I don't want to hear it.

It's very late, and I'm very tired, and very angry, and shouldn't be posting at all, but you know what?

If you are as completely, wordlessly outraged by the Ledbetter decision as I am, or the Attorney General Scandal, or the insanity that is the "surge" in Iraq and...

You voted for Bush in either of the last two elections? I don't want to hear what you have to say. You have forfeited all claim to complain to me of this man's actions. There is no way in hell we would be in the place where we are if GWB were not in the Oval Office. Okay, so I am willing to cut people slack for 2000, even though I think a lot of his actions over the next seven years were predictable even before he took office, since the press did a piss-poor job of actually covering, you know, the ISSUES. But 2004? No way in hell. You people had four years to watch the man in office. And you voted for him anyway.

And the effect of that lapse of judgment on your part will be with us for a very long time: those two new justices Bush appointed created the most reactionary court since... I don't know when... a majority made up of men who live in a cloud-cuckooland where Congressmen are better able to make medical decisions for women than their own doctors and where women will of course know the moment they are being paid in a discriminatory manner so they can file suit before the six-months statute of limitations runs. And those men? Are all relatively young. We will have to put up with a Supreme Court that doesn't give a damn about actual living human beings -- as opposed to fetuses and corporations -- for the next decade, at least, probably two.

And you people who voted for a third party candidate? Revel in your sense of superiority. I don't want to hear from you either. Politics is messy. And yes, the system is not perfect, and yes there are a great many things I am not happy about with the Democratic party both in 2004 and now. (A very big one would be the non-filibuster that did not keep Alito off the Court.) But sometimes the choice between the lesser of two evils is a very stark one indeed. By declaring yourself above the fray, you helped throw it for the other side. Feel good about that, do you?

And you people who did not bother to vote at all? I really don't want to hear from you. There were people who were unfairly denied the right to vote (through erroneous roll purges in Florida and other voter suppression tactics) and people in our history have died to get people the right to vote and you treat it like it doesn't matter. It mattered. Oh, God, how it mattered. How it matters still.

I know I will get over this, and be able to talk to people with other viewpoints, soon, but right now, I just need to get all this down... primal scream therapy for the politically strangled soul.

I'll be back to normal soon. I hope.