Blood Pressure: Through the Roof

Political Wire’s Quote of the Day:

"Any time they are yelling, preaching, lecturing, and you are cool and calm and breathing deep, you are winning. What that means on television sets where the American people are watching this is, you look good and they look bad. It was the central operating premise."

-- An "administration official," quoted by the New York Times, in comments to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on their strategy to get him confirmed by the Senate.

Seriously, I feel like giving up. (I won’t, but I damn well feel like it!) Try to play fair against the GOP, and you lose. Try to be reasonable, you lose. Try to be passionate, you lose. You can’t beat them, because they’re lousy, lying cheats who have bought the media.

And if it was just about bad policies that could be undone when the pendulum eventually swings back the other way, I wouldn’t care so much. But everything they’re doing is designed to stop the pendulum. Irrevocably undermine our democracy. Permanently destroy checks and balances. Forever fix the scale so it favors them. Smash the bloody pendulum to eensy, weensy bits so it never swings anywhere again.

They totally suck.

Every time I tell myself that there’s still time for Democrats to win some important elections and stop this train o’ disaster, a little voice in another part of brain insists on squeaking, “Do we even have fair elections anymore?”

I feel really disheartened today. I almost can’t think of something more tragic and unfair than losing Rosa Parks right as Alito was nominated and then losing Coretta Scott King on the day he was confirmed. The symbolism of the deaths of two of our most brilliantly shining beacons of justice and equality and genuine progressive vales bookending that piece of shit’s ascension to the Supreme Court is nearly too much for me to bear. It’s tough not to succumb to the notion that we’re at the end of an era, and that all the crap that we’ve seen thus far is only the beginning of something the true ugliness of which we’ve yet to comprehend.

I’m sure I’ll feel more hopeful later; I usually do. But right now I just feel like smashed shit.