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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Save America's Youth...vote Kerry
Posted by Jill | 3:51 PM
I don't mean to harp on the Pandagon boys, I really don't, even if they are a constant reminder that an old crone like Your Humble Blogger is playing in the kids' sandbox.

But it just chaps my ass when I see a 20-something kid who already feels like this:


Enough. Fucking enough. I am so goddamn tired of talking about the Swiftvets. This last week has been the Dean scream or Dole fall for our body politic -- it has shone light on everything corrosive, everything vile, everything that turns off Americans not just from voting but from civic participation. It has ripped our veneer of idealism and high-mindedness and exposed many of us as bottom-feeding predators whose primary political instinct is to dash towards the blood, skirting and evading the actual hurdles and obstacles holding back our society.

Our media has led the way with its rendition of A Beautiful Mind, schizophrenically fighting its better instincts and leaving the editorialists and truth-finders to snipe and attack the stenographers for mindlessly pounding their keys in the newsroom. We've seen Chris Matthews turn to virtue and O'Reilly come to the rescue. We've watched the Dionnes and the Krugmans of the world lower their anti-media cannons while the Malkens and Barones have desperately clung to the inaccuracies, begging Americans to believe the discrepancy equates with deviancy. In short, we've watched the election dig up an old war, some partisans spin it, and significant portions of the media realize that business-as-usual reporting will render a disservice to the republic. And so they, like everyone else, have gone to war against their misguided colleagues and brethren, lining up on the side of common sense just as many in politics have lined up on the side of elevated discourse. But such company also highlights the size of the forces arrayed on the sides of ignorant stenography and political mud, those who continue to do wrong because they're not sure what'll happen to them if the game changes.


It's one thing for ME to feel like this, to feel that there's no use, the game is rigged, and we are on an inevitable downslide into a permanent Bush family dictatorship. After all, I lived through both Kennedy assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the Vietnam war, the protests thereof, Chicago 1968, the Nixon Administration, disco music, and Qiana shirts on men. I've seen the worst America has to offer. I'm torn between going to the march in New York City this Sunday and saying, "I did it last time. It's your turn."

But then I read this and I think maybe we can't give up. Because if we give up, then these guys, and this guy, and this one and this one give up, and this guy is just another lawyer and then where are we?

This situation requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part. Like marching up Seventh Avenue on Sunday. And we're just the ones to do it.

Who's with me?
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