Rant #3

My friend Carly forwarded this one from Matt Taibbi, writing in the latest Rolling Stone.

Excerpts:

"Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by
the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no
reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after
congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully
watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their
mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their
Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

"And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before
Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some
cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential
ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle
American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his
giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin' picante
dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not
because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his
life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the
low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because
that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in
the mirror every morning.

"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern
United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a
new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of
puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying
symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of
our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the
tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the
lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV
– and this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of
the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do
anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the
calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call
a nation."