Third time's the charm.....?

One of the reasons I stopped blogging was that I found myself linking more and more to fewer and fewer bloggers. One of them was Kevin Drum. I always liked his posts, but I've become more enthused about his work as time has gone by. And the reason, at least as I perceived it, is that he's become more fired up over time. Mainly, in that he's gotten off the fence more frequently and made his own dissatisfaction with the state of things clear, rather than equivocating in the name of objectivity all the time. Anyway, I'm going to swipe on of his posts in its entirety, since it just about sums up the way so many progressives feel about this election.

TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS....Joe Klein on the GOP's attempt to play that old time gospel one more time:

Maybe I'm getting old, maybe it's that I've seen this act so often before, maybe it's that the people I talk to when I go out on the road really are having a harder time paying for things like health care, gasoline and college tuition, but I'm finding the Republican attempts to derail the conversation from the actual state of the country really depressing and disgraceful this year. They practice Orwellian politics of the crudest sort. They are trying to sell a big lie — that the election is about the social issues of the 1960s, or Barack Obama's patriotism or his eloquence, or the "angry left," when it's really about turning toward a more moderate path after the ideological radicalism and malfeasance of the past eight years.

Hey, when he's right, he's right. And he's right: it's very depressing indeed watching John McCain immolate both himself and the country in yet another raging round of the culture wars solely because he's decided that it's the only way to put John McCain in the Oval Office.

But I don't think it's going to work. The American public isn't going to buy it this time around, and in the end McCain will, once again, have dishonored himself and have nothing to show for it. It's the story of his life.

Of course, Drum is more optimistic than I am. I can't help but think that things can get much, much worse before the people who keep voting these greedy ideologues into office stop voting for the same old lines about atheist/immigrant/Hollywood/Commie/gay/[your bogeymen here!] conspiracies and wake up to the fact that the country is on the brink of multiple crises-- economic, diplomatic, democratic, and environmental-- and that all that cynical flag-waving and Bible-thumping has only served to turn American against American while the GOP carves up the nation into thick, juicy slabs of wealth and power for distribution among themselves.

Of course, I'm basing much of my opinion on conversations I've had with conservative friends and family members. Educated folks all, but still entirely willing to overlook reality and keep on voting GOP.