Sirota - D.C. Elites, You Are a Joke, Get a Freakin' Clue

came as an e-mail...

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=F0E4D2DF-0C91-63D1-EA11C0D149F9A5B8

Note to D.C. Elites: You are a Joke, Get a Freakin' Clue
David Sirota

Look, I don't want to downplay the importance of this filibuster fight - it is a clear example of the GOP trying to usurp power, and the blame for this fight goes squarely on the Republican Party. That said, however, the endless attention this is getting is really truly pathetic for both parties and the media. If the bloviating inside-the-beltway crowd can just step back for 5 seconds, they would see just how ridiculous this all is - and exactly how this hyperventilating, non-stop coverage is exactly WHY more and more Americans have become completely disillusioned with politics.

Every election, people wonder why so many Americans don't vote. Well, let me say that this filibuster fight is EXACTLY why people don't vote. It isn't that people are stupid - it is that they see a political system so totally and completely divorced from their own lives that its not even worth it to go to the polls. As more and more pundits who never leave the confines of Washington ramp up their breathless rhetoric about the "nuclear option" and the "war in the Senate," more and more average people throw up there hands in desperation. There is a war going on in the Mideast, there is a major health care crisis burgeoning in our country, wages are stagnating while our government helps ship jobs overseas, poverty is on the rise - and all our politicians and media can do is focus on a fight about arcane Senate rules and two or three extremist judges? Is this what it has come to? Have we become so overwhelmed by these huge problems in our society that we feel we must find some distracting conflict between out-of-touch politicians in order to divert our attention?

To be sure, there are still some courageous Members of Congress who are desperately trying to focus on these real problems. Though they are in the minority, they understand how corrosive all of this really is, and how this just makes ordinary more cynical about a political system that is supposed to be addressing real problems. I mean, I haven't bumped into one person - NOT ONE PERSON - out here in real America that has ever brought up the filibuster fight that the media and the Beltway elite has been obsessed with for months. Again, I'm not saying the filibuster issue isn't important and isn't an example of the GOP's excesses, and I'm not saying progressives shouldn't fight it tooth and nail - they should.

But if ever there was an example of why average Americans innately know that Washington, D.C. and the self-important snobs who occupy the halls of power are out of touch from America - this is it. It is as if our nation's capitol has been transformed into one giant soundstage for a reality TV show - only its not even reality TV - it's a depressing sitcom - almost like "Real World," but even more fictional and hackneyed. Instead of crying, whining and fighting about who is dating who, we have politicians moaning about Senate rules, and reporters self-importantly spending hours and hours and hours speculating on the outcome, as if "news" had become one of those rags where you can read up on the latest soap opera gossip. What a complete joke.

Here's my message to all of the dolts in Washington: get a freakin' clue. Calling a fight over Senate rules a "nuclear option" is an insult to millions of average Americans who want their political system to focus on REAL WORLD PROBLEMS. The media and punditocracy may breathlessly report every detail about this conflict, and the political elites may masturbate about how important they are to be involved in such a supposedly "historic" fight that they hilariously believe should evoke images of mushroom clouds - but they all look like a bunch of dolts. Get over yourself, get beyond your own egos, and try - please try, I know it's hard - to understand that there is more to life than the pathetic, limited universe of what you have deemed "important and legitimate political issues."

America has serious and severe problems - and the more you ignore them, the more people will continue to correctly believe that Washington, D.C. is nothing more than a bunch of self-important blowhards who are more concerned with their reputation on the cocktail party circuit than they are in their country.

Sources:
American casualties mounting in Iraq: http://www.icasualties.org/oif/
America's health care crisis worsens: http://www.bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20040618152601.asp
America's wages are stagnating: http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20050420jb
America's government helping to move jobs overseas: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=32409
Poverty rising in America: http://www.freep.com/money/business/uninsured27e_20040827.htm


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when we are living the real life version of "A Handmaid's Tale."

after moving to Montana. LOL

would have won in a landslide.

The reality is that the people he's talking about don't care about politics, period.