Why I'm happy to be an intellectual and why I'm so disappointed with the Democrats, right now

The American Democratic party, like the American Republican party, has become so bankrupt as an institution in its dash for power, and this headline illustrates the point, well.

Democrats use strategy of ambiguity on Iraq: experts

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061004/pl_nm/iraq_democrats_dc

It's an article about how Democrats have decided to rationalize their own cowardice to brainstorm, posit, consider, hypothesize or otherwise think about a better Iraq strategy. And how they are hoping, in some bizarre, distorted way, that this will qualify them, in the minds of Americans, for political leadership.

And the biggest reason why they are not at all, necessarily, the better alternative for leadership this November or any November until they decide to think more than they hunt down power.

I am so sickened by the cowardice and the intellectual dishonesty of both parties this election and at this point in our political history.

It can't continue, obviously, because to any numbskull who's taken an iota to think about thinking: it matters. So when you don't think about what you're going to do with all that power or all that money or all that influence or whatever it is that you want, you inevitably end up wasting it.

And in this case, it will involve Democrats likely winning seats in the House and the Senate (and maybe next election, win the Presidency), and then stand around like a bunch of dumbasses saying, "Well we don't know what the fuck we're going to do. We just knew we were tired of the dumbasses over there. Doh, doh, doh."

Fuckin' morons.

Let me be clear. I want enough Democrats to win this election as some kind of substantial check on a Republican party that controls the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. Republicans are definitely divided, these days, thank goodness (meaning they started putting their thinking caps on and perhaps, just perhaps, operating more out of principal than power hunger...maybe). But Democrats are needed to split power in meaningful ways so that no party has too much of a concentration.

But that's where my loyalty to Democrats ends, except in those places where we agree on issues, which is a mixed bag, to say the least.

The short story is the places where Democrats favor freedom, so do I. The places where Democrats favor taking away freedom, I like someone else.

And headlines like this one demonstrate that Democrats have become just as dangerous and untrustworthy with power than Republicans. Because who really gives a fuck about a party or a person that wants power but has no fuckin' clue what they're going to do with it or what ideas would be better.

It's arrogance of power, at its worst. It is the fulfilling of Lord Acton's prophecy about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

And guess what? It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lasts.

Because while the dumbasses of the earth can be convinced to give up their freedoms for a short time, they soon wise up and get over their stupid pride that kicking ass was going to save the world (which it clearly hasn't, if you've picked up one history book in your life).

And I have no love for any person or any party that cares more about their right to power over me than my freedom. I used to say more easily that I believed in reasonable compromises. But now that I see the manipulative writing on the wall around how people lie and bullshit and manipulate themselves around that issue to basically do whatever they want with power, I'm much more skeptical about people's compromises and negotiations.

I say let the Democrats choose whatever strategy they please, including a strategy that arrogantly asserts the right to power without any responsibility to think about how they're going to use it.

And let them lose.

This election, and all elections, I will be choosing the more responsible, more honest, more thoughtful, more genuinely moderate candidates (meaning no fakers; and I'll do everything in my power to call out those faking moderation to rationalize radical ends, which I'm beginning to understand is the most fundamental lie that power-hogs and people, generally, engage in to get their way).

And then, like everyone else, I'm going to live my life however I damn well please, thank you very fuckin' much Mr. and Mrs. American Politician.

What a shameful political moment this is for Americans.

And the one major saving grace is that history demonstrates that:

It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lasts.

Sometimes it gets worse, for awhile, as it is now.

But it never lasts.

Naziism captured peoples' imaginations for awhile.

Communism captured peoples' imaginations for far too long.

And force as a political philosophy (which, of course, it is not; it is, generally, the absense of thought and engagement in favor of our more brutish tendencies) will capture our attention for a brief moment.

And then float away, like every other bad idea the world has seen.

And the biggest reason?

Because the proof is in the pudding.

And the pudding is looking awfully rancid, these days.

And for this rancid pudding of power and aggression, American Democrats, like Republicans, have quite the sweet tooth, these days.

And that is why people around the world are likely to stop listening and following such obvious gluttons.

Thank goodness.

And we can only hope that that will mean that they will start following their better natures.

And if Maslow is right, which I think he is, it's likely a guarantee.

Because while people may choose to give up their freedoms and to feed the power hunger of politicians for one round or maybe two, they aren't likely to keep feeding the beast into perpetuity. And they are least likely to do so in a robust, mature, free democracy like the United States.

Love,
Ben