Boiling Frogs
April 2nd, 2015 | 
Author: I just ate macaroni and cheese out of a pull top can with a big ass spoon.
Forty years ago Sarah Palin would never have been chosen as a presidential running mate. Not because she’s a woman but because she’s dumb as a goddamn stick. Forty years ago, you would not have seen the lineup we’ve seen for the last two presidential elections from the GOP. And yet again, the whack jobs cometh.
For what it’s worth, democrats aren’t much better. Their excellence is viscous populism while ignoring the eight hundred pound gorilla as it shits on the main course. No different than republicans. One party distracts with fear while the other accomplishes it with hope. Black and white hats. It’s exactly that stupid.
Politics in America is nothing more than reality television. Lowest brow common denominator entertainment. It’s a pageant where we all vote for the equivalent of Miss Congeniality as long as she’s able to sucker punch and back stab that commie liberal or fascist conservative and keep up appearances. It’s a joke that not all of us are in on. The electorate plays the straight man, each side blaming the other side for everything while the burlesque of consequence dances on all our heads.
Consider as an example that we are all living on the same planet experiencing dramatic and destructive climate change. The current pissing contest is over whether it’s caused by human industry or the cyclical nature of mother earth. Nobody bothers to admit that it doesn’t fucking matter. Our only chance is to exert control over the impact of our footprint and the shuffling of our feet.
Or water will become as important a commodity as oil in a mere few decades.
Once that happens, plutocrats and oligarchs will be at play in the fields of the lord.
All the while, wealth concentration continues apace globally. In America we’ve gone from a middle class that was robust and could afford a house, cars, health insurance and college educations on a single income, to one that can’t afford any of these things on two incomes.
The ideal of an educated populace is openly mocked.
Prisons are for profit.
Our infrastructure crumbles. Bridges, roads and tunnels decay. Electrical grids deteriorate. The very things we used to fund as devices to bolster the middle class, things we understood would pay dividends for decades, are things that are now maligned as socialism or utopian.
We never wanted to suffer the poor and disadvantaged falling through the cracks. We took pride in equality and opportunity. We were flawed but worked to erase it. We owned that most people if given the chance, would rather work hard toward self sufficiency and prosperity than wallow in pity and dependence. These were once popular ideas.
Now we trip over the sick and homeless in our urban areas with disgust and we accept abject poverty in our rural areas while media shows us how to loath and despise people not like us for being weak and undeserving. Racism and classism flourish. It’s stupid that we waste a single worry over immigration. It’s goddamn ridiculous that we actually debate marriage equality. It’s been an amazingly methodical implementation of economic policy symbiotic with social engineering and cultural warfare. Concerted. Awesome.
We are losing ground.
We have arrived at cheering the divide between the undeserving takers and the virtuous makers instead of the purpose of closing the gap between the haves and the have nots.
America has lost its goddamn mind.
Multinational conglomerates rape and pillage, stealing and hoarding resources and wealth without the threat of law. There’s nothing new about this except the most powerful advent of technology as a catalyst ever. Lunatic greed in broadband HD with surround sound after a bump in the bathroom.
We can access validation for any belief no matter how crazy.
If you fuck with our government it sends drones.
We are told that we can no longer afford to simply help people. Bullshit. We spend a trillion dollars a year on making war, planning more war, inventing new ways to make and fight new wars and new enemies. As we speak at least half our political representatives are chomping at the bit to mingle us in yet another war in the middle east.
This our cancer. This is our disease. This is the addiction that will kill us all.
Humans are losing.
America used to be an example. Other countries agreed. Now we’re barely able to stand our own smell. America is the preeminent historical example of absolute power and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The rest of the world reasonably expects that America will be its demise.
What’s it going to take?
How bad does it have to get?
America is a frog in a pot on a stove. I hear you can literally boil a frog if you just start the poor thing out at room temperature. He’s a cold blooded amphibian and it seems he can’t really sense the heating as long as it’s gradual. He won’t jump out or anything. He’ll die in that pot before it boils and he won’t see it coming.
Drinks for my friends.
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And a manifesto is born.
Couldn’t have said it better!
“The electorate plays the straight man, each side blaming the other side for everything while the burlesque of consequence dances on all our heads.” Best piece of writing I’ve seen in a while. Please immortalize this in a book so future generations can see how we blew it.
Yes.
No, it didn’t happen overnight, did it? Little by little. It’s the death of humanity by 10,000 cuts. We’re on cut #9,925 … but at least I’m an optimist about it.
Go ahead and cry bitches. Call me mean. Here it is: we have to quit promoting the the most selfish immoral modern day people who are causing this. Those SELFISH mu modern day people that I am referring to are the ones who are giving birth. We are already overpopulated.
You nailed it, Mr. Douglass!
Wtf happened to people?
If we could find the correct answers to this broad-sweeping question, perhaps we could begin working toward countering the effects of whatever conditions and events brought so very many ‘patriots’ to look down their noses at other Americans. This national division, more pronounced than ever, is much larger than differences of opinion in priorities, religions or politics.
It’s a difference of values…of what we hold dear, and what we’re willing to discard.
What brought people to this degree of callous indifference, at best, and seething, resentment at its worst? Do they feel themselves slipping in power, authority, financial security and need to feel superior to somebody – ANYbody? Do they imagine themselves members of an exclusive club, ‘The One Percenters’, by embracing and sharing the group’s messages? Are people feeling the ever-expanding income equality gap and choosing sides? Or do they feel cheated, as though helping out that single mother with a bag of groceries somehow takes something away from them? The Tea Party began as an expression of offense against federal taxation and government waste – legitimate gripes by most folks’ standards – before evolving to the cult-like open asylum it is now. Did their distrust of the government metastasize to include everyone who wasn’t with them, as in, ‘You’re either with us or you’re against us”?
But that’s the chicken or the egg question, I guess.
And why did they so easily agree to make ‘entitlement’ a dirty word? Will it still be an entitlement when they reach retirement age themselves?
Note to the Tea Party: Politicians change their speeches to address different groups. If, as an unintended audience, you bought Mitt Romney’s story that half the nation is a lazy bunch of ne’er-do-wells, your perception was already unrealistic. Tea Partiers, when Romney spoke of the 47 percent, he wasn’t talking TO you. He was talking ABOUT you.
When I visit other blogs, I read far too many young people echoing conservatives’ sentiments. I hold little hope, Mr. Douglass, for a return of sensibility in the near future, even allowing that the most opinionated and vocal among them will be the most likely respondents on these boards. The anonymity of these sites allows their unfiltered beliefs and opinions to shine through, and they relish and feed on the sense of self-satisfaction gained in group hate that’s disturbingly reminiscent of a German youth movement of WW2 with their reciprocal encouragement and mutual motivations.
How can they not see the cannibalistic feeding fest they’re re-baiting every day? And what makes them believe they’re exempted from the feeding pool?
I can think of no other group that needs encouragement less, but receives it 24/7 through the other leg of the Republican party, Fox.
Would you try something with me? Would you try, for just a few minutes, to imagine our country without Fox?
Without Fox, the horrible things Republican politicians say would be much more offensive to more people. Without those Fox talking heads making hate mainstream, the hate would shock a lot more people. Without Fox, a black President might even be acceptable. Fox not only makes these beliefs acceptable, but celebrates them. Republicans are drawn as victims who are OUTRAGED.
So much outrage.
How much outrage will they have left when they finally realize that 99 percent of them are targets, too?
Yes, you’ve almost accurately reported the woes of our patriarchal world, while omitting the biggest and most glaring difference between the two parties: one party is tirelessly eroding women’s rights. To speak on the behalf of one half of this country’s population, WE’RE SICK AND TIRED OF BEING TREATED AS CHATTEL who need to be protected from our own decisions. One party is goose stepping us towards a patriarchal theocracy, so YES there IS a difference between the two parties. I would remind all those who continue to omit giving a shit about women’s rights, and continuing the line that “there’s no difference between the two parties,” that those who make third party votes to rebel against the “two parties are the same” bullshit, are in essence voting for the regressive talibamericans who would see your wives, sisters, daughters and mothers treated as property. On this issue, the parties are NOT the same.
Feminist makes the problem all about her; what a surprise…
We were boiled a lot time ago and no one realized what was happening. Is it too late to jump out of the pot?
We are ruled by a government that doesn’t represent us. They don’t care that people are outraged when they commit treason by sending letters to Iran and the UN because they know the outraged people didn’t vote for them. Their base of people who have been lied to and manipulated are all in favor of what they do. It doesn’t take them off the hook that they were manipulated and lied to. They allowed it.
While the country grows more and more liberal, the government grows more and more conservative (or insane–is there a difference). Rachel Maddow talked about this on her show tonight. This happened because we didn’t vote. The zealots always vote. We’re too lazy or think we’re too busy or think our votes don’t matter. We are the ones who lost this country and it may be too late to get it back.
You see people making comments all the time about, “Voting these assholes out-of-office”. The only problem is that we can’t. The people who elected Tom Cotton like Tom Cotton and the fact he committed treason against a President they hate is great for them. They will elect him again. Louis Gohmert and Marsha Blackburn at the dumbest members of congress, but they keep getting re-elected because their constituents are more stupid than they are.
We can’t change this. With all the gerrymandering and voter suppression, it is near impossible to unseat a republican from congress. Look at the last election. Congress had a 7% approval rating yet over 90% were sent back to congress by their electorate. People hate other congresspeople, but like their own. Nothing can change.
So as the country grows more liberal, congress passes laws to restrict freedoms we have always taken for granted. It doesn’t matter how liberal we are because we didn’t vote 10-20 years ago when it mattered, especially at the state and local levels
Is it possible to reverse this? I don’t see how. People hate the President of this country so much they cheer for senators committing treason. Right now, Barack Obama is the only person standing between us and fascism. He and his veto pen.
I’m afraid to say it, but the only thing that will change the direction of the country is an overthrow of the government. Yes, we need a coup’d’tat. But you know what? We’re too damn lazy and too damn busy and too damn self-important to get off the couch and fight. One day, women will go to pick up birth control prescriptions only to be told those prescriptions are illegal now and most women will think, “What the hell is going on?” Because they haven’t been paying attention. One day, people will try to buy food with their SNAP cards, only to be told the program was cancelled. They will stand there in shock and wonder, “What the hell happened?” Because they haven’t been paying attention. One day, Social Security and Medicare won’t exist anymore and when the checks don’t come in the mail, senior citizens will think, “This isn’t what I voted for”, when, unfortunately, it was the very thing they voted for because they weren’t paying attention.
We weren’t paying attention 20-30 years ago. Most of us aren’t paying attention now. The people in the south are the poorest in the country and they continue to vote for republicans who want to take the social welfare programs that keep them alive away. What are they going to think when the checks stop coming? I can guess.
“I knew that goddamn Muslim was going to ruin this country”.
Oh yes, we’ve been boiled and like the frog, we sat there and let it happen.
“Now we trip over the sick and homeless in our urban areas with disgust and we accept abject poverty in our rural areas while media shows us how to loath and despise people not like us for being weak and undeserving. Racism and classism flourish. It’s stupid that we waste a single worry over immigration. It’s goddamn ridiculous that we actually debate marriage equality. It’s been an amazingly methodical implementation of economic policy symbiotic with social engineering and cultural warfare. Concerted. Awesome.”
Ground Hog Doy courtesy of Americans for Prosperity, ALEC, etc. Soon our water will all be poisoned. Fracking… That’s just insanity and also… Fukushima is still melting down. Soon total dependence on corporate teet. Game over.
Pretty much agree with everything you’ve written here with the exception of the comments about both parties being the same … on certain levels that may be true but, as a woman, the democratic party works so much better for me … I also agree with everything Joanne Giovenco said …
*loathe
Give this guy a series!
spot on as usual
eight hundred pound gorilla shits
miss congeniality of hate and hope
frogs in the pot
bleak
happy easter- egg laying bunny, or zombie savior?
Many of the general complaints are true, there…though I would take issue that the two major parties do the same thing only wearing different colored hats. That kind of “they’re all crooks” attitude and rhetoric tends to come from someone who is just interested in complaining rather than trying to support the people who are trying to right the wrongs they see.
And I do see that attitude repeated; every generation of adults has its pessimist scolds who lament that the country is in decline, EVERYTHING is getting worse, etc. etc.
But the devil is in the details. If you see what is wrong and can describe it, you should also suggest a solution. I know few folks who would like to return to the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or breadlines during the Great Depression. Or the days of Polio or any number of cured illnesses.
Things are not perfect, but they are better. We fall back sometimes, and we definitely have to fight the growing extremism of the religious right in our government and sectors of our population. But these are fights worth having, and they are winnable.
And per another commenter…as I suggested, the devil is in the details–simplistic characterizations of complex problems are only good for misleading your audience. The far right has raised it to an art form in recent decades here.
I read this post and immediately thought of a lyric: “I’m Miss World, Somebody kill me…”. Sadly, you are correct. Not moments before you placed this on my wall, a friend and I were discussing Elizabeth Warren and what can we do to compel her to run for the presidency. The cold hard truth these days, is that if you don’t support Hillary Clinton you are labeled as a traitor. Excuse me? We are a democracy, not a theocracy, not an aristocracy, and running up under the skirts of the Clintons once again smacks of desperation, lack of forethought, and a complete lack of vision. Corey Booker? Elizabeth Warren? Yes. The old guard is just that: the OLD guard. They continue to rest upon their former glory, and by doing so they are completely out of touch and cannot see that times have changed. They are in a constant battle with their adversaries on the Right, they oversaw the destruction of Moderate Republicans, Fiscally Conservative Democrats, and have gutted this country to the point where we are falling apart…literally. We need, no, deserve to be represented by logical, fiscally responsible visionaries that understand we have a long way to catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to government and their responsibility for their citizens.
I just hope to give my children the ability to think critically and look for solutions to problems; apply them when they can. I try to maintain optimism that the pendulum will swing back toward reason as the “millenials” grow tired of the mess we’re in now. We can fix this, but there’s a lot of work to do.
Absofuckinglutely !
Nice piece. I would add only two points.
First, wars are profitable to the oligarchs and so we will have them. Their bought and paid for lobbyist /politician (they take turns) make sure to spout hatred in time for the evening news. They hypnotize the people through their propaganda machines to hate the current enemy for the love of Christ.
Second, you forget another of our most infamous agencies, the health insurance scammers. Here buy this policy so I can inflate my prices and still overcharge you for an aspirin. And all the while, the pharmaceuticals stifle innovation by locking the processes that save lives behind the patient wall so no other group of researchers can use it.
Nostaligic hooey which is every bit a bucket of old turds as anything a right-wing loon would soak in.
You keep saying ‘drinks for my friends’… I would like to buy you many drinks!
Pretty much identical to the disturbing conclusions I’ve arrived at!! We live in interesting times. Like the Chinese curse. Well said, my friend. More drinks, please.
Absofuckinglutely !
Bunch of ignorant comments from most. Obama (community organizer) who knows nothing about foreign policy has made America weaker and “tries” to make friends with enemies while shunning our allies. Sticks up for radical Islam (oh yea, forgot he won’t say that word), while claiming to be a Christian, but slams Christians every chance he gets. Seriously, he doesn’t even know the King James Bible or History for that matter. You all would be good to maybe go to church, (Christian) and learn something. You won’t understand the true meanings of the bible by yourself. You just won’t. You can learn moral ways, love and truth. Or you can go the Islam way and learn how to treat women like trash,(all your wife’s), hatred, and lies. Hmmm, wonder which one I would pick? Christian=Love. Or, Islam=Killing Christians and Jews. All the prophecies in the bible have came to fruit already. (Research this, you will find it) which means the Rapture is very, very soon. Better get on board. But most of you would think that’s crazy talk right? Used to think the same thing 4 years ago until I saw the light (facts In History). Good Luck all, and I’ll pray for all of you to get saved. Peace out!
You are part of the problem, Rich. We don’t need the words of a 2,000-year-old compilation of stories to tell us what is moral, to tell us what is right vs. wrong. Too many people are sitting around waiting for God to save the country. It takes the responsibility out of their hands. Well, guess what? God, if he exists, gave up on this world, let alone this country a long time ago.
The bullshit you spout about President Obama and Christianity vs. Islam is just that–bullshit. I don’t know the King James Bible. I don’t go to church (my knees hurt from all that kneeling). Does that mean I’m Islamic? No. Neither is President Obama. What do you consider “slamming Christians”? Giving equal rights to homosexuals? Being pro-woman and giving us free contraception through the Affordable Care Act? Fighting to keep abortion legal because without abortion, women die?
You wrote: “Christian=Love. Or, Islam=Killing Christians and Jews.” You left out the opposite: “Christians=Killing Muslims”. Do you have any idea how many people have been killed in the name of their God? Is that worth it? Don’t you think God would have said something about it, like, “Stop killing each other. Religion is bullshit.” If you believe, you believe. You don’t need any hatred-filled religion to help you along.
What is it? I want to know. I hear this crap from so many people. It has no merit, but you all believe it without even considering the source or checking the story yourself. You believe it because you want to believe it because you hate him because he’s black. And don’t start telling me about your black friends because you don’t fucking have any.
Big news here: There is no rapture. You are going to be here until you die. Why don’t you start living for the here and now instead of planning for the afterlife? Maybe you would be a better person.
Don’t waste your fucking prayers. Why don’t you go find someone who needs help and give him/her a hand? That will do so much more good than any stupid prayer.
Jesus, folks. Why don’t we just draw a warm bath and strop the straight-razors already? Make my whiskey a double.
It isn’t a mystery why our reprehensible representatives don’t actually represent We The People who pay the bills: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html. Americans have never voted in large enough numbers to make a difference, and since we all gained the right to vote, turnout has gone down steadily and inexorably.
This never mattered until government became the place where sociopaths and assholes went to get rich and only retire by way of casket or Tea Party. The former being the most important lesson from the last two midterm primaries, which average half the above numbers. If America can be made crazier by way of the vote it can also be made sane.
Thomas Paine offered the perfect quote from the very founding of the country in his pamhplet Common Sense:
“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
The means by which we suffer is our own ignorance and apathy. Not only are we not a frog in a pot of boiling water. We aren’t even on the stove. We are chilling by the pool suffering from a bad acid trip. http://artisanpolitics.com/a-primer-on-primaries/.
Chilling reality. The future is now.