Why DO We Get Up In The Morning?

The other day, I came across a line that says it all. It comes from Slate Magazine’s John Dickerson, in his story, Democratic Daydream.

"Only 30 percent of those polled by the Los Angeles Times believe that the country is on the right track. That is such a historically low number it's a surprise Americans even get out of bed in the morning."

In spite of that, yesterday I somehow allowed myself to encounter more "news" than I usually allow, these days. I really have to gear myself up to watch or listen to the news; and even after ten or fifteen minutes of private pep-talking, I can only get through a very few minutes before I start ranting at the radio or screaming at the tv screen. And as a general rule, anything that comes out of Congress gives my gag reflex a strenuous work-out.

Monday was no different. I heard that the junior senator from Wisconsin has introduced a resolution in the Senate to censure President Bush for breaking the law on the issue of illegal domestic surveillance. My bullshit meter quieted down for a minute, and I tilted my ear toward the radio. This might be good… Is Mr. Feingold not absolutely correct? Was the law not broken? Do we not need to see the Bush Administration taken to task for playing fast and loose with Americans’ constitutional rights? Are we not desperate, as a nation, for just such bravado?

And then Bill Frist’s slimy tones came sliding over the airwaves (I often wonder how his voice sounds so clear when he has his nose shoved so far up the Bush Administration’s collective…posterior):

"The signal that [the censure] sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that is making our homeland safer, is wrong."

And cameras zoomed in on the ever-articulate Dick Cheney, with his trademark twisted smirk, appearing before a well-chosen partisan audience in Feingold’s home state, intoning:

"Some Democrats have decided the President is the enemy."

Gag me. Please.

And how did Senator Feingold’s fellow Democrats respond to his bold, if not particularly well-planned, move?

Even as he spoke, Democratic leaders held off the immediate vote that Majority Leader Bill Frist requested. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he didn't know if there ever would be one. Durbin said that Feingold had sought to use the censure resolution ''as a catalyst'' for thorough hearings and investigations.

The referral averted a debate and a vote that Democrats privately worried would alienate voters who could decide close elections. [From The Associated Press, March 13, 2006]

Two-thirds of us are yearning (without too much hope) for somebody to do something about the direction in which this country is heading. But both the Democrats and the GOP are still bending over backwards to brand that herd of stupid, blind, quaking cattle that comprise the thirty-odd percent (and shrinking) of voters who still line up behind the Bush Administration. For an assembly of lawmakers who lives and dies by the polls, it sure does seem that they aren’t paying much attention.

Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder for the rest of us to get out of bed in the morning.

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