Much is made by the anti-women zealots of an old “documentary” called Silent Scream, which is credited with arrousing the passions of this oppressive political movement. (For a thorough debunking of this work of exaggerated agitprop, go here). As we watch an extremist movement conservative slouch his way onto the Supreme Court this week, helped along by radicals in the Republican Party, a lapdog media and a disinterested “opposition” party, we must sadly note that the “screams” of undeveloped masses of human tissue matter more than the actual screams of an a majority of Americans.
We scream at our televisions as CNN’s news-poodles regurgitate GOP talking points, apparently fed directly into their teleprompters from RNC fax machines. We scream through faxes, letters, emails and phone calls to our “representatives” in Washington, but apparently those faxes arrive blank, or garbled into incomprehensible hieroglyphs when they pop out on a staffers desk. The emails must arrive rearranged into UNICODE symbols, the letters wet with ink and graphite running together and our phone calls must sound as though we’re calling on cheap cell phones as we drive into tunnels, because it’s quite plain that our alarm, our absolute disgust and FEAR of what this country is becoming, HAS BECOME, is manifestly not having an impact.
So we can look forward to an America where more young woman scream into their pillows, fearful of an abusive parent finding out about an unwanted pregnancy she can no longer get help ending. More and more women will cry in their bathrooms, quietly so as not to upset their children, as they look down at a positive pregnancy test knowing that they can’t afford another mouth to feed, horrified that there is no way out. More husbands will cry by their wife’s bedside as high-risk pregnancies go bad, left to watch helplessly as she suffers, no trained doctors available to save her with a now-illegal lifesaving procedure. Hell, that America already exists in far too many states, but it can and will get worse under this new court, as this lying, Bork-worshipping conservative activist joins his buddies Scalia, Roberts and Thomas on the bench.
What else can we look forward to? More people screaming as their mouths fill with flood waters, as their lungs fill with noxious gases and their children’s cries are silenced by asthmatic hacking, as more and more enviromental laws, workplace safety laws and public health systems are gutted by a rapacious corporate culture and their Republican shocktroops. These citizens will find less and less recourse from the courts as the Supreme Court will be packed now with corporate friendly ladder climbing ambitious assholes who’ve made it painfully clear they were willing to say anything, join any hate group to advance either their careers or their own bigotries. It’s hard to tell which, since they are utterly unable as a group to speak honestly and forthrightly about what they do believe. Monsters cloaking themselves in Hallmark platitudes.
In today’s America, the only tears that matter are of the crocodile variety, leaking down the privileged cheeks on cue of the wealthy woman standing by her man, political theater for the Oprah nation. No, the tears in flooded neighborhoods, in Appalachian mines, in low-rent bedrooms and bathrooms and over-crowded public hospitals don’t matter a whit, nor do the screams crying out for justice and representation and an actual fight for civil rights and a better tomorrow.
Those screams may as well be silent, because no one is listening.
I am hoarse from screaming. Our “representatives” in Congress are not listening to our pleas, and it is ushering in the destruction of our government.
Madman, I’m glad you’re still posting here.
thanks …
I wish I had your optimism. I think it will be far worse than that.
in this country is when the rulers were scared into allowing it. That’s the underlying truth that the “leaders” on our side are very far from accepting, much less voicing. I don’t see any way out for this country as long as we are afflicted with the current two-party system, and I don’t see any significant move, even among BT types, to make that the priority.
There are those of us here who have advocated, and acted on, our displeasure with the “opposite side of that counterfeit coin” we call the Democratic party. But I don’t believe the answer is a third party. It’s not that complex: just say “no” unless you support an individual candidate.
The loudest noise you can make is to zip your wallet.
you have to be willing to withhold your vote. Vote for a progressive on every other line on the ballot, but when your choice is a Republican or a shadow-Republican, withhold your vote.
Agreed. But from now until the primaries, I’m suggesting direct candidate contributions only – no intermediaries.
Not a 3rd party.
Take over the Dems.
Very passionate-very well written-very well-said– So when are you running MitM? and Where?
I think it is PATHETIC that Not One Dem has the guts to speak this way.
What was that silly Kerry slogan? ‘Hope is on the way’?
Looks more like ‘Despair is on the way’ to me.
GRRRRRR
I’m an atheist w/ a bad credit history thanks to a lengthy period of unemployment … not very electable.
Be glad to write some nasty aggressive speeches for a candidate willing to go there, though! 😉
is absence of talent.
It’s shouting at us from the mountain tops.
There’s no talent here.
I can’t say where this points. But I can say where it doesn’t.
Thank you for this diary! We are in deep shit and quite frankly my letters to my reps are becoming less nice and more I am not going to vote for you again if you vote for Alito. Are we all doing this? Of couse I got the standard form reply from DiFi, holding any judgement until hearings are over. Well DiFi, the hearings are ove what are you going to do now? I know I will be calling and screaming to I get an answer.
I honestly thought my outrage meter would last me an lifetime. It was so reliable for for so long, sounding alarms regularly for over 60 years, spurring me into taking action however and wherever I could find a way to fight back.
But it’s broken. Burned right out. It’s strong, reliable alarm has been silenced by an ever growing avalanche of outrages that seem to have no end, that have filled up the tunnel and blocked any light that I could once see at the end of it.
I still encourage and cheer those who are still in there fighting against those who are taking this country down; I’m grateful to all of you, and I know there is always reason for hope, even in darkest times. But I am so tired now. I am so very sad to see all that my generation, and those before me, fought so hard for, being systematically destroyed, aided by the silent complicity of most Americans. No, it’s more than feeling sad: I am grieving, because I can no longer see how this can be stopped.
I choose now to spend my available energies closer to home, by telling my stories to my children and grandchildren, and anyone else I can convince to hear me. Stories about strong, decent ordinary Americans meeting whatever challenges they may face, and somehow persevering and thriving in spite of them.
I want to help empower them for whatever they may face in this harsh new America, by convincing them to look within, where they already have all they need, and need only to use it all well. Things like hope and courage and endless creativity and the ability to choose again and again and again..from whatever “is”, and thus built their lives based on values that ring genuinely true within them. Our kids and grandkids are our hope now, and the more we can give them to work with, the more powerful they will be.
Grief is a difficult human emotion to live with, yet, just as with anger or outrage, it can still be put to good use.