View from the Side 20190402
“I washed my brain, in the new-ews cycle
shrunk my mind, in the media spin.”
Joe Biden’s candidacy for president is over. Why fight it? The Democrats need to settle their internal differences quickly, or they will have little chance in the 2020 campaign. Biden was never a good option. Who will rise to the top? In a news story I had to search for, Bloomberg reports that Bernie Sanders leads Democratic fund-raising. You wouldn’t know he was even running, from the headlines on CNN, Fox News, or Google News.
The Democrats in Congress are threatening to subpoena Mueller’s report, and they claim they might even “ask” Barr to testify if the full report isn’t released. Promising words, but ineffectual action. I’ve been using the metaphor of the bull and the cape. The Democrats are the bull, and Mueller’s report is the cape. Here, Toro! No, over here.
That the Mueller report, despite being unread, is not big news anymore is big news in itself. In one of the most egregious propaganda efforts I remember, the unknown contents of the report have been analyzed, reported on, and now largely dismissed. How does anyone who has reported on the report know what it says? It seems we have a lot of amazing psychics among our politicians and news analysts.
What is and is not reported on the news matters. Like the ongoing ecological crisis. A search of Google News brings up many shocking pieces of environmental information: Extinction Rebellion protesters arrested in the UK parliament! Canada warming twice as fast as the global average! Huge wildfires in China! But you wouldn’t ever see these stories if you didn’t search for them. (I haven’t included links, because if you search for “climate change” yourself, you might learn more than you could from the few links I would have chosen.)
Even yesterday’s biggest headline news— for example, that Trump had forced 25 security clearances through for his staff, despite “red flags” that would have blocked those clearances— flickers across our screens and is gone the next day without mention. This is an impeachable offense, endangering the security of our nation, clearly as bad or worse than Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. The Democrats holler about it for a day. Then the next day, following the headlines, they holler about a different outrage.
Like a caged tiger, they roar. But they don’t act.
I return to the theme that drove me out of the Democratic party. Impeachment is part of the US Constitution for this exact reason. It is the only tool in the Constitution to protect the people from a criminal president. With a majority in the House of Representatives, the Democrats have a responsibility to use that tool and protect us from a clearly dangerous criminal president.
That Pelosi and the other leaders of the Democratic party won’t impeach makes them complicit in the crimes of the president. Like a policeman who watches a crime without interfering, Pelosi and the Dems have made themselves a party to that crime.
It’s time to leave the parties. Don’t be a part of it anymore! I feel so much less embarrassed, now that I’m not a Democrat.
From the side, it looks to me like both rings of the two-party circus are participating in the same show, clowns whacking each other with giant rubber hammers. It’s entertaining, fun to watch.
But around us the circus tent we are all in together is burning down.
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