Listening: office waking up
Desiring: an honest administration

Up Front disclosure: THIS IS A RANT. If you're surprised and angered by anything I write, reread the subject and understand that you've been warned.


Oh you mean these taxes will heavily impact the people who voted for the other guy?? WHAT A CO-INKIDINK!

Ever since Democratic partisan writers started babbling about Fuck the South and Matt Miller's article "This Land is Red Land, Paid for By Blue Land (WARNING .pdf document) I've been thinking while it's amusing to hold hostage major red state infrastructure projects like Alabama's highway system and the Tennessee Valley Authority because they're paid for with blue state money, we don't really have any way to withhold the money.

The red states command our money by aligning themselves with the ruling party. The ruling party commands our money [period] and without starting a new civil war we don't have a way of not paying up. "The governator" can talk about getting back California's fair share, but as long the president can say "sorry, Arnie, I don't think so" it remains just talk.

Originally I was thinking, it's just the natural progession of blue thinking that liberals like us have a tendancy to want to help out. It's the tendancy of liberals to be fine with taxation because we are stronger en masse, and if that mass includes seriously rich people then even better. I don't mind be taxed a bit if it's for the greater good. It's better to be able to pitch into a national kitty that will educate people, build roads, fund science initiatives and encourage industrial and economic growth around the nation. That's something I would be interested in whether or not the government was. But my income is such that I can't support programs like that realistically with the pittance set aside for the taxes I pay. I prefer to enroll my pennies to a greater plan that takes a little bit from everyone and turns around to help everyone instead of just the people I've heard about.

I was also daydreaming about what it meant for California to lose so much political clout. Ever since Bush won in 2000 (took the presidency or however you want to describe it) he's been mostly ignoring California, only returning in the last year to collect a lot money and encourage naive goobs to vote for Schwarzenneggar (seriously, if you voted for Arnie over Tom McClintock and you're a Republican you *are* pretty naive). Bush hasn't had a reason to try to come out here knowing that any potential constituency that would actually listen to him is fairly small in number. So he doesn't see any problems with thinking of California purely as a resource and not a full fledged state deserving of all of the rights and priviledges a nice happy red state deserves.

There is no incentive for the Federal government to look out for California's best interests. Short of us being annexed back by Mexico the Fed really has no interest in keeping the state from being robbed blind or polluted by more business barrons (as Arnie is fixing to allow), or to keep us from being taxed into forever or to preserve our state's right to determine prosecution protocols that fall under our 14th amendment rights.

What in the world can a state or even a group of people really do with a government that has a conquering mindset and not a leadership/consensus-building mindset? Fortunately the administration only has four more years and not 25. However if no other party seriously challenges the ruling party, and I mean sooner than in four years, and I mean more seriously than expecting it's existence to be enough for a challenge, then the party can carry forward the same prejudicial, divisive, oppressive policies that simply mine opposition states for capital and other resources, much the same way it did the former lands of the native Americans.

More and more I want to say I love my country and despise the people who run it, but more and more I think I love an ideal: an America that exists here and there but has never been a pervasive, persistent quality that has lasted, on a national level, for longer than the time it takes to read a speech or cast a ballot. I want to encourage that idea and I want to see it grow. It's been germinating for over 200 years and I know it's possible. I know human nature fights it and there's so many other ideas that see America-the-land as prime growing ground. But America-the-idea doesn't have to be forgotten in favor of some backward-progress ideal of impervious political, economic and real boundaries and of rigid and self-righteous moral mores.

The laws that were set down and the framing language of the Revolution doesn't need to be considered quaint and archaic. They were not ideals that were meant only for the fairweather times. They were written under duress, during war and signed by men who faced losing their lives for espousing them - and some did die! Ideals are something to live up to and to live for and that's what makes them so hard and yet so worth fighting for. I deeply resent any implication that my instinct for dissent is indicative of a traitorous quality in my nature. Such things are said exclusively by people who do not wish to see and depth to these arguments and indeed who do not like to expend the effort to see that even the opposition is part of the citizenry of the country.

The trouble is I don't know what the opposition needs to look like anymore. Armed insurrection is so third world (I'm kidding! I'm against it per my pacifistic ideals), and willfull self destruction - slash & burn and/or self-immolation - is a little hard to stomach. friends have talked openly about leaving the country and while the idea makes me deeply sad because I love this land so much, I've been working on a list of non-negotiables. If certain measures that would limit freedom are introduced, if certain ideals become unavoidable, if certain legal measures are eliminated, I have to consider the very real notion that this is no longer my country. I know that there is a strong contingent of generalized people who I don't personally know but are free to generalize about liberals like me and state proudly and without irony that they wish I would just die, or leave, or both.

Of course there's always voting. But I don't think the ruling party plays fair. I think it's got a core of people who have no qualms about breaking the law or coming damned close, and I think that the rest of the party is not serious about rooting them out and punishing them accordingly. When the majority leader can be accused of *very* serious ethics violations and get dragged into court for charges related to his gerrymandering projects and the party not only shows support for him but changes its own bylaws to avoid censuring him it just goes to show that, no shit, these people care more about an implacable rulership than the actual rule of law and the little whims of the voting body.


So yeah. I don't think any of the opposition parties have a real political answer to the Republican Sword of Damocles. I don't know what it would take. But I'm fed up. I'm angry as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.