dissociatedpress.com » apolitical

Welcome To The United States Of Earth

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:22:03 +0000

Why aren’t the snobbish, intellectual liberals of America more outraged by the racist overtones of things like the Barack the Barbarian comics and the on line game United States of Earth, in which Obama has taken over the country in an Islamic revolution? Well, probably because they’re smart enough to see it as the satire that it is, and just chuckle about it. Unlike their Republican counterparts with that teabag thing, for instance. You Democrats know what I mean. Just keep laughing inside. You Republicans don’t worry about what I’m referring to, just keep teabagging. If you haven’t heard about the comic or the game to which I’m referring, “Barack The Barbarian” is a comic in which Barack Obama is portrayed as an heroic leader of the future clad only in a fur loincloth and armed with an axe. “United States of Earth” is an on line game with a little more depth. Given the surreal state of American politics over the past several years, it wouldn’t surprise me if in the near future there were a battle in DC in which Sarah Palin’s militia attacked Rahm Emanuel’s Hamas guards to seize control of the country. Which is what the site’s creators are counting on; it turns out they’re a group of Ron Paul Libertarians with their own agenda, not some Fox-News-fed kneejerk Republicans as one might at first think. The best in depth look at the site and its creators can be found in this Mother Jones piece by David Corn. I must confess that as someone who’s drifting toward the apolitical myself, I find their strategy pretty amusing, but think it may be too amusing to intellectual liberals and too complicated for lowbrow conservatives to achieve much more than being a temporarily popular game. Don’t let that stop you from signing up though; who couldn’t love the idea of assaulting Rahm Emanuel?

Never mind 2012, America has 2011 to contend with first…

Sarah Palin as she appears in Barack the Barbarian…

Admit it. You want her.

Thoughts On Tom DeLay: Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:27:34 +0000

Would you let your daughter
dance with this man?

I don’t really swear much, but that was my response when someone told me that Tom DeLay was on “Dancing with the Stars”. I wasn’t surprised that the federally-indicted, lying, self-serving and egotistical asshole would have the nerve to do such a thing – in fact if I were his publicist it’s exactly the sort of audacious thing I’d suggest. What surprises me is that a major media organization like ABC would deliver his image-washing for him, and that the American public would sit there and slurp it up like a bunch of livestock at the trough. Watching the several seconds that I did watch of him wiggling his fat white ass on national television frankly made me “vurp” just a bit. It gave me the same feeling you might get at an old-fashioned ice cream social when the gym teacher that everyone knew had been caught at the local rest stop doing questionable things with a truck driver says “that’s a fine boy you have there” and no-one says anything. On a more fundamental level though, it highlighted why I’m slowly drifting into a more and more apolitical state. It’s nothing new to turn political criminals into celebrities; Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy were trailblazers in this area. But to me, putting smug-faced contemptuous asses like Karl Rove and Tom DeLay on national TV while they’re under subpoena or indictment perhaps makes a bigger statement about you and me than them, in a way. And with a slew of villains like the last administration wandering the streets and major television networks, I might as well get used to it. But I will remain utterly perplexed: why the apathy towards these men?

Would You Vote For A Third Political Party?

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:07:13 +0000

I’m what you might call a reluctant Democrat. Although I felt good about voting for Obama, I’m experiencing some consumer remorse, and I cringed as I voted for Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis. Worthy of note is the fact that voting for Dukakis started a long tradition of voting only to avoid having a George Bush in office, and that prior to that I was a cynical young punk that considered himself more or less apolitical. Which brings me almost full circle. I’m so cynical at this point that I have almost come to the conclusion that I think Washington is so corrupt and self-interested and that the two parties are so similar that there’s almost no point in voting. Before I do that though, I decided with some resolve recently that I’m going to “throw my vote away” if necessary in the next presidential election. By that I mean vote third party if the two major candidates reflect my values as poorly as they have for several election cycles. As I explored my thoughts on all of this recently, I came to a disturbing decision. I may just be a Libertarian. Although something about the political party that calls itself Libertarian gives me the willies with their restrained cowboy capitalism, a lot of the principles that can be described as Libertarian (as in this Wikipedia entry) are right up my alley. We’ve talked about Red vs Blue both jokingly and semi-seriously in the past, but we’d love to know: If there were a third party that represented your values, do you think you might vote for it? Vote below and let us know if you think we’re adequately represented by a two party system.

Did You Take The Red Pill Or The Blue Pill?

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:24:16 +0000

I’m confused. I wish the words liberal and conservative would rediscover their meaning and stop consorting with scoundrels like the Democratic and Republican parties. And I wish we could de-politicize colors. Although it was pretty easy to choose a color in the great red and blue contest of 2008, I think I’m really something more like purple, given what red and blue have come to mean. And purple just seems a little indecisive somehow. But who – if they’re paying attention - wouldn’t be a little undecided, in a time when both near-socialists like myself and a rabid neo-con like Free Republic’s Jim Robinson joke about the need for revolution, rather than voting. I think I’d fall into the liberal category simply because I don’t want some demented, rapture-driven Ayn Rand capitalist deciding who we can have sex with, or racist nutjobs like the GOP base deciding anything for us. But I can’t say I’m ecstatic with the current administration either. I know that campaigns are poll-driven marketing machines designed to appeal to nebulous but emotional voter values (like mine), but I have to admit I still feel a little suckered by the “Hope & Change” pitch. I see the former fading in a lot of people, and very little of the latter. So rather than continue thinking for myself, which has never done me any good, I decided to submit my indecision to science, and took the Pew Research Typology Test. Give it a try, the results were surprising. So surprising in fact (it pegged me as a Conservative Democrat) that now I’ve given up on science as well. I found this Democratic Loyalty Test much more informative, with questions and choices like:

Q: Which bumper sticker would you be most likely to put on your car?
At Least In Vietnam, Bush Had An Exit Strategy
May the Fetus You Save Be Gay
Ted Kennedy’s Car Has Killed More People Than My Gun
Nice Hummer. Sorry About Your Penis.

And….

Q: Which of the following do you find most offensive?
A vice president who enjoys telling Senators to “go f— yourself” and shooting people in the face
A Senator who enjoys lecturing about family values when he’s not busy tapping his toes in the men’s room and soliciting gay sex
An anti-war protester who says that Bush is “ten times the terrorist” that Osama bin Laden ever was
A Hollywood celebrity who says that anyone who uses more than one square of toilet paper is contributing to global warming
A FOX News host who sanctions an Al Qaeda terrorist strike on San Francisco and laments that Hurricane Katrina didn’t wipe out the UN

Give it a go, they have a Republican Loyalty Quiz too.

Me? I think I’m going back to my apolitical roots and forming a punk band.