SOTU'D AND FILETBUSTED....

What a week, eh?

There’s been a real domino effect of relieved and audible sighs leading to the inescapable fact that none of us seems to actually ever watch the Prez pat himself on the back for an hour every year. Joe’s relieved that Josh Marshall never watches, and I am likewise relieved that Joe never watches. Spread it around; relief is always better than guilt.

But I tried. Honest, I really did. And I made it right up to the entrance of the Supreme Court Justices. The Chamber response so repulsed me – I thought everyone had confused the date with the Super Bowl – I had to turn it off. Just too many direct comparisons to coronations and touchdowns to force down the democracy delusion, like trying to help the liver go down with a tall, cool tumbler of castor oil. Two hundred and five years after Jefferson dealt with his distaste for the imperial trappings by mailing in his SOTU, our own regressive royalty tosses out fantasies like Marie Antoinette offered up cakes.

But this Prez, he can sure give great delusion, can he not?

Aside from the wish list for reality he dished out – unemployment, crime, drugs and abortions all decreasing?? – he visited upon us a full-blown hallucination. The administration is now (cue the dark orchestral chord) “seeing isolationists.” !?

And what sure-fire weapon does our Fearless Leader propose to employ for our protection?

Initiatives.

More …initiatives.

Yes, folks, to fix the unemployment and economic problems we have the American Competitive Initiative. So timely, so …pre-emptive! And to keep the kids off drugs, in school, and virginal? Why, America’s Youth Initiative, of course! And Laura is on it! Am I the only one wondering what happened to the First Lady’s initiative from last year? You remember, don’t you, those boys’ gangs?

We won’t touch that one, not even with the proverbial 10 foot pole.

This is likely the same reaction those twelve Dems had against the filibuster: Hot Potato! Better you than me; I got mouths to feed, and all those justifiable excuses.

Hard to reconcile that with the standing O our intrepid crew gave the failed Social Security reforms. Think it might have a little something to do with the fact that no one ever watches the SOTU?

As obvious as it seems to be, it’s still impossible to say. I’ve become pretty damn cynical, but I still find I have to believe most of our folks really want to stick it to these thugs. Ya know? Ya just gotta believe that. Somehow.

Whenever these opportunities present themselves to the only viable party left to us, and you watch each and every one of them go off in their various directions to frustrate the cat-herders, one cannot help but wonder what the ones with some remaining conscience must be thinking.

It’s so easy for us to criticize and dismiss them as traitors. And don’t get me wrong; I remain royally pissed. But what can it be like, trying to do the decent thing, if not always the truly right thing, in the midst of this Orwellian rabbit hole? To shamelessly mix satires. And this is not the Red Queen’s Animal Farm, no piggies or Mad Hatter for comical sane relief. No, these dudes play for real – probably their only contact with reality – and they play serious. Dead serious. I mean, Dick Cheney openly threatened Paul Wellstone just two weeks before his plane went down. And we all know that event was sadly just the dirtier, inconvenient side of their game plan.

There is no doubt that altogether too many Dems long ago became part of the problem. All those little compromises along the way (not least of which I count the DLC’s catapult into corporate laps) are making these big ones that much easier to shrug off; a vat of well-boiled frogs, we have.

This is yet another thing these folks are facing besides temptations to deal and concede our democracy away: the very real, very ruthless enemy we face in this White House.

The image that comes to my mind is a rattler. A very big and very nasty rattler. A rattler that will stop at nothing to keep its spot at the top of this mountain. There are no rules, no courtesies, no sense of decency, and it’s all just terribly, awfully nasty.

Not even a decorated war hero – hell, two of them! Kerry and Cleland – could best this evil machinery. How does one fight this monster and maintain the integrity we demand of all our elected officials? Michael Kinsley suggests that the Dems just need to start playing by the Repug rules, which is patently absurd on two counts. One, this assumes that the media would be only too happy to apply the same rules to both parties, but we’ve all seen plenty of evidence to strongly suggest otherwise. And two, the Repug tricks Kinsley suggests Dems embrace - framing the issues, staying on message, putting them on the defensive – all require a certain suspension of the rules, unspoken rules to be sure, but they’re deeply embedded in our sense of good manners and fair play. Many Dems were furious with Kerry for our ‘loss’ in 04, blaming his weak campaign. No doubt there were flaws, but I was always impressed with Kerry’s refusal to play dirty, to get down in the sewage with these brutes, or even to let his gofers to the dirty public work. He truly remained above the fray, and I was never impressed with the suggestions offered up by the armchair quarterbacks.

I don’t claim to have any such suggestions, and I sure don’t have a clue how I’d handle things were I an elected official faced with the bizarre issues facing this hideously skewed Congress, though I can only hope I’d keep my principles high. Emphasis on ‘only hope;’ I admit to being human, with at least this one mouth to feed.

Which is largely why this watershed week has left me feeling like we’re all pretty well cooked. How does one swallow the irony of championing the very filibuster used to block civil rights legislation (I grew up in the South; it was a tough one for me)? Or the irony of fighting theocratic haters of “activist” judges to keep likely the most activist judge in our history off the Court? And losing. Or the irony of watching King George take us all the way back to 1770 while talking more liberal than Tom Paine and Jefferson combined? Enough to make us all lose our lunch.

We’re getting force fed fat back they call prime rib, the media servin’ it up like maitre d’s and suckers lining up for the best table, everyone scared breathless to give a bad review or suggest a menu change, or – perish the thought – call for the chef’s head. On a platter.

The few timid noises being made these days are most likely only giving the kitchen staff plenty of time to cook up their next piece de la resistance.

Let's consider what this next special du jour might look like, shall we?

Starving in the world's bread basket.
dr. elsewhere