Music Please:

I haven't written much about politics in the past... year or so, mainly because it's been such an unqualified bummer. I read Krugman and Duncan and check up with my friend the subcommondante on a daily, and pretty much count myself in their camp on most issues. If you want to stay in the know, you could do a lot worse.

But this caught my eye and excited some comment, well, because it highlights the total batshit insanity angle of what's going on out there, and in doing so sheds some maybe pretty good light on what exactly makes the whole political situation so depressing. I could not help but remark.

So, the leading Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado thinks that having a free bike program in the city of Denver is the first step towards one world government:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are "converting Denver into a United Nations community."

"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor's efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes "that's exactly the attitude they want you to have."

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," Maes said.

This is insanity.

First of all, any intellectually honest conservative who bothers to think of the actual mechanics of things rather than, as they say in the industry, "the optics", which is to say appearances, they would realizing that bicycling has enormous trans-partisan appeal. It is an expression of self-reliance and personal responsibility: human power. It makes you (literally) stronger. It is a rational effing economic decision.

Second of all, even though I love me some one-world government having free bikes around is, if anything, a sop to bike-theves.

Finally... really? "This is bigger than what it looks like?" Like, really? Because biking seems to have the appearance of something hippyish, it's a paranoiac punching bag for this guy. That's really how they roll at the gubernatorial level these days.

And, I'm happy to be wrong, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts there won't be a full-throated counter-offensive from his Democratic opponent. This is the "depressing" part so well illuminated by the aforementioned bullshit insanity. Because the general trend among Democrats has been to tremble and cringe in the face of this Precious Bodily Fluids psychobabble.

I mean, the frackin' Obama Administration (and the NAACP, for extra bonus points) wet their collective pants at the release of an obviously doctored video from a well-known total hack with a history of doctoring video for political haymaking.

The problem is that the people who I will end up voting for, and ostensibly support, have no ability, facility or willingness to "punch back" against crazy insane lie-driven maniac passion coming from the contemporary tea-bagging GOP. And this is just completely spiritually crushing to a guy like me.

I mean, serously. My guy was rocking "I want my country back" seven years ago, and we ain't got none of the things we wanted done yet.

And what's more there so little willingness to tell these people they're insane, hateful, idiotic morons, to stand up to such obvious logical and moral wrongness and just say, "shut up." They can't even laugh, which is what paranoid delusional hacks often deserve. No. They're afraid that some kind of "Real America" that they have no concept of, which dines at an imaginary Applebee's salad bar (honestly, David Brooks is such a fracking toolbag) and unsure of their own values — being, mostly, totally clueless sold-out coc*suckers themselves — that they sort of cower in fear of what appears to he heartfelt, if deranged, sentiment. Weak sauce.

And possibly worse, in our own quadrant, failure through worshiping the status quo goes unpunished. There is no meritocracy. By all means give your "Green Collar Jobs" guy the shaft, but there's no willingness to, like, rattle anyone on the Economic team, or take any new action, in spite of manifest failure. In particular I loath the lard-assed alleged egg-heads who can't see any possible way to do something about 10% unemployment — honestly screw Larry Summers and his half-assed brain-magic; I know his type coming and going and smart guys who make dumb decisions but get you to go along with them because they're "smart guys" deserve to end up one place: the GD curb; let that soft-handed member of The Committie To Save The World (honestly, frack all those guys) get a real goddamn job for once — but were sure johnny-on-the-spot when it came to downsizing and corralling the stimulus last winter.

Why don't you go back to managing Harvard's endowment, Larry? Oh yeah, because you ran it into the ground, you stupid fracking worthless hack.

So yes, this is why I don't write about politics much. I find arguments that Team Obama has "done a lot" to be pretty unconvincing. The only possible exception is putative (and I stress, putative) beachhead gains made by Health Care reform, but otherwise it's all been technocratic mumbojumbo around the edges, and very little that, you know, actualy works. Which is what people care about, after all, and rightly so.

And that's what happens when I don't write about politics for a while. It builds up a bit. Currently don't have any bright ideas other than to try and fete people like Alan Grayson (ably Rasputined by the inestimable stollerizer) and try and point out the obvious. Honestly I don't blame the GOP here; they're following a natural course. I blame the Democrats (and Obama in particular, though I'm not really surprised) for:

1. Kowtowing to morons when they get het up about whatever.
2. Simultaneously making a real fetish out of throwing your left-wing allies under the bus.
3. Big-picture sitting back and taking the long view that enduring demographics and their oppositions incompetence means they don't have to work that hard to counteract reactionary ideology.
4. Having no apparent clue how to play the game of politics, or exercise political power.

We are running "the dumbest socialism ever". I leave you in the hands of Larry Lessig: