapped by the democratic system, which is probably it’s last greatest power.
Because we have more than 200 years of democratic governance, the rules can’t just be thrown out without repercussions. I remember in 2004 when the Bush administration floated the idea of “postponing” the elections due to the terrorist threat. For the rest of their administration, they never did a more rapid turn-around and denial of even broaching the thought, because it would have thrown the entire country into civil war that would have made the original civil look like a schoolyard fight, within days after November 4th.
This is what the kids understand. Don’t waste your energy for battles you will lose. Pick your fights where you have a chance. The system is still reformable from within, it is a war of time and ideas, but it’s easier, and much better, on the furniture of the nation than a war of bullets and blood.
Corner Stone
@DougJ:
Bullshit. You so spoof and troll your own shit.
Good Lord man.
OriGuy
The Revolution will not be twittered.
goposaur
this is the corporatist’s dream – police powers to charge people with unlawful expression of their 1st Amendment rights. People are too scared to lose their jobs or become “unqualified” for future employment due to a civil protest.
Mr Furious
On a smaller scale, the wealthy taxpayers of Troy, Michigan decided “Fuck you!” and they don’t care if the city has a library anymore.
Perpetual ignorance is the the future in this “City of Tomorrow!”
—
Congrats to the GOP and the Teabag Party on yet another victory. One step closer to the great America of yesteryear… you know, because there were none of these socialist libraries in the good old days.
joe in oklahoma
DougJ,
I fail to see how this is a bad night for Democrats.
A Dem beat a DINO in Pennsylvania,
a Dem won Murtha’s seat,
Lincoln is in a runoff,
and the GOP establishment candidate loses in KY.
may be a bad night for Rahm and Barry, but hey.
Brandon
The runoff in AR is the best thing ever for financial regulation. Lincoln needs to now pretend that she is not a blue dog corporatist for a few more weeks.
According to this today, she was already counting her chickens.
Bill Murray
It’s time to get the band back together. A capella, death metal version of Fight the Power, that’ll show ’em
OriGuy
@Mr Furious:
Yeah, soci-alists like Benjamin Franklin, who founded the first lending library in America.
BruinKid
Oh boy, I had to go and start reading the comments in Bowers’ post.
Oy. Why do I never learn?