Take Your "Experience" and Shove It, You Whores for Empire

As good Americans who wuvs their country, we all know in our hearts of nastily bleeding red, pure as the frickin' driven snow white, and never smutty blue hearts that what the Republicans have been telling us, and telling us and telling us, for the last seven years is absolutely true: it is our patriotic obligation to be scared out of our teensy eensy minds, to spend our lives cowering under the covers (or better: just lock all the doors and windows, get under the bed itself, and check to see if everything's okay in about 30 years), and to trust completely in the wisdom and superhero competence of our overlords in the Empire's capital city, Washington of Dee Cee. I know this must be true cuz I read it at Hullabaloo. Yowza!

This, sez I, is a wonderful development. Pretense, begone! That the two major political parties disagree on fundamental principles -- who you kidding, baby? That liberals and progressives are inherently smarter and more honest than Republicans -- hahahahahaha! We're from the Empire, and we're gonna protect you and gives you everything you needs, you poor little 'fraidy cats. Monsters are out to get you, but your Imperial Masters will wrap you up in their big, strong arms dripping with blood, fill your lungs with the death fumes of unending slaughter, and show you exactly the great time you've been dying for. "Dying" being the operative word, natch, okey-dokes, and right on!

You want more evidence? You're a buncha sadomasochistic freaks. Christ, I wuvs this country so much! Try this, sweetums. I can add to that, cuz I was a bad, bad boy so I hadda listen to Stephanie Miller myself yesterday and today. Only for about half an hour each day, otherwise I go bye-bye as my brain 'splodes. Miller, you may recall, thinks taser jokes are, like, the best! That Andrew Meyer, he got 'zactly what that big-mouthed troublemaker was asking for! Smile when you call me a "progressive," you piece of crap. Zap! Got you! Zap! Stop moving, you bastard! Zappity zap zap! Ahhhh, that was good. You think progressives are weak?!?! ZZZZZZAAAAAAAPPPPP!!!

Miller and lots of other folks say that Sarah Palin is one ginormous slut. "She's good with her mouth." Love that critique of policy. And I hadn't understood that entering beauty pageants -- in part, to pay to go to college -- is, like, The Stupid. I just hadn't appreciated these nuanced, progressive perspectives. Bad Arthur! Tase me, sister! But yesterday, Stephanie totally opened my eyes. Stephanie wants to know if Palin can twirl a baton. This is, according to Steph, IMPORTANT. And Steph found the descriptor of Palin that is Steph's fave: "Caribou Barbie." Listening for a few minutes today made clear that this is Miller's general way of referring to Palin now, instead of using, like, her name. Names are so yesterday. "Dignity" for women? Wow, are you out of the loop. Maybe if you're a devotional follower of Oh Bah Maa, otherwise not so much. [See this analysis for the deeper roots of the ferocious hatred unleashed at Palin.]

Like I said, this is all good. One coin, two sides; two hands on the same body; rival gangs fighting over the decaying corpse of Empire, with neither gang challenging the beliefs that brought us to our brave new world of pain, blood, carnage and death without end.

The taser-lovin', fear-peddling proggies tell us that Palin doesn't have "experience." Joe Biden has experience. You can take it to the morgue. The Democrats-proggies-libruls insist that they're 2% less shitty than Pure Evil ("It's all they've got!") or, in another formulation, that they want a better, more "competent" Mafia (note the concluding section of this interview). A new, better Mafia that extorts, tortures and kills more effectively than the old one! I suppose if you're gonna vote for a war criminal, you want the best war criminal you can find. Voting for someone who isn't a war criminal isn't "viable." Oh. Tell it to the Germans. They know all about what's "viable." Aw, quit your griping. This is inspiring shit, even if it is 2% less shitty than Pure Evil.

To move from the blood-drenched vomit of death to the astonishingly sane and peaceful, consider Mike Gravel:

In 1971, he waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States. He is most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. After the New York Times published portions of the leaked study, the Nixon administration moved to block any further publication of information and to punish any newspaper publisher who revealed the contents.

From the floor of the senate, Gravel (a junior senator at the time) insisted that his constituents had a right to know the truth behind the war and proceeded to read 4,100 pages of the 7,000 page document into the senate record. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Senator Gravel did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

He then published The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication resulted in litigation, Gravel v. U.S., resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision (No. 71-1017-1026) relative to the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1, Section 6) of the United States Constitution.

"A successful one-man filibuster" that "effectively end[ed] the draft." Gee, I don't suppose someone -- maybe someone who wanted to run for president -- could have done that with, say, the recent FISA legislation, could he? OF COURSE NOT. Zzzzzzaaaaaapppppp! You aren't learning!! And Mr. Gravel charmingly thought "his constituents had a right to know the truth"! No wonder the Democrats generally and most commentators and bloggers treated him like a joke. I mean, what the hell. Does Gravel think criminals should be held accountable for their crimes? ZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP. You're going to make me hurt you. A lot. Whatever happens, it'll be your fault. Can I work for the Empire now?

Mike Gravel has some observations about Palin and her significance as a candidate in the Age of Rotting Empire. Please note that Gravel says -- as I did several days ago -- that he has crucial criticisms of many of Palin's policy views:

Wasilla is one of the most conservative communities in Alaska. Little wonder that children reared close to family in that environment become conservative with strong family values, a deep sense of fair play and strong patriotism tinged with jingoism. They are personally independent and self reliant, yet fearful of the unknown and susceptible to narrow biblical religious beliefs.

...

I strongly disagree with her views on abortion, creationism, stem cell research and a host of extreme conservative views that are a product of her environment. We must bear in mind she is running for vice president––a heart beat away––not president. ...

Sarah has issues. What politician doesn’t? Hers are a product of family loyalty and insufficient knowledge of politics and governance.

See the full column for clarification on that last point. But here is what Gravel has to say about "experience," with regard to how that term is commonly employed:

In my mind, that Sarah comes to the national scene as a novice with a clean slate is her main asset. Having a long history of political experience also means a long history of exposure to the political corruption endemic to the process of human governance, with the phony public and private compromises that accompany political experience.

Foreign policy experience? Thank god she has none beyond that of a normal citizen subject to the militarization of our culture over the past 50 years, particularly so in Alaska with its strong military presence. The three other would-be leaders have tons of experience among them. But whether liberal or conservative all three are committed to a policy of American imperialism with the self-appointed role of world policeman. This role of trying to influence the world with our military might sustains bloated defense budgets that profit the few and impoverish the social and economic needs of the many.

The United States spends more on defense than all the rest of the world combined. By comparison, Russia and China—our supposed competitors on the world scene—each spend less that 10% of our budget, preferring to strengthen their economic sectors. Are we not as concerned about the wellbeing of our citizens as Russia’s and China’s leaders are? Do they—or do we—have our budget priorities wrong?

Sarah is no doubt going to be briefed by the “best and the brightest” of the neocon crowd that President Washington warned us about with their foreign entanglements, and the military and corporate leaders that President Eisenhower predicted would destroy our democracy. Will they be able to write her a new slate that is a replica of John McCain’s? Odds are they will. But just maybe she won’t be so easily co-opted by corporate America––she hasn’t thus far. Wow! Isn’t that an interesting possibility?

It would require a series of extraordinary events for Gravel's "possibility" to become a reality with regard to any individual, primarily for the reason I identified some time ago:

Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system.

Nonetheless, Gravel is absolutely right on the general point. "Experience" per se is not necessarily any kind of virtue whatsoever. If your experience consists in understanding and being a major player in the irretrievably corrupt, corporatist culture of national politics, if your alleged expertise lies in the realm of ceaseless military interventions (whether for conquest and exploitation admitted without shame or apology, or in the guise of "humanitarianism"), then your experience should be viewed as a fundamental disqualification. If you will support a Mafia murderer because he is a more experienced, more competent and more effective murderer than his opponent, you can go straight to hell.

In addition, the very notion of a "well-managed," "competently run" Empire represents a significantly worse evil than an Empire that is in disarray and rapidly falling apart. For the reasons explored in "The Fatal Illusion of Opposition," it allows most people to believe opposition is unnecessary, and it allows the evil to grow and destroy still more lives.

Whether Sarah Palin is a "slut" is no one's goddamned business, until and unless it demonstrably affects her performance in office. Even then, the focus should be on her actions in government and not elsewhere, regardless of the fact that personal destruction of this kind is the favorite blood sport of so many -- aside, that is, from the actual blood sports that are the Empire's primary occupation. But the fact that so many Americans -- including almost every national politician of both major parties, and almost all commentators and bloggers of all political descriptions -- are whores for Empire is remarkably awful news for those few of us who value peace and liberty above all else.

Against this army of whores for Empire with its weaponry that can destroy us all many times over, peace and liberty don't have a chance in hell, unless the Empire collapses as the result of internal corruption and decay or because it fatally overreaches. Whatever happens, much more death and destruction is almost guaranteed to be in our future. Yet none of this troubles the whores for Empire, for lies, blood, chaos and death do not deter them: the pain and suffering of others is barely real, and this is the diet that sustains them.

"Experience," hell. At this moment in the trajectory of the now-dead American republic, it will kill you -- as well as an untold number of innocent people. I hope all these criminal and criminally ignorant advocates of "experience" choke on it.