Big Fuckin’ Rant On Morality, Politics, And Clinging Desperately To Imagined Wrongs
This was set off by some of the comments in the thread below.
Bill Clinton is a Crook.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal
Happy?
Does it make you feel so much better about the world that a married man spent two years trying not to reveal an extramarital affair with a woman half his age? That, in the midst of all the things he had going on - most of which were based on trying to run the country - he had to fight for his political life against a shitload of pitbulls doing the same thing.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/time/9701/13/lacayo.html
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/19/livingston.quits/
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/cov_16newsb.html
But Clinton’s a crook.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has, among other things:
- engaged in numerous illegal actions, from unlawful redistricting to vote suppression, resulting in at least one and possibly two national elections being at the very least extremely suspect
- lied us into an illegal war, invading a country which posed no threat
- beggared the country by [a] keeping the cost of the war off the books and [b] giving absurd tax breaks to the corporate sector and the super-rich
- violated the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution
- violated the FISA laws
- violated numerous treaties to which we are signatories, including the Geneva Conventions
- advocated illegal spying and torture as valid methods to “fight terrorism”
- broken or worked around many environmental regulations that would have penalized corporations which pollute
- violated rules about contract bidding to give lucrative deals to companies run by its friends and supporters, many of whom have engaged in human rights violations and war profiteering
And we’re not even getting into the many, many stupid things they’ve said and done that aren’t necessarily illegal but you can’t believe grown people would do that in public.
But Clinton’s a crook.
To those of you who say this, especially those of you whom I love who say this, I realize that you may not forgive me for the following two words:
FUCK YOU.
On his worst day, Bill Clinton is one of the five best presidents we’ve ever had. He cared, and cares, about the country and its people. He’s smart as all hell, knows his stuff forward and backward, and (gasp) can use the English language correctly.
Yeah, he violated the law. He didn’t tell a grand jury - that he got forced in front of because of rampant, relentless Republican operatives trying to nail his ass on anything because he’d had the temerity to deprive Poppy Bush of his birthright as Preznit - the truth about an extramarital affair that was nobody’s goddamn business except his, hers, and their families’.
And I’m sick of it.
I’m sick of the sexual repression; I’m sick of the hypocrisy.
I’m sick of the world freaking out because we saw Janet Jackson’s nipple. It was a kinda nice nipple, y’know? But it was a nipple.
I’m sick of having shows on late-night cable that we pay for being bleeped, as if no one had ever heard those words before.
I’m sick of Paris Hilton’s announcement that she’s celibate being of any interest to anyone besides her S.O.
I’m sick of politicians who claim to be moral, while secretly having affairs all over the damn place.
I’m sick of the Vatican, a bunch of old celibate white men, telling everybody else how to fuck and when to fuck and when not to fuck and that God wants every single possible baby born and how immoral you are if you do it before marriage or with somebody of the same sex or in some funky position or with an animal or whatever’s on Benedict’s Dry-Erase board this week, while they protect child molesters and contribute to overpopulation and the spread of disease by denying people around the world basic health care information because (eeek!) they might have sex.
THEY’RE GONNA HAVE SEX. Got it? Good. Sex is one of the strongest instincts we have, hot-wired into us by that constantly offended prude of a God they go on about.
I’m sick of people who pretend that sex is bad.
I’m sick of people who genuinely believe sex is bad.
I’m sick of the moralizing scumbag fuckwits who believe the only purpose of sex is procreation, and who would force women to be breeding machines because Every Sperm Is Sacred.
For that matter, I’m sick of the lackwits who voted for a spoiled fucktard of a binge drinking alcoholic while telling themselves he’s the guy they’d like to have a beer with.
I’m sick of the people who claim something called “compassionate conservatism” exists.
I’m sick of the people who have been brainwashed into thinking that someone lying about a private sexual affair is as bad as or worse than promising $15 billion in AIDS relief money and then not delivering it. Or who believe that same-sex marriages affect you or your marriage in any way. Or who think throwing stem cell lines in the trash is more “moral” than using them for research. Or who think that a girl is “asking for it” if she dresses in a way you consider to be provocative. Or who believe that parents should always be told about their kids’ abortions, because all family situations like that are perfectly good with no possibility that the parent is [a] emotionally unstable in a dangerous way or [b] the one who knocked the kid up.
The most important freedom we have is the right to privacy. Not that anyone on the far side of the aisle seems to give a shit anymore. But that’s the biggie. The privacy to live how you want; to think how you want; to vote how you want; to say what you want. The only restriction should be that you can’t hurt anyone or anything else.
And so Bill Clinton is a fucking crook, all right? Because we as a society are so screwed up that, in trying to hide an affair, he was battered hither and yon until he was in front of a grand jury and his silver tongue failed him and he made an ass of himself.
And I would put Bill Clinton back in office today if I could.
Because his affair was not our business.
And we have much, much bigger crooks in power, and they’re trying their best to stay there.
Guess who I’m more worried about.
