Charlie Brown

I gotta tell ya, I feel for this guy.  The President of The United States. He gets his ass kicked by friends and enemies from the time the alarm goes off to a never so gentle goodnight every damn day.

On the surface his legislative accomplishments are impressive.  Health care.  Financial reform.  He absolutely saved us from a depression and damn near all of it has been payed back.  Yet he has capitulated too early and far too often.  A mandate to purchase health care without a public option, prematurely ejaculated off the table, was just absurd.  Indefensible.  Not good enough.  Financial reform that began as not so John Wayne looking and ended up missing a respectable grill for even a photo worthy grin.

Then there’s the inexplicable and embarrassingly unjustifiable clusterfuck of Afghanistan.  Ridiculous controversy manufactured for things like unemployment benefits, social security and lower taxes for the pigs at our trough but we never talk about the stratospheric defense budget.  Billions spent to kill for no fucking reason.  Proof that too much of America’s politics and policy are dictated by the military industrial complex.

Makes my teeth ache.

My impression is of of a thoughtful and principled man with heart and courage but no real desire to swing as hard as the opposition.  When the Republican thug drops his hands in confusion and surveys the crowd for his mob rule constituency and bullshit moral equivalency, our man checks himself and does not throw the vicious uppercut and go to the body.

He stops swinging altogether.

The truth is the tax deal, the “compromise”, is a little more vanilla than bad or good.  It’s just there.  Ambiguous.  Ambivalent.  Business as usual.  Same fecal.  Same dais.  Different day of year of your Lord.  I am confused as to why the Democrats have chosen to erupt just now.  I mean it’s not what we need but that means it’s the same as every other hollow victory.  Like anybody couldn’t see this one coming.

Still, why does this president keep rolling into the wet spot?

His instinct is kind.  He doesn’t covet the spill of blood.  He does not possess the eye of the tiger.

When his pause gives way to a fusillade of blows landing on his own countenance, he glares from his corner between rounds at his supporters for not appreciating his blinding skill but implores their disgust for not swinging hard when it matters.  It’s telling.  This for an instance  evaporating, his crowd, his majority, to be thinned before the fight is over.  He lost the midterms dramatically and decisively.  The people that put him in the ring smell his weakness.  His opponents taste it.

Chum in polluted water.

The fight is about to double in ferocity and stupidity as Boehner assumes control of the house.

Do your teeth hurt?

It’s not as though he’s not tough or smart.  It’s just that he’s not mean.  My father told me, and I’m sure he’s right as he was quite the brawler and very wise, it’s not the toughest or the most skilled man that wins a street fight, it’s the meanest.

And that’s where we are.

The opposition is mean enough to lie, obfuscate and distort the truth to their own people.  They do it ALL the time.  Their own constituents reflexively vote against their own best interests in support of policies, practices and ideologies that consistently result in their own suffering only to be led by the ridiculous bastards they support without question into blaming it all on the other side.  It’s brevity is fucking brilliant.  Talk about cutting to the chase.  What a way to keep them guessing just enough.  Foment fear and confusion and the world is not merely your oyster.  It’s your baby killer.  Your socialist.  Your godless pagan.  Your Muslim, Jew or Catholic depending on the decade and the agenda.  Your nigger, spic, chink or wop, depending on the century.  Your lazy unemployment beneficiary, welfare or medicare recipient today.  Your homeless bum child molester smelling of piss and costing us all money with the shopping carts they steal and the food stamps we give them.

Fuck that.  The average American wants to work.  For the dignity, the self sufficiency and the money.

Our man is not nearly mean enough.

They would have you bring an assault rifle to a peaceful exchange of political ideas.  They won’t condemn or even admonish your bursts of violence against anyone not like you, provided you’re a white Christian.  They will applaud and celebrate your words of hate and intolerance as long as they are patriotic by their very narrow definition.  They will absolutely praise your lack of intellectual curiosity and willful ignorance.

They themselves are afraid.  That’s how they do it and certainly how they justify it.  Fear.  They want to share their fear and distrust.  So they do.  They want to make you just like them.  Afraid.  Confidence is bad.  Thinking for yourself is communist.  Your own mind is, well how can it be your own mind?  What right do you have to your own mind when the axis of evil wants to kill you and your children in your beds just like the latest weather pattern on a slow news day?  You know, the terrorists.

Thank God we have high radiation body scanners that allow TSA agents to laugh or marvel at my package.  I breathe easier knowing that if they can’t see pictures of it they get to touch and fondle it for themselves.  Yes. in some cases the pictures will lead to a groping.

The restrictions on your personal fluids and the size of ziploc you use in order to fly commercially these days will never ever stop a single terrorist and are fucking absurd.  Never.  Ever.  Stupid is as stupid does.  We are all stupid.

America.

What a country.

Is there anything left in that bottle?

The very people who endorse and support this shit have not a goddamn clue about concepts like personal freedom, privacy and liberty and they are somehow piloting our national discourse.  The filthy stinking rich are about to see their completely unjustified, fiscally disastrous, tax break extended into a presidential election cycle where chances of it being reversed are even more remote and we’ll be borrowing even more foreign lucre to pay for it.

I’m okay for borrowing for the middle class and the poor……….but doing as much for the rich and the wars kinda chaps my ass.

I dare anyone to justify the extension of the the George Dumbass tax cuts to the wealthy.  The people who can’t be bothered to allow their largess to trickle down.  The people who don’t need it and don’t deserve it.  The people who have far more to do with a desperate condition than them that suffer from it.

When are we gonna call bullshit?  Our man at the top clearly lacks the sack, but he’s not entirely culpable.

We are the problem.  We are the answer.

The moral and ethical fabric of America is fraying, but it’s not godless liberals that are responsible, it is without a doubt the self righteous, family values, overtly pious and zealous hypocrites that tirelessly wear at it in the name of preserving it.  How do you trust them that would lie to themselves?

And we are just not mean enough.

Know what a teabagger’s worse nightmare is?  A liberal with a gun and a brain both bigger than his.

Let’s get this party started.

Drinks for my friends.

16 Responses to “Charlie Brown”

  • Janet Carter:

    Excellent op-ed, Michael. I so agree on the damn wars. All the fucking money we are throwing into a foxhole just to have our boys murdered. Makes no sense.

    • Michael Douglass:

      Serious and efficacious campaign finance reform and an end to these senseless, unjustifiable wars. That’s where I’m at.

  • I think that you are correct in that we are just not mean enough. Neither is POTUS. We are all too damn kind, loving, caring and compassionate…but do we have to all really sink to that other level of violent anarchy and meanness to get anything done? My greater concern is where the so-called moral fabric of humanity is in all of this…what has become of the emotional intelligence that tell us to save our drowning friends and neighbors? It is not just here, it’s everywhere. It’s like some type of god-forbid evil (pun intended) has taken over the humanitarian fabric of the human species in general…and then there’s us. Sigh..

    • Michael Douglass:

      We are not mean enough. A certain amount of fighting fire with fire will always be necessary but look what he got done this week. We elected him in part because we understood how smart he is. He just showed us a grip of intellectual agility. Damn this guy is good.

      However, with the shift in power in the house, he’s not gonna have any choice but to get his mean on.

  • Spot on 🙂 Stupid is as stupid does.

  • Karen:

    Damn, Michael – you’re good!

  • Superb. Thanks for this one. What to do about it I don’t know – though I agree that we cannot remain unarmed, we’re all to likely to end up in Palin inspired God’s Army reformation camps if we do. Beyond that, we must face the facts you call to attention, and do some serious thinking about how to deal with them.

  • Beth:

    I agree with most of this article, except you’re a little more forgiving of Obama than I am. It’s like paying a quarterback a zillion dollars a year but then forgiving him week after week when he fails to throw a touchdown pass by saying “SO much pressure” or “the weather was TERRIBLE”. No – sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Obama was hired to do a job – an extremely difficult one, yes, but I will no make excuses for him. He has totally blown it…..for all of us.

    • Michael Douglass:

      Again, I have the luxury of hindsight, but he certainly made me look like a bit of an ass didn’t he? I couldn’t be happier about it by the way.

  • Charlie9365:

    This is the most brilliant article I’ve read. Send a copy to the White House. Cheers!

  • Junior's Ghost:

    “Foment fear and confusion and the world is not merely your oyster. It’s your baby killer. Your socialist. Your godless pagan. Your Muslim, Jew or Catholic depending on the decade and the agenda. Your nigger, spic, chink or wop, depending on the century. Your lazy unemployment beneficiary, welfare or medicare recipient today. Your homeless bum child molester smelling of piss and costing us all money with the shopping carts they steal and the food stamps we give them.”

    This is why I always keep coming back to your site.
    Your heart is in the right place AND you can turn the English language into your wanton bitch. Keep up the good work.

  • Michael Douglass:

    Oh my 🙂

    Thanks very much. I have a really good time doing it and it’s so cool to be noticed for it. Thanks very much.

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