Posted on Democrated Underground Friday the 13th 2008

I always come back to Democratic Underground, even though I become exasperated by some of the posts and responses, because without DU, especially without the Editorials and Other Articles section, I wouldn't know that Joe Bageant even existed. This was surely posted here in February when it first came out, but I'm in the mood to put something up and this is what I read (again) tonight.

Good, thought-provoking, depressing but funny stuff.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/04/the-audacity-of.html

Excerpts:

"I don't hear so much outrage. In fact, the readers seem to be suffering from what someone aptly called "rage fatigue." Which is another way of saying the bastards have simply worn us out. And it's true.

" . . . I am not kidding when I say rage fatigue victims have fallen into an ongoing mid-level depression.

"... Like whoever else wins the presidency, Obama can never acknowledge any significant truth, such as that the nation is waaaaay beyond being just broke . . . or that the greatest touch-me-not in the U.S. political flower garden, the "American lifestyle," is toast.

". . . the bunny and cupcake set of Americans are still oblivious, or at least pretend to be, but even at the more inchoate and private level, there is a growing awareness that things are going very wrong, and doing so on an incomprehensively massive and complex scale.

". . . We all stand submissively before the global ATM machine network like trained chickens pecking the correct colored buttons to release our grains of corn. Freedom, and to a large extent joy, as we understand it in our common technoculture . . . each with its own type of packaging . . ."

Now speaking as me again, not copying and pasting quotes: If anyone has read down this far (rather than doing the sensible thing and clicking on the link to go read the article in its entirety), the posted DU opinion that has exasperated me most recently is people getting all outraged and indignant because the right wing radio blowhards are attacking Barak and Michelle Obama with smarmy nonsensical quasi-racist slurs. Let the Hannitys and their ilk blab away! One, that's what free speech is all about. Many people, liberals and progressives included, think free speech means people have the right to say stuff they agree with but shouldn't be allowed to blurt out anything idiotic or impolite. We ought to instead allow Scarborough and "Bill-O" keep on revealing how stupid, scared and nasty they really are. We ought to be calling attention to what they're saying and the way they're saying it. Most Americans who believe they're on the Right still don't, however, want to think of themselves as prejudiced bigoted closeted Ku Klux Klanners. They say, "We're not racist, but it's just that . . . "

The answer to hate speech is better speech. Keith Olberman is doing just fine exposing Bill O'Reilly (anyone not watching "Worst Person in the World" would not meet my definition of well informed) with articulate ridicule. We (assuming that there is such a thing as "we") should be asking all those potential McCain voters "Is that what you really believe? Does this trash talking lout really speak for you?" Getting all huffy and asserting that they shouldn't be permitted to say such insulting things is exactly the wrong way to counter them.

Just my opinion. As always, I may be wrong. I often am.