I'LL TAKE CINDY AND SUNSARA OVER PELOSI AND REID ANY DAY

It’s been amusing -- in much the same way it’s amusing to see someone shut their fingers in a car door -- to read some of the anti-Cindy Sheehan sewer spew being upchucked across the web in recent days. Since I never waste my time trolling in virtual wingnut waters (a lowly endeavor that would serve no purpose), I’m referring to a few hit pieces I saw at none other than Democratic Underground. As would be expected of just about any dogmatic adherents to a political party line, whatever that party line happens to be, a few indomitable “DUers” have concluded that Cindy actually is the enemy after all. She has the unmitigated presumption to publicly challenge the Democratic “leadership” to live up to their responsibilities; for political disciplinarians of all stripes, such audacity is the most heinous of heresies. Like I said, it’s all so amusing -- hardy fucking har.

Actually, the author of the one crap post at DU that was sufficient to send my credulity reeling around the bend also characterized Sunsara Taylor and World Can’t Wait as “communist” oriented, or words to that effect. Funny, isn’t it, that a nebulous and largely irrelevant spectacle, such as the Democrats taking control of the utterly compromised whorehouse known as the United States Congress, apparently tends to induce a number of otherwise reasonable liberal types to adopt the attitudes, vocabulary, and pejorative iconography of their erstwhile Neo-Con antagonists. What an interesting phenomenon.

Well, one of the most blandly over-used axioms out there says something about people having a right to their opinions ... even cross-eyed mouth-breathers who use fear and ignorance as existential lubrication for what passes for a thought process. That would have to include individuals who operate under the sad delusion that only Neo-Con Republicans should be rhetorically questioned and excoriated and sometimes physically disrupted, while DLC types, and Vichy Democrats in general, should be magically immune from any criticism whatsoever. I’m not sure what you call this sort of thing: Intellectual dishonesty? Hypocrisy? Brain-dead stupidity, maybe?

Fact is, people like Cindy Sheehan and Sunsara Taylor understand full well that our real opponent is the apparatus, the machine, not merely its Republican/Neo-Con wing. They’re not so blindly naive and drowning in wishful thinking to believe that Pelosi and Reid and Emanuel -- and the entire coterie of “off the table” Democrats they lead -- represent an authentic answer to anything, simply by virtue of not being Republicans. Just like the Repugs, Democrats in Congress are politicians, first and foremost, burdened with all the baggage such a designation entails. Posing as self-righteous alternatives to the corrupt bottom-feeders on the Right, the Dems have to be held to a higher standard; Cindy, Sunsara, and others know this intuitively. Too bad a few well-meaning libs at DU don’t seem to have a clue. Political operatives aren’t going to save this country -- real people like Cindy and Sunsara just might.