Get nominated for "best blog", and then hit a case of the poli-blahs that just won't shake loose.
In the past week, I've sat down at least a dozen times and started writing on a topic, but nothing's flowing. It's like my muse has left the building.
I know for sure that my frustration level, which pretty much peaked after the sham election in Iraq, has a lot to do with my lack of blog production recently. Continuing to bloviate about the lies and deceptions foisted on America (and the world) by a government cloaked in hidden agendas and bad intent starts to become tantamount to screaming into the teeth of a category 5 hurricane.
Allow me to ask a stupid question. If, as a lot of bloggers seem to be opining recently, blogs are in the process of replacing the MSM as an open source window on the operations of the United States, why are we still talking about the same crap we were screaming about three years ago?
Yeah, you could say that the Guckert dustup is news, but it's not really. It's a subset event of our overall frustration with the mainstream media. Armstrong Williams and James Guckert have put a face on the problem of media control, but at the end of the day do you think Minitrue is going to fold up shop and release the Stepford Media from the spell they've been under for the past several years? Hardly. The media pool stenos are still going to dutifully crank out the latest river of propaganda this coming week.
Without reviewing the laundry list of Bush administration folly over the past 4+ years, it's all so mind blowing to me that this administration can still be standing. From Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill's great books through Sy Hersch's expose of Abu Ghraib; from a war we were lied into through gay hookers in the White House press room, nothing sticks. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
With all the self-congratulatory remarks and back-patting in Left Blogistan this past week, you'd think something had actually been accomplished. For all the respect I have for the Kossaks and John Aravosis and Media Matters and Raw Story and Justin Ramiondo and others on the web who broke and pounded on the Guckert story, in the end, not one damn thing has fundamentally changed. Nor is it likely to.
The focus will shift this week from the Guckert saga and Bush tapes (two events that, by themselves, would have individually brought down any prior administration), to Bush's gladhanding on the European continent. You won't see stories about the mass demonstrations in Belgium or Germany. You won't hear about the red zone lockdowns that have been set up in Brussels or Mainz - security that will make the Baghdad lockdown during the Iraq election look a "Scan in zone 4" public address announcement at Wal-Mart.
What's most frustrating is that there are no answers on how to break the Bush embargo on truth, and that's at the root of my writer's block. I need to be able to offer myself a ray of hope, not another recitation of the truth of America's inexcorable march toward an oligarchial fascist state. And we have traveled so far down that slippery slope, that I'm not so sure anymore that we progressives can stop the slide no matter how hard we dig in our heels.
On the other hand, maybe I just need to take the advice of that Bush campaign worker last year, and start popping Prozac. At least then I might be able to write about just not giving a tinker's damn about what's going on in the world.
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon...
- Pink Floyd / Brain Damage
