OK, I'm awake already. Should I get a job as a custodian at the white house and snoop around in the oval office, or just hand out "smart pills" to people with faded "Bush-Cheney" bumperstickers?
Posted by TIKI AL at August 30, 2006 05:45 AMI was just telling a friend in Canada yesterday the main problem in the USA is the vast majority of people just don't care, they do care about who wins American Idol, but they do not care about where their tax dollars are spent, or how their President is endangering them with incompetent and foolish policies...
gasoline goes over $3 a gallon , I thought people might care, but I am not seeing a sign of it yet...
what will it take?
Posted by leftymn at August 30, 2006 06:14 AMGas at over $5 gallon.
Cops at street checkpoints toting submachine guns looking for people on a 'terrorism watch list'.
A draft of the college-aged middle class kids.
Essentially, what it will take is overt state terrorism against the middle-class.
Posted by idiosynchronic at August 30, 2006 06:32 AMIt's a mystery to me too that Americans are so numb to the state of things. I agree that $5/gal gas would get some attention, but in the final analysis I do not in fact think most Americans would "care". The ones who are hurt most by such a thing would be pushed even farther back from the front pages and ones with SUV's would gripe but pay the price because they are capable of it.
The war in Iraq and a looming one in Iran and a boiling one in Lebanon have caused no-one to "care". As a nation, we are at worst "disappointed" that we aren't winning and wish we could go home, but the commitment was made and so we have to finish the job---I mean, it's the sort of logic you apply to "spilt milk", not warfare.
Like many others, I agree that the opposition party has offered no substantive opposition. You would expect them to be the first, loudest and longest of the protesters. It seems, however, that the Democrats simply believe they can bide their time, this too shall pass, and they will pick up the pieces at the appropriate time. That plan assumes we can sustain ourselves as a nation long enough to get beyond the tenure of the present Administration.
Armed militia at our local street corner? Get attention? On the first day, it might. But after that I'd expect the press to find something else to look at and the political class to moan before resigning to their fate. I really think a lot of Americans would in fact accept armed militia with checkpoints in their neighborhoods and if they didn't, their complain would be about traffic snarls, not civil liberties or sound government.
Posted by cromulant at August 30, 2006 06:49 AM"what will it take?"
A DRAFT.
"That plan assumes we can sustain ourselves as a nation long enough to get beyond the tenure of the present Administration."
Cromulant, how right you are, and how wrong the premise. My fear is that we cannot sustain ourselves as a Nation, and someone better wake up fast. Hear that Democrats? Or, do you give a crap?
Posted by Judith at August 30, 2006 10:44 AM