I’ve gotten quite bored with writing about politics, or even thinking about politics. I used to engage in political debate with gusto, and enjoyed it, but now the whole enterprise just makes me weary. Maybe it’s something to do with turning 30.
Or, maybe it’s because of the stunning incompetence of the Republican Party. With a Republican Congress and Republican Presidency, there was an opportunity for great things (or, at least things that didn’t suck as badly as Democratic things). Instead, we got a bunch of stupidity. They passed on many opportunities to do something constructive, like fix Social Security, build a damned wall against Mexico, or undo some the damage of the Clinton years. They did none of those things. But you could definitely count on them to stick their noses where they didn’t belong, like between a doctor and her patient’s uterus. And they got more excited about some brain-dead woman in Florida than about making sure I’m not throwing my salary away on social services that won’t be there when I retire.
The one truly constructive thing they did was allow the moronic “assault weapons” ban to expire. Of course, that accomplishment simply required them to do nothing.
And what about fiscal discipline? In 1994, the Republicans replaced a thoroughly corrupted Democratic Congress that pissed money away to their cronies while not giving a flying fuck about the rest of us. And in 2006… the Democrats replaced a thoroughly corrupted Republican Congress that pissed money away to their cronies while not giving a flying fuck about the rest of us. And, what do I expect this newfangled Democratic Congress to do? Why, piss money away to their cronies and not give a flying fuck about the rest of us! New boss, same as the old boss. I think it’s time to explore term limits.
When the Republicans weren’t doing stupid things, they allowed the Democrats to paint them as doing stupid things. “Bush lied about Iraqi WMDs!” is the classic example here. “Bush Lied” is itself the big lie. The entire world agreed that Iraq was a WMD threat before the war. Now that the war has gone south (thanks largely to the Iraqis themselves), many people are simply practicing selective memory. The problem here is that the Republicans have not pushed back against this disinformation. They’ve sat on their asses and allowed the Left’s “Bush Lied” meme to become accepted in political discourse. Stupid!
As it turns out, Saddam did have WMDs, just not in the amounts the world had feared. People can be forgiven for missing all the press coverage of chemical munitions, chlorine bombs, and nuclear technical documents, since, um, the press hasn’t been covering it (that goes against the “Bush Lied” meme, after all). Essentially, Saddam was bluffing about the size of his WMD capability, and he didn’t expect the United States to call his bluff. After all, we hadn’t called the bluff in the Clinton years.
As for the war itself, “mismanaged” seems to be a good euphemism. General Petraeus seems to be going in the right direction with classic counter-insurgency tactics, if reports from embedded milbloggers are any indication. Too bad we didn’t do that in 2004. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
As for the Muslims — especially the Arab Muslims — all I can say is that’s a pretty fucked up religion. Most religions, especially the Abrahamic ones, are intrinsically messed up anyhow, but Islam takes the cake — hence its elevation to “fucked up”. And I’m not going to qualify or justify that statement; the Muslims do that themselves. There is a significant number of complete whackos in that faith, and the rest of them are simply enablers that do nothing to contain their whacko brethren. Westerners who still buy into the “Religion of peace” baloney after all the bloodshed perpetrated by Muslims all the way back to Muhammad are just willfully ignorant.
Maybe there’s still hope for those people. The kinder side of me still holds out hope. Our efforts to build a democratic Iraq are ultimately based upon that hope. But many days I have my doubts.
So it’s safe to say that I feel let-down. I’ve been let down by a Republican Congress that stank as badly as the Democrats they replaced. I’ve been let down by a bunch of Shiites that are more interested in settling scores than building a country.
And I’ve been thoroughly embarrassed by George W Bush, whom I confidently voted for, twice. It’s not that he’s an idiot. It’s that he’s stubborn and a very poor communicator, which together are essentially fatal bugs. I guess that when the Queen of England (or Helen Mirren, anyhow) declares that she “was a mechanic during the ‘war’”, she was referring to the American Revolutionary War. I wish John McCain had won the 2000 primaries. Or Joe Lieberman, for that matter.
I fully expect the new Democratic Congress to stink, and I also give the Democrats about a 70% chance of winning the White House in 2008. Trying to make things somewhat better by debating politics right now is somewhat akin to standing on the beach and commanding the tide not to come in — I expect to get all wet. And since no one else reads this blog anyhow, I expect it to be all wet on an empty beach.
In any case, all of the bloggers in my blogroll are better political writers than I am. Go read.