I don't like to get extremely political with this blog. I'd much rather alienate my readers with bad YouTube videos and dick jokes and dash my own hopes of getting a better job by admitting that I don't do that much work at my current one. And, as I've been told before, I don't particularly care about "important issues," but every now and then Gawker will touch on something that doesn't have to do with Salman Rushdie's impending divorce, and it makes me have a serious thought or two. Get ready for my opinion!
So, Scooter Libby is not going to jail for being the guy who took the fall for exposing a CIA agent whose husband refused to lie about Iraq buying uranium from Nigeria in order to start a war. And no one should really surprised because he wasn't on trial for the leak that put a CIA agent's life at risk. Rather, he was on trial for perjury and obstruction of justice, which seem like code for "what can we pin this guy with so people will stop paying attention to our fuck ups?"
And the moral of the story? I don't know, really, it's complicated. I mean, it kind of reminds me, yet again, why I stopped following politics in the first place. When I was in high school and my early years of college, I used to get so fucking upset about political issues. I would fight with my father about gun control and how shitty Bush was, and it didn't solve anything. Instead it just made us more angry at each other and what was going on. And that's why I stopped paying attention: I have too much stuff going on in my life that I have some sort of CONTROL over to sit around and bitch about Iraq. I can't do anything about Iraq, and even if I thought I could, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. Libby's commutation is another example about how this administration (and really, EVERY SINGLE presidential administration - Republican and Democrat) is going to do whatever the fuck they want to anyway, because people are stupid enough to keep supporting them. And also, they've got the power and can use it. And that's really what it comes down to.
And please, I know how ironic it is for me to say that just bitching about this stuff isn't going to do anything, because I am, essentially, bitching about it. But really, I'm so sick of people putting bumper stickers on their cars and and joining Facebook groups and going around and shouting about Global Warming because our generation has finally found a cause they think they can change. Look at the youth generations before us. Look at the goddamn '60s, for example. You had all of these people who protested against a war that lasted FOREVER, in the hopes to stop it and make sure something like that didn't happen again. And it STILL went on and it happened AGAIN! And what's worse, you look at some of those people now and see how they are just as ridiculous as the people they were protesting against. John Kerry! He became a fucking politician who was exactly like every other fucking politician. Look at Dennis Hopper, who wrote and directed the film that became a symbol of the '60s counter-culture. HE'S A BUSH SUPPORTER.
I mean, we're living in an age where people are trying to tell us that if we buy cute t-shirts, we'll help AIDS victims in Africa. Because we're living in an age where we need to be immediately rewarded for doing good things, as well as have some sort of object to say to other people, "Look at me and how good I am."
Basically, I'm sick of the fad that is political "awareness."
KTHXBYE.
Related: Make Your Voice Ignored. [Wonkette]
1 comment:
Great post-- even though I tend to come from the other side of the political spectrum, I got riled up. I have found that most people have a teeny little tolerance for exercising true thought: it's too hard for them. So they listen to a 5 minute soundbite about a political issue, and latch on fervently as if they are experts. It's frightening... and as you point out, history only repeats itself.
We are mostly a nation of little AJ Soprano's.
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