The Rules of the Game

Reiteration #2,543,678 of the operational differences between your nominal "liberals" and "conservatives": A card-carrying jackass like Ted Nugent can go on teevee and radio shows (and on tour with his little traveling music extravaganza) hither and yon and spout bumptious, potentially violent rhetoric about Obama, or mouth off about banging Hitlery Clinton with an AR-15 right before launching into Wang Dang Sweet Poontang, and if anyone has the nerve to get butt-hurt about it, well, you just don't like free speech, podna.

But a couple of putatively "liberal" writers mention the use of a prosthetic Dubya head in a split-second exterior shot in Game of Thrones, and boy howdy, they just cannot fall all over themselves enough to apologize and genuflect abjectly.

I mean, it's pathetic, and it just never stops with these people. This is why I(and many people, I believe) have never been fully comfortable with identifying with "liberals" and "liberalism". Conservatives are perfectly comfortable with mocking a decorated veteran at their national political convention, in support of a couple of draft dodgers, and liberals just go, "Gosh, that's mean."

By the same token, these are the folks who were all excited about thrice-bankrupted terminal asshole Donald Trump running for president -- even though it was a transparent publicity stunt for his worthless show, even though his sole talent is slapping his name on shit.
And now they're excited about Buzz Killington, because he's Not Obama. Even though he became a hectomillionaire by gutting American companies and sending American jobs overseas (or eliminating them outright), even though his foreign policy apparently boils down to "Ask Bibi", even though he lives the rolling-in-pelf, high-on-the-hog lifestyle that in another time and place brought guillotines into city squares.

It's not about Obama or Romney, nor even about any discernible practical difference in their "vision" or intent. It's about the vestiges of the political system being finally killed off by Citizens United, how a misbegotten ruling by a bunch of activist judges made it a fait accompli for rentier capitalists with far more money than conscience to just throw impossible amounts of money at whoever is more pliable, more complaisant.

It does matter who wins, in the sense that Obama and his party, on the rare occasions when they're on their game, manage to infrequently stand athwart some of the more rapacious maneuvers of their GOP counterparts. Though really, watching Corker, DeMint, Johanns, and Crapo take turns fellating Jamie Dimon for his latest massive fuck-up was nothing if not entertaining, and by "entertaining" I mean nauseating.

Not that I can't picture Chuck Schumer or DiFi doing the same thing. But nothing represents the fix we're in quite so concisely as watching U.S. Senators, even the mouth-breathing dipshits Republican voters routinely install, genuflect so shamelessly to a major factor in the ongoing economic crisis, who just "lost" somewhere between $2-7bn.

But it all begins -- and ends -- with the ability and desire to fight, and fight hard and dirty if necessary. Reasonable people can disagree over how "dirty" they're willing to get, but one thing's for sure -- you never get anywhere by constantly apologizing for every stupid little thing to people who routinely tell you to go fuck yourself.