You being appalled doesn’t stop them from appalling: W R Marshall

[edhopper]

http://thenewdominion.com/?p=2002#comment-21821

There was a time — maybe I don’t remember it, but there had to have been — when being appalled meant something. And not just to the appaller, but to the appallie. I’m not talking about some 19th-century literary bohemians spitting in the eye of fancy French folk. I don’t mean those postwar beatniks banging on their bongos and trying to get a rise out of the man in the gray flannel suit. And forget about those free-lovin’, inhalin’ hippies with their bell bottom jeans and their psychedelic art, turning their tie-dyed backs on the Establishment. All of them were actively trying to appall someone. They behaved in ways that invited consternation, they were trying to shock. When they got the desired response, everyone felt better, the world was balanced.

[Joanne98]

1. Hippies and the Shock Doctrine! WOW

[mwb970]

2. I liked this part.

I think this is George Bush’s fault. (This isn’t partisan politics, it’s an unfortunate fact of daily life.) All you right-wing hatemongers out there still go on endlessly about Clinton and the infamous blue dress. Rightfully so, it was appalling behavior. Now, you may all be prudes and repressed, but you certainly had every right to be appalled.

Yet, somehow, with the most appalling president in the history of our nation sitting in the White House, we just shake our heads and sigh. Hell, it took Newt Gingrich (who was doing exactly what Clinton was doing at the time Clinton was doing it) a New York minute (that’s supposed to be really short) to bring impeachment to the floor. (Stop with the, “It wasn’t the sex, it was the lying” chorus. Of course it was the was the sex, it’s always the sex...)

We have a bunch of truly horrible people running the country right now. They have lied us into to one war, tried to lie us into another, as well as all kinds of other criminal behavior… and all we do is ignore it. In spite of Gingrich leaving a blueprint for how to get rid of guy doing appalling things, the current Congress took impeachment off the table on day one, which makes you wonder what they’re up to — and we thought the Republican run Congress was bad.

This is exactly how I feel. I cannot for the life of me understand why Americans as a group do nothing at all as their country is destroyed right in front of their eyes by sociopathic criminals. Would we just stand and watch while crazed arsonists burned down our house with our whole family trapped inside? Well, that's exactly what we are doing.

I live in a nation of idiots.