What follows is a rant.  I cannot help it, as I saw Joe Lieberman’s sanctimonious face grinning at me on site after site yesterday.

The nihilism that is rotting away Western modernity’s heart showed itself yesterday.  The self indulgence and ugliness of a society whose dominant elites have come to believe in nothing but their own narcissistic and sociopathic selves, and their lust to hold onto power and wealth at any cost, without any sense of responsibility, or service to the country that makes their ascendancy possible.

How else can we explain the huge
grin plastered across the face of Joe Lieberman as he pulled his last minute
double-cross against a compromise he himself had agreed to only a few months
before.  On the issue most Americans are most personally concerned about.  His power and name
recognition was magnified as never before despite its harm to the millions who
expect something from the so-called “representatives” they put into office or his
fellow senators who groveled at his feet. 
That more Americans will enter into bankruptcy or die while Joe preens
in the public eye is of no concern to him. None at all.

How else to explain the cravenness
of a Harry Reid who continues to prove his utter lack of fitness for his post
by repeatedly demonstrating his inability to do the American people’s work, or
to focus the Senate’s abilities on the major issues facing this country
today?  Whether in the majority or
the minority, Reid has demonstrated a singular inability to lead on anything,
accomplish anything or stand for anything.  He is a man of a thousand excuses and few accomplishments.

How else to explain the dark
cynicism of a Rahm Emmanuel and the President, Mr. “B+,” who gave him his
position.  Yesterday they urged
Reid and the Democratic Senate to reject the wishes of a majority of Americans,
including the great majority who voted Democratic, to compromise with a man who
has proven he negotiates in bad faith, proven his personal pettiness while the
nation deals with big issues, proven his dishonesty to his constituency and his
contempt for the craven Senators who keep providing him privileges and perks he
does not merit.  They urged Reid to
ignore significant health care reform the better to do Joe Lieberman’s bidding.
Truly the semblance of “winning” matters more for the White House than the
substance of the win.

How else to explain a Democratic
Senate comprised largely of old men who stand for nothing, neither defending
the constitution from Republican assaults when in the minority nor
accomplishing much of their own agenda when a potentially powerful
majority.  Repeatedly they allow
corrupt single senators to grind the institution to a halt with their anonymous
“holds” on issue after issue, from appointments to executive and judicial
branch offices to important legislation. 
Then they put up with “filibusting” the people’s business without the
supposed filibusters even having to say a word.  One time the filibuster actually had to be used to be
effective.  The person making the
threat had to carry it out.  No
more. Now they just need to drop a hint. 
It saves Senators the stress of having to vote for their corporate
paymasters or the people who elected them so long as they keep issues from coming
to a vote.  But they do find time
to give billions to those who gave us our financial crisis while almost
ignoring the millions who suffer from that crisis, and who voted for them.  No one puts holds on that.  Daily the bulk of Democratic senators
show they believe in nothing, will fight for nothing, and care only for their
perks and status in their club.  I
mean men like you Max Baucus and Ben Nelson – and women like Diane Feinstein.

How else to explain the Republican
opposition who has forgotten the first principle of politics in a free society:
that opposition must be loyal opposition, one that however strongly they
disagree over how best to serve the nation, agree that serving the nation is
their top priority.  Seeking to
bring government to a halt, the country to its knees, hoping for failure on all
fronts in order to pick up the pieces not because the public supports you but
because they loath the other party even more than they loath you, is not the
stuff which preserves a free society. 
These are the tactics of the Communists and Nazis in the doomed Weimar
Republic.  Supporting the lurid
fantasies of birthers, global warming conspiracy advocates, “death panel”
imbeciles and teabaggers does not create a country able to preserve democratic
institutions.  I mean people like
you, Mitch McConnell and James Inhofe.

How else to explain the
self-described “religious” right who prove over and over again that they will
do anything, say anything, to gain power over the rest of us.  The God they really worship is power,
not the power to create or preserve but the power to dominate.  They  despise the principles this country was founded on, seeking
theocracy over a world they claim is doomed but are possessed by the lust to
rule anyway.  Little things like
the constitution and rule of law are so much chaff in the wind.  I mean people like you Mike Huckabee
and Sarah Palin.

How else to explain a corporate
media, highly paid men and women who spend more time focusing on Tiger Woods’
sexual shenanigans than they do on medical reform, Afghanistan, global warming,
or the economic crisis.  Like so
many of the above, their real love is seeing their own face in the public eye
while they collect millions for their alleged talents as “journalists.”  Polls have shown that Americans who get
their news from the comedy channel understand more about what is going on than
those who get their news from you “newsmen.”  I mean people like you Chris Matthews and George
Stephanopolous and Cokie Roberts.

How else to explain a business elite
who treats capitalism as a sophisticated casino where the public pays for their
losses and they keep their wins. 
Creating products and services is secondary to million dollar bonuses
(bonuses for what?  Certainly not
competence.)  These are men who try and fill their inner emptiness with multiple homes, cars, jets, and boats
while preening themselves as somehow having earned the wealth they extort
from those who create it.  I mean
you, the bloated leaders of corrupt institutions such as Goldman Sachs and
Citigroup, men who could not even be bothered to meet with the president to
discuss the devastating problems you caused.

How else to explain a significant
percentage of the American public who continually finds excuses for whomever in
the above they claim to support because they loath the others more.  Cutting perpetual excuses for any of
the above has trapped our country in despair, stupidity, and hardness of heart
at a time when integrity, clarity of mind and openness of heart, are necessary as
rarely before.

Across the board, with few
exceptions, America’s elites have proven themselves nihilists at best, monsters
at worst.  They reward failure and
dishonesty and ignore competence and 
integrity.  I increasingly think countries have life spans that come to an end when their elites have
become self-perpetuating incompetents challenged by an opposition whose only
goal is to destroy and take power on the ruins.  This is why a majority of incompetents cannot triumph over a
minority of undemocratic radicals even in a democratic body.  The secular pursuit of wealth and power
as the highest things in life, mostly challenged by a power obsessed religion
with its demon god, cannot maintain let alone expand, the basic attitudes,
commitments, and loves needed if a country and a culture are to remain worthy
of respect, let alone devotion.

The “religious” right is correct
about one thing, even if they have nothing positive to offer to help, and much to make it worse.  We are in the midst of a moral and spiritual
crisis.  The Enlightenment
ideal of a society that takes only the tools and methods of science and
instrumental reason as legitimate knowledge, and believes that knowledge is power, that power is the common denominator, is proving itself bankrupt. We desperately need a spiritual awakening to
the immanence of the sacred and the intrinsic worth of this world and all within it.