Posted by
The Cynical Turtle on Thursday, August 07, 2008 12:00:00 AM
NOW IS THE TIME !!
I reprint the following verbatum because I have never seen it said any better or more compellingly:
Off The Map - By Will Durst (OK; so its from the Progressive. Read it anyway. You won't get Kooties.)
"For those of you blessed with sweet selective memory loss, now might be a good time to prepare for the national political conventions what will shortly be washing over this country like a sugar glaze waterfall on a Krispy Creme donut parade.
As in baseball, National Political Conventional Wisdom holds that the home team (meaning whoever gets to use the South Lawn for impromptu touch football games) bats last. So the Democrats will convene first at the end of August in Denver, and the Republicans follow the next week in St. Paul. The Republicans are in for a treat. Late summer in in the Upper Midwest. Come for the humidity, stay for the mosquitoes,
Last time around, way back in those $1.69/gallon of gas halcyon days of 2004, the Republicans chose to convene in New York the week after the Athens Summer games, and the Democrats inexplicably picked to meet in Boston two weeks before the Olympics - a move that proved to be about as successful as lighting a Weber grill in a broom closet filled with oily rags. Two weeks of the most exciting athletic competiton on the face of the planet did a pretty good job of wiping away any residual memory of John Kerry. Not that John Kerry himself didn't do a terrific job of making us forget about John kerry.
And then the Swift Boat Boys started running ads, and John Kerry not ony failed to respond, but decided to go on vacation and be seen in spandex while windsurfing. None of which helped. And the Republicans and george W. Bush accepted the nomination a full month after John Kerry and then stole Ohio while everone was focused on Florida, and that pretty much was that. Again.
This time the Democrats are in Colorado as a kind of celebratory dance trying to spotlight their enhanced prospects in the Rocky Mountain states, which used to reliably be a major suckhole for them, but not so much anymore. think of it as an 'in your face, GOP' stomp. On the other hand, the Republicans picked St. Paul because ... well, we don't know why. Perhaps to remind the public about their looting of America at the expense of our infrastructure, evidenced by that bridge that fell down in the middle of the Twin Cities.
The very stall in the Minneapolis airport where Larry Craig experienced his restless leg syndrome is destined to become a tourist attraction during the Republican stay. Because it's Minneapolis. They got the Mall of America, and the giant ball of string down the road apiece in Darwin. That's it . the mall, the ball and the stall.
We know the dance.
The Democrats will masquerade as a coherent concordance, instead of thousands of winged widgets in various complex continuous orbits marginally connected by centrifugal force.
The Republicans will pretend they are the big tent, we're-all-in-this-together, can't we-just-get-along, and aren't-those-minorities-swell party of inclusion.
And the big time television networks will show maybe an hour a night and get beaten in the ratings by reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger on the Hallmark channel.
But relief is in sight. Once the posturing of the conventions is out of the way, we can move on to the more important posturing of the general election."
In my view, Mr. Durst is reminding us all of what we already know, but choose, through laziness, stupidity or simple lack of concern, to ignore. The message here is that it is time to take the reins of power away from the 2 major parties, and open the political process up. It is also time to stop underwriting the expensive foolishness of endless campaigns that only serve to mask issues and make positions so fluid that it is impossible to know what a candidate really stands for. Whether your afilliation is Republican or Democrat, abandon it just this once and cast your vote elsewhere. We only need to do it once, and the message will be clear.
Jefferson once wrote that "..the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots." Some take him literally, but one of the overriding strengths of a Republic is that revolutions can be and usually are bloodless victories of ideas and ideals.
THE TIME IS NOW. We may not soon get another opportunity that is this propicious.
"Don't give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks" - James Lawrence, USS Chesapeke, June 1, 1813.
Please. Lets don't give up our ship without a whimper.