minneapolis upside down

I was hit by a personal tsunami of political awareness in the last twenty-four hours.

First, I read the G.R. Anderson's City Pages article on Michele Bachmann. You should too. It will explain a lot about how her personal ambition guides her faith and why attacks against her hypocrisy don't work. She is comfortable in her hypocrisy--since, as the title of the article says, she is "The Chosen One."

Shortly thereafter, I witnessed the pathetic "Impeach for Peace" March wind through downtown Minneapolis. Utterly predictable and completely banal, the ragtag largely white marchers shuffled through their act in hippy drag chanting the same tired slogans and beating an arrhymthic drum. Already, the chatter has started about the fine protests to be held outside the Republican convention.

Wake up, folks. Those in power are waiting for us. Action is no doubt needed, but let's not do the same ol' ineffectual shit--the puppets, the slogans, the signs, the kissing of the media's ass, the sacrificial arrests. Ignoring the Repugs convention and generating something of our own might be far more useful than bitching about the "free speech" cage into which many of us would willingly march.

Then, I watched Bill Moyers' unrelenting On America episode "Capitol Crimes" on the corruption endemic on Capitol Hill--and in our culture. I knew much of the information--although I learned a lot about how religion, business, sleaze, and Congress are intertwined--yet I was left wrung out by utter depravity on display. Like a refrain to Michele Bachmann, Tom Delay says something about wanting people to see Jesus through his mug shot. Pardon my sacrilege, but Christ Almighty.

Maybe the biggest revelation is the utter cynicism on display among Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Mike Scanlon towards the church goers who make up the Christian Right, who we on the left often assume are in on the deal.

No, it appears that the cynical bastards behind the money mill in Washington looked at working class Christians with almost the same contempt held for the Indian tribes that they likewise bilked for millions of dollars in order to pedal influence and line their pockets.

Seriously, regardless of whether you agree with my politics or my distrust of organized religion, you need to watch this Moyers' thing. It ain't pleasant, but before you vote in November, you need to see it. You can watch it on the web, and the web site has lots of solid supplementary material.

Finally, I woke early to leftover coffee and Crooks and Liars, the essential website if you want to watch the dissolution of the republic. There I found another video document that I recommend to all. Keith Olbermann has been noted mostly for his feud with Fox's Bill O'Reilly, but as of late, he has risen out of the tar pit to an Edward R. Murrow level of erudite journalism. Watch his special comment demolishing George W. Bush's administration not with some lame "Bush lied, People died" sentiment or faux outrage, but with a methodical yet passionate exposure of the cynicism, lies and incompetance.

But what does all this leave us with? Sorry to say it, but we need to vote Democratic in this election, and when I say we, I include the Christian working class folks and the alt left too. It is sad that we have sunk to this level where we have to rely on the Democratic party--and believe me I will be pinching my probocsis--but the alternative is a referendum wherein the Bush, Norquist, Abramoff, Delay, and their ilk--including the smiling Timmy Pawlenty-- will return to finally put a stake through the Republic's heart, assuming that it still has one.

I have no illusions about the limits of the Democratic Party, but as Norm Ornstein says in the discussion following the Moyers documentary, this level of sleaze in government as invented by the modern Republican party is something quite different. Ornstein didn't say it, but I will. To vote Republican, or regrettably, to vote Green or another third party, in this election is to tacitly approve the final preparations for an uniquely oily Bushoid fascism. With Democrats in, the work will just have begun, but with a Republican victory, the tools we need to change things will be taken from us.

--Loosestrife