"I guess we'd all like to aspire to civilized discussions motivated by intellectual expansion" sounds like something that President Barack Obama might say, might inspire us to aspire to.
It was a DUer and there may have been a big "but" coming but the trail of bread crumbs back to the reply has disappeared.
IMHO the dissension and tension surrounding Obama is based, not as much on what he has done or not done, but what our expectations of him were and are.
"Ya don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." -- Dylan
After 3 decades of Reaganism, media consolidation, corporate welfare and megamergers, outsourcing, illegal wars, mercenary housing prices, stagnant wages and prices increasing on everything EXCEPT the price of gasoline, our way of life, our way of communicating and our way of government have all been compromised.
The president who was a joke was The Great Communicator. The radio jockey who was a joke became The National Confabulator.
Rush Limbaugh might as well lead the Grand Old Parochials, as he has led them by the nose down the garden path toward the lemming departure point for those same 3 decades.
Rush and his Limbots can take a lot of credit for taking over political discourse; for making it nigh impossible; for making The Daily Show parodies of national nonsense the "real" news for younger generations. His carefully crafted Big Lie Sandwiches are so artfully composed that all the candy colored curlicue cellophane toothpicks in China can't do them justice.
We've had 8 years of unstoppable illegal behaviors by 2 unelected administrations; some form of shackled complicity from Congress; inexplainable inability to pursue accountability; while our Bill of Rights, privacy, Constitution, right to remove criminal administrations, economy, homes, educations, health and environment lay in shambles.
4296 U.S. troops deaths from Gulf War II, 4157 of those SINCE "Mission Accomplished."
Many younger Americans won't remember the split screen of Reagan's inauguration, with the Geezer on one side and the gangplank with deplaning Iran Hostages on the other. A recent similar wake up call was an American pResident standing on a battleship under a banner, wearing a codpiece and telling the television that "Major combat operations in Iraq are over" and over 4,000 more people dying with no end in sight.
That's how bad the cognitive dissonance is. We have been hornswaggled. That is the environment that this new president was elected in. He has to play the game. He had to play the game to get elected.
The two main candidates being on the campaign trail for 2 years while impeachment was "Off The Table" was a big clue about how much and what kind of change we could really hope for.
There were many hopeful ideas and images in Obama's campaign. The main one, the one that carried him, was the notion that each of us can and must be part of the process and as Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
We can do that. One way is to communicate with each other. Ask the right questions. Accept that our leadership and our entire system have been severely COMPROMISED. Blaming or fighting over Obama doesn't change that any more than he can change it by himself.
Our system has been compromised and our ability to communicate has also. We have the internet to bypass "mainstream" media, yet we still seem to be stuck in the antagonistic style that the Limbots infected the country with.
It's a sign of the fear and confusion and the insanity of much of it, that humor and sardonic treatments prevail. Maybe the Fool, Coyote, Court Jester, shall always be the TruthTeller.
Let's consider though, that we may be under the influence of some RushBaughContin poisoning, disseminated and ingested via the airwaves EVEN TO OUR ARMED FORCES OVERSEAS :wtf: BY THE GOVERNMENT.
We can kick the habit. We can quick ingesting the Limbot Droids on cable. We can quit acting like Bill O'Reilly.
We can screw on our
We can aspire.
"I guess we'd all like to aspire to civilized discussions motivated by intellectual expansion"