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Friday, October 21, 2011
How to Win
(N at all SFW)
(N at all SFW)
We keep forgetting the "Government by the people" part of the arrangement.
IT'S SIMPLE. Stop pining for a leader. Seriously. Stop. It. This podcast explains what we really need.
You can read a half-reliable transcript after the jump.
Found an article on reason.com that has made my election season. It's called "What the Left Can Learn From the Right," which is a notion tantamount to sedition, but one section in particular is the most hopeful thing I've read all year.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who successfully steered Republican negotiations so that no taxes were raised in the debt-limit deal, is anything but a fiscally responsible, government-limiting public servant. He championed such Bush-era white elephants as No Child Left Behind, the single biggest increase in federal education spending in history, and Medicare Part D, which gave heavily subsidized prescription drugs to seniors. He supported George W. Bush’s $100 million stimulus plan in 2008, his $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) later that year, and his $1 trillion-plus war expenditures. As recently as last fall’s congressional campaign, Boehner was explicitly refusing to contemplate cuts in military and entitlement spending—the two biggest growth engines in government.
What changed Boehner’s tune? The Tea Parties.
In the run-up to the November 2010 elections, Boehner, along with his Senate counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), refused to include a Tea Party–backed ban on earmarks in his flaccid “Pledge to America” manifesto. Hours after the Republicans took over the House of Representatives, both men reiterated their opposition to a ban on legislative pork.
Not satisfied with merely winning elections, Tea Party activists flooded congressional phone lines and prodded the 90 new Republicans on Capitol Hill to face down a GOP leadership more concerned with appearances than reform. Amazingly, by February 2011, Boehner had caved under the pressure.
What changed Boehner’s tune? The Tea Parties.
In the run-up to the November 2010 elections, Boehner, along with his Senate counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), refused to include a Tea Party–backed ban on earmarks in his flaccid “Pledge to America” manifesto. Hours after the Republicans took over the House of Representatives, both men reiterated their opposition to a ban on legislative pork.
Not satisfied with merely winning elections, Tea Party activists flooded congressional phone lines and prodded the 90 new Republicans on Capitol Hill to face down a GOP leadership more concerned with appearances than reform. Amazingly, by February 2011, Boehner had caved under the pressure.
This is the key to it all. Boehenr was a crap politician, the public made him their honest-to-God servant. A public servant must serve the public. Seems so obvious to say it out loud. But we've lost sight of it. Everyone's bitching that, oh, Romney's not even in their top 10 choices, but it looks like he's going to get the nod. Maybe Romney's going to be an OK President. Maybe he'll do. I doubt he'll be a great President, but maybe that's fine. Maybe it's our turn to be great.
That's why I liked Rick Perry at first. When the media came after him with their usual BS slinging, he dispatched them without barely breaking a sweat. Well, he used to, before this whole "Niggerhead" debacle. As soon as the first MSM goon brought it up, he should have said exactly this, word for word: "My dad painted over the damn rock, you shitstains. What would make you happy? If he'd smashed it into powder with a sledgehammer and then shouted to the heavens 'Never again!' How about if we'd razed every inch of the ranch with a backhoe and salted the earth? Would that have been enough? Were all the world's problems solved in the last couple weeks? Did I miss that? Are you media idiots so starved for news that you have to work yourselves into histrionics over this, you dipfucks?"
But, of course, he didn't do that. He stammered and equivocated and... has stopped impressing. But in fairness to him as a candidate, a President should be too busy working to explain irrelevent silly-ass controversies. We shouldn't need him to. We should have a little more perspective than we do. We should be a little more bullshit-proof than we are.
The Rick Perry of early in his campaign eviscerates the media, the elitist... fuckfaces. That's what they are, they are fuck faces. Perry eviscerates them, but capitulates to the common folk, the people trying to live decent lives and not butt their noses into everyone's damn business. And I know I sound like I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. I mean it. Most people in the world just want to have a nice time and do well for themselves and not hurt anyone else. When I was younger, I hated normal people, but now that I'm older and I've pulled my head partway out my ass, I'm glad they're the norm.
To these people, Rick Perry caves. He tries to force the Gardisil vaccine, everyone says "No, this is a step too far, you need to back off. We've had kind of an assful of having the sex ed issue being forced down our throats (so to speak, heyooo!), and we're taking a stand. We decide when we teach our kids about sex. It's not gonna be some doctor saying hey, here's a shot for vagina cancer, which you can get from a boy's penis, which looks like this 3D plastic model in color, by the way. No, we're done not having a say when our kids learn about sex. Gardisil thing's a no-go, period. Back off, back off, back off."
And he did.
Now, I think Perry was basically in the right. One little shot gets rid of... that cancer, do it. Just do it. You don't want to have the sex conversation with your kid? Don't tell her what the shot's for. She's a kid. You don't have to tell her crap. She worries what it is, tell her it's poison and to shut her goddamn face. Then, when you get home, make her do the chores you don't feel like doing yourself. She refuses, have her fucking arrested. You own her, fair and square.
BUT. Back to Perry. The point is not that he was right. The point is the good guys spoke, and Rick Perry listened.
That's what we need. We need a President who bows to the good guys and stands up to the bad guys. The bad guys foreign and domestic.
You want to fix the country? Two steps. Step 1: Elect a President who bows to the good guys and stands up to the bad guys, the bad guys both foreign and domestic. Step 2: Make him bow to you. And keep making him bow to you. He wants to waste more of your money on the war on drugs? You tell him no. He speaks in a cavalier fashion about raising taxes? You remind him whose money it is. And make sure he hears you. You keep your spurs buried in his fleshy flank at all times. The President is America's mule. America's workhorse. If he's stubborn, crack the whip.
There's a rub.
If we the people are really going to start calling the tune, we have to know which tunes to call. We can't just nod vigorously and cup our hands when the government offers us our neighbor's money. We can't risk a real national default in the real world, friends. I hate taxes too, but come on. Our thought processes should be a little more deliberate and clear than they've been. We have to have our heads on straight, and our priorities in order. There's more to self-government than just "Get off my lawn." If we want the government to work for us, we have to participate. And we have to be competent to participate. That's how it is with any job.
And this is our job. This is the job we haven't been doing. We need to figure out what kind of country we ought to make, and why. Which means we may need to rethink some of our most cherished notions of right and wrong. Because if we're the one's responsible, we have to be sure.
Have a great weekend.
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