Scarecrow at FDL on Van Jones’ Netroots Nation speech saying “Obama volunteered to be the captain of the Titanic, after it hit the iceberg” and that the Orcs are coming.
I don’t agree with Jones about the captain [Obama] — he’s not, and doesn’t appear capable or or inclined to be, what I believe is needed in a President at this moment — but I’m not certain how much that matters in the long run. Everything Jones works for, everything that needs to change to alter the ending after the iceberg, also needs to happen (and more) if you believe the iceberg is still ahead.
Whether you believe the iceberg is still directly in front of us, or we’ve already struck it, any alternative ending to this story is going to require a very different attitude from a paralyzing despair.
Absolutely, despair and cynicism will get us nowhere. Optimism is a required virtue now.
And as Jones notes, when he says an even better metaphor is Lord of the Rings, the Orcs are out there and they are being created and enraged to kill you . . . but that’s another story.
Well, some of those Orcs may be sympathetic to our causes or could be turned. The first step is to listen to what they’re saying and realize common ground exists at least some of the time.
In the inimitable words of Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting With Jesus.
With Micheal Savage and Ann Coulter openly calling for liberals to be put in concentration camps, with the CIA now licensed to secretly detain American citizens indefinitely, and with the current administration effectively legalizing torture, the proper question to ask an NRA member may be, “What kind of assault rifle do you think I can get for three hundred bucks, and how many rounds of ammo does it take to stop a two-hundred-pound born-again Homeland Security zombie from putting me in a camp?” Which would you prefer, 40 million gun-owning Americans on your side or theirs?