PunkAssBlog.com

Two points spring to mind upon reading this post by Shape of Days via
the first point is the obvious one sparked off by Shape of Days saying;

We’re not at war. But we’re doing the kinds of things, both at home and abroad, that would only be justified — could only be excused — in a war. And not a war of convenience, either, or a war to enforce the edict of some pseudo-legal body. The tactics we’ve employed in the past four years could only be tolerated in a desperate and frantic war for our very survival.

…which is that if we go as far as torture, napalming of children, mass murder, the constant destruction of civil rights and everythign else that has gone on so far, in our defense, we have already been destroyed, we have already lost the war, because now we are not the good, the pure, the just, we become the Greater Evil, who keeps the Lesser Evil in check through those greater acts of evil, and who will always grow greater in its evil should that evil that wishes to destroy The Us be in turn destroyed.

“Liberty Or Death” is a phrase that is supposed to be said by the individual, referring to the giving up of their own life in defence of their own liberties, those that are willing to give up someone else’s life for their own liberty have, generally speaking, forfeited both their liberty, which has been turned into an evil thing now, and their life, which means no more to your leaders or enemies than theirs did to you after all…

But of course that would require people accepting that the only battle worth fighting, that should be fought is the one between Good versus Evil and refusing to fight for anything less than good is both an acceptance and condoning of the evils that make the fight less than good.
That is not to say that reality is cut and dry, Good vs. Evil, indeed it is ever the opposite, nothing but grey, because no one can find it in themselves to makes things different, or because people allow themselves to accept the generally proposterous illusion that Our side is right in all things, and it’s the evidence to the contrary that is either wrong or causing us to be Evil.

People understand on some level that a fight should be a just one though, and so justify the Bad Fights, those between evil of a kind and evil of another kind, with willful ignorance and acceptance of the illusions they’re fed because it’s just so hard, so scary, to say that we didn’t need to firebomb Dresden, to say that the second nuke, the one on the civilian population of nagasaki, was an unneccesary show of strength for the Russians’ benefit, to admit that the carpet bombing of civilians achieved nothing but waste bombs and human life in equal amounts.

To admit that the levelling of towns to show the partisans palestinians Insurgents that you mean business does not achieve your stated goals. We must be good, yet people say “that’s just the way things are”, “this is neccesary”, “we can’t afford to be and accept things that can change in an instant if enough people choose to change it as though it was gospel, which itself changes if enough of the right people decide to change it. Which is fitting I guess, as allusions go.

Anyway, the other point that occurs to me is in response to those who think that you need to nurture and support rightwingers who have finally noticed the now unignorable fact that repugs are Evil, capital-E, no irony, sarcasm or satire intended. To the idea of nurturing these previously willfully ignorant I can say nothing more complex than this:

No.

No we don’t need to nurture these repugs in their sudden admmitance that all the things that were previously just obvious are now undeniable, these people will switch back as soon as they’re offered a less obvious version of the “le stat c’est moi” facists in the bushchev admin, and we’ll all be bound by more attractive bondage, and placed inside gilded cages.

We can’t nurture them because they’ve not yet learned what has gone wrong here, they’ve not learned to actually ask all the questions that have been progressively getting louder, shouting out for all to hear “ASK ME! ASK ME!” until these people finally asked them and found themselves shocked, shocked I say, at the answers that were there all along and plain to see for those who bothered to look. They have only noticed that which is now unignorable, that which is only politely not mentioned by those who gain direct benefit from it all and suffer no real consequences that they care about. These people are not teachable, because they refuse to accept that there’s anything to learn, and the only lesson they’ll accept requires people other than them to die by the hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands, and that is a price that is too high for enlightenment, that Must be too high opr else the enlightenment is just a different kind of ignorance.

These Lazy Evil people deserve to be put in stocks and have rotten fruit thrown at them, to be turned into the monsters of children’s bedtime stories.

“Be good little children now or else the passive enablers will feed you to the big bad wolf.”

The citizenry being informed consumers of politics is vital to democracy, and the key to being an informed consumer is to ask the questions that inform you in the first place, the media shouldn’t need to be the unelected protector of the democratic process, the media is at heart a business, and business does what is best in their own interests. People who refuse to ask the questions in the first place, who don’t realise that patriotism is the constant Protection of the ideals of the state and not merely the appearance of those ideals are what kills democracy.

Nazi germany was held aloft by the entire nation of germany not asking things like, oh, I don’t know, “Where are all the jews being taken off to?” Silence is support you morons, passive acceptance of authority is what enables them to act in the barbaric and horrible manner they do when you let them.

Which is pretty harsh, but these people did only notice that the repugs were not good when they got really really obvious, so I doubt the softly softly catchy monkey technique of trying not to hurt their precious wittle feelings like they were the children they sometimes act like, is going to work any better than it already has.

That is of course, if you take what they’re saying at face value, there is of course an alternative.

The alternative is simply that it’s a set up for the politics of 2008.

Now in 2008 one of two things will happen, bush will step down and the repugs will elect another puppet regardless of the votes for or against him, or the repugs will just keep bush on indefinately until he kills himself in some no doubt deeply amusing way.

Now either scenario works better if there is a longish period in which bush is dumped on, the first is aided by the repugs dumping every ounce of blame for all the fuck ups that peeps like the shape of days blogger actively supported way back when, along with the other repug politicians, thus allowing the neo-cons to field a shiney “new” and “improved” republican party, which is exactly the same republican party as before but it blames bush for everything bad that ever happened anywhere and swears up and down that they’re completely different of course.

That’s assuming of course that the Neo-Cons, who seem to be the people behind all the current facist policies, don’t just jump ship and get the democratic party elected, with themselves and their ever increasing number of repug-lite dems (the current beaus of the DLC) in charge and repug it up for the Neo-Cons’ non-partisan agenda. (a scenario people often forget because they forget that the neo-cons, the actual repugnant politicos and advisors, care about achieving their goals, whereas the republicans and democrats only care about getting elected, the dems don’t stand a chance against that sort of ruthlessness)

The other alternative is that Bush doesn’t step down at all, which sounds crazy but does take into account the fact that Bush is an egomaniac who makes Nixon look both sane and honest, in which case, as Marc pointed out, the media loves a good come back story (and are in the pocket of the corporations that love the neo-cons), because people seem to lap it up like it was milk, and Bush will look really super compared to his current crappiness even with a mediocre improvement and a scaling down of the obviousness (after nuking the term limit of course, which anyone with eyes can see he could get away with, thank you opposition vacuum).

Yes I’m paranoid, but that’s mainly because I Never Forget, Never, Ever.

In 1998 we didn’t bother to look around to see what was building, in 2000 we were still unaware because it could never happen here right? We’d never admit to using torture right? We’d never invade country after country for shits, giggles and money money money (it’s a rich man’s world), right? We’d never use napalm on civilians (again), would we? Not after vietnam surely? Our elected representatives from both parties wouldn’t knowingly throw our troops by the hundreds of thousands into a meat grinder for short sighted political and monetary gains, right? Wouldn’t wring twice as many deaths from the civilian population of the country we say we’re trying to help (again), would we?

We can be assured that I’m too paranoid right?