And Then the Sky Fell

by One Pissed Off Liberal

Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 11:12:14 AM PDT

{from Notes on the Apocalypse}

Anyone paying attention must surely still be reeling over the Citizen’s United v FEC case wherein the SCOTUS smote us. Citizens United. How’s that for irony?

I wish I could say I saw this one coming but I didn’t. Though when I first got wind of it I knew it carried the potential for very bad news, as difficult as it is to believe that anyone would actually do that to their country...and ours. Aiding and abetting a hostile corporate take over of the nation amounts to treason doesn’t it, or something very near it?

George HW must’ve looked under some horrendous rocks to find the heroes he blessed us with – not to mention the abundant blessings of his witless son. These Bushes have screwed us big time. These Bushes and the forces they represent have destroyed the United States of America. We’ll not likely ever see her again, much less the improvements for which we have struggled.

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While we were busy fighting a desperate uphill battle to improve the meager status of mere citizens, our rightwing opponents snuck up from behind. Acting for the second time as the tip of the spear, SCOTUS struck a blow intended to kill the remaining vestiges of the power of the people. The only remaining question is whether or not we will let them get away with it.

The People fucked hard by SCOTUS
The People barely notice.

~ ANON

As for letting them get away with it, we’ve been doing an awful lot of that lately. Has anyone noticed there are no laws for the ruling class anymore? I believe Pelosi taking impeachment off the table was an unbelievably foolish act, one for which we’ve only begun to pay. Not only are Bush, Cheney, et al not in prison and not under serious investigation, but they are all over the national television opining on matters that concern them not. The worst criminals in American history go Scot-free while no one can be bothered to lift a finger to keep Don Siegelman from being railroaded back into prison for no good reason.

And this abomination emanating from the most despicable court to ever exist is nothing short of a deathblow. Alan Grayson called it a stab to the heart of democracy. I think that says it pretty well.

Don’t you know that George HW is laughing up his sleeve?

"If they knew what we had done, they’d have chased us down the street and hanged us."

George HW Bush

There was a diary posted a few weeks ago that wanted to use the fact that 33,000 small donors had pledged 1.5 mil to primary Lieberman as an argument for why we should accept the old conservative notion that money equals speech. Never mind that accepting that poisonous idea is to cede all power to the ridiculously wealthy. Democracy is what should matter (in ‘the world’s greatest democracy’), not money. Else we end up with rule by the ultra-rich - such as we now so enjoy.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France

To engage the ruling class on the uneven battleground of money = speech and wealth = power is to lose the fight before it begins. No smart guerrilla would ever march into that lopsided battle. Lieberman can write a personal check nullifying every last one of those 33,000 small donors. Small donor’s chances are always remote...and there’s nothing fair about it. We simply cannot compete with them on the basis of money. It takes on the order of millions of us for every one of them for there to even be a contest. Big money always wins.

Small donors lose even when they win. Obama received an unprecedented amount of small donor support, yet who has benefited most from his election? Small donors like us? Or large donors like Goldman Sachs? Single-payer advocates like us? Or Big Pharma and Big Insurance?

All along total corporate dominance was our destiny. Talk about a bitter fucking pill.

It’s so sad for me to watch the struggles of the good people of America come to naught.

So many of us had such high hopes for humanity.

What would Eugene Debs say if he could address us now?

"When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known."

Eugene Debs

Yeah, sorry Eugene. We never quite lived up to your expectations, I’m sad to say.

What would Daniel Berrigan say?

The arms race is worse than it ever was, the dumping of creation down a military rat hole is worse than it ever was, the wars across the earth are worse than they ever were.

Daniel Berrigan

Could the news be any worse? Could it be any more heartbreaking? Will all the best efforts of all the best people come to nothing?

What would Dr. King say to us?

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where is the leader who will lead us to peace and social justice?

A lie cannot live.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where is the leader who will expose the lies – the lies that not only live but fester?

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why should we willingly bend our backs for these bastards? Wall Street bankers demand and receive trillions with no questions asked while the rest of us are told to go suck on a three-year spending freeze. We can’t spend money on peoples’ needs - we have two of history’s stupidest wars to support instead. Tell me that’s not totally fucked.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have all these great people lived in vain?

I guess we can take some small comfort that so many heroes did not live to see this day.

{Regarding the next paragraph and anywhere else that I imply or state that we have lost the war for humanity, well...I kinda think we have – at least for the moment. Whether we have the will to resist and overcome at this late stage remains to be seen...though I’d certainly like to think that we do.}

It’s a bitter awakening to realize that we may have lost the greatest internal struggle in US history, the struggle of the goodhearted compassionate citizens who want to band together to make life better for all against the heartless ‘every man for himself’ crowd, even worse, a struggle between humanity and the corporate war golem, between greed and compassion, love and hatred. It has been a greater struggle in terms of its consequences even than the Civil War. It’s a very strange feeling to wake up to the fact that you’ve won nothing and lost everything. That the lives and good works of all those who fought, sacrificed and suffered for social justice down through the ages have failed to overcome the darkness.

Citizens United could well be a death knell for democracy and the remotest sense of government of, by and for the people.

...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Perish the thought Abe.

* * *

Going back to Reagan and the Scalia appointment, the republican right wing went after the big prize, the SCOTUS. And now that they have it they’ve hammered us with it...twice - and in doing so they have unleashed the hateful and the stupid. First they hit us with eight years of Bush, now this.

‘Money equals speech’ and ‘corporate personhood,’ are despicable anti-person ideas. We need to send SCOTUS and the rest of the DC crowd a message that these are not ideas we can live with. They are intolerable in a free society and incompatible with democracy.

I learned something about democracy: that it does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice. I learned about race. I learned something that any intelligent person realizes at a certain point -- that race is a manufactured thing, an artificial thing, and while race does matter (as Cornel West has written), it only matters because certain people want it to matter, just as nationalism is something artificial. I learned that what really matters is that all of us -- of whatever so-called race and so-called nationality -- are human beings and should cherish one another.

Howard Zinn

Amen Dr. Zinn. Amen. And rest in peace brother. We’ll miss you.

To honor Dr. Zinn, Dr. King, the Berrigan Brothers and all the other great souls who came before us and who struggled and sacrificed for justice and peace, we must somehow find ways to assert our basic humanity in every aspect of our national life from here forward. They would not have it any other way. We cannot give in to the greed-sickened corporatist warmongers. We must oppose them. Humanity must prevail.

DRA Grayson ~ If this Decision Stands, You Can Kiss this Country Goodbye