Speaking Truth to Powerlessness

“I hope that with this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be.” - Rep. Pete Stark, October 23rd, 2007

It’s really as simple as that. Yet, this simple truism in never shying away from the truth and even disavowing it seems to have been lost on virtually every Democrat who has ever laid their hand on a Bible to swear to tell nothing but. The latest example is Rep. Pete Stark, who felt it necessary to apologize today for saying that we were spending obscene amounts of money blowing up the troops for George Bush’s amusement.

How is this in any way not true and why should he apologize for it?

Now, to recap: On one side of the aisle, you have scumbags of one political party who are in a constant state of denial regarding their own corruption, hypocrisy, incompetence and general, overall shortcomings.

On the left side of the aisle you have nervous, gulping Democrats tugging at their collars and ties like so many Rodney Dangerfields and quickly apologizing for barking a little too viciously on those rare occasions when they themselves aren’t denying the truth. If you can’t bear to watch Stark’s stammering, painfully self-effacing apology on video, here’s Mary Ann Akers’ coverage of it (Tip o’ the tinfoil hat to regular reader Diva for the link).

Now, let’s review for a minute another vignette offered up by Mary Ann Akers in today’s Wa Po, one about Tom DeLay’s chummy little book signing party on Capitol Hill earlier this week. I’m sure you all remember “the Hammer”, don’t ya’ll? He’s the one who’d, along with Duke Cunningham, elevated meanness and corruption to Olympian levels unimagined in the annals of true crime. That would be the same Hammer who’d been censured three times by the Ethics Committee but only under difficult circumstances. That would be the same Hammer who’d benefited from enough cover from his Republican cronies and henchmen on the Hill to protect the Soviet and Nazi empires combined.

But John Boehner, himself one of the most corrupt and tainted scumbags on Capitol Hill, thought that Stark’s “despicable” comments were worthy of censure, a fate that has been skillfully avoided by our Commanderin’ Thief and his own Republican cronies. That would be the same George W. Bush who thought looking for phantom WMD’s for which many hundreds of US troops had gotten their heads blown off was amusing enough to make a slideshow about showing himself looking for Saddam’s long-ago destroyed weapons and getting uproarious laughs from other Republicans.

That would be the same son of a fucking bitch who’d melted the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians lost in this bloody, illegal war down to a mere comma.

Bringing attention to these inconvenient truths infuriated Republicans and Democrats alike.

OK, there’s one time and one time only to apologize for telling the truth.

You’re sitting in Lane Bryant with your wife’s purse perched in your emasculated lap. She comes out of the dressing room for the fourth time, already looking like she’s going to give up on that new pair of slacks. She asks you if they make her look fat. If you have a death wish and say that they make her ass look like two pit bulls fighting under a collapsed tent, then you apologize if you still have a tongue and a pulse.

Yet when you tell truth to power and say that your so-called President is blowing people up and getting the troops’ head blown off for his amusement, when you say that this administration is the worst in American history, you stick by it, without any heed to political fucking correctness. You don’t then immediately apologize for it like Jimmy Carter and now Pete Stark (and Carter’s capitulation was all the more puzzling since his career has been dead for over a quarter of a century and had nothing to lose).

Whatever truth is worth saying is worth sticking to.

People ask me why I don’t run for public office. This is why. Even if I could somehow get Diebold to swing an election my way, I’d never last a day on Capitol Hill because I cannot and will not suffer fools, especially overpaid fools who are ruining our country. I’d refuse to refer to people as “the honorable gentleman from…” If they were a worthless cocksucker, I’d call them a worthless cocksucker right there on CSPAN.

And, if I had my Stark moment, I certainly wouldn’t knuckle under pressure by my own party leaders and be forced to apologize. Oh, I’d take the floor, alright but not to apologize:

“For what purpose does the gentleman from Massachusetts rise?”

“Madame Speaker, first off, I’m no gentleman and I aim to prove that right here and now, once for all. Secondly, while I refuse to apologize for my remarks, I will say that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I have to be allied and associated with the most notorious lying, thieving pack of upholstered jackals in American political history in the Republican party.

“I’m sorry that I’m also obliged to work with the most inexplicably spineless, invertebrate eunuchs in human history in the Democratic party. Between these two parties, straddled by an egomaniacal scarecrow like Joe Lieberman, a man who thought so little of Vice President Gore’s chances of election that he ran for the vice presidency and the Senate simultaneously, the 534 other members of this body might as well hand the keys to the city to Almighty fucking Lucifer for all the damage it's done.”

“The gentleman from Massachusetts is out of order!” (Banging gavel)

At this point, I’d rip the fucking microphone out of the podium and wheel around to face that other treasonous scarecrow, Nancy Pelosi.

“No, Pelosi, you know what’s ‘out of order’? This entire fucking country. You got elevated to the highest post in this chamber, and some 31 more Democrats were brought into this selfsame chamber at the same time in the obviously naïve and misplaced hopes that you people would help end this war.

“Instead, you’ve perpetuated it with one spending bill after another and cannot even muster enough votes to override a veto when the man you should’ve started impeaching long before today had a big problem with non-binding resolutions. Pelosi, Dennis Hastert used that Speaker’s gavel to better effect when he used to crack walnuts with it during the 110th session of Congress.

“You are more worthless than testicles on a priest, than a sandbox in the Sahara, than an ice cube tray in Alaska. You were administered an oath to uphold the Constitution and by not impeaching George W. Bush and not supporting Dennis Kucinich’s Resolution 333, you are doing anything but. And why did you ask for my apology, Madame Speaker? So we could get the co-operation from a minority GOP that openly despises us and stabs us in the back the second we vote on things they want, which is every Goddamned day?

“Now shut the fuck up unless you’re introducing articles of impeachment…”

At this point, I’d be dragged off the floor of the House of Representatives by the Capitol Police and shot in the back of the head in an alleyway on K Street, Soviet style.

And that, boys and girls, is why I would make a lousy legislator. My only fans would be the janitors and the busboys in the Congressional cafeteria. And I’d never apologize for saying something that I knew to be true.

Just like Michael Moore’s never apologized for Fahrenheit 9/11, just like the Dixie Chicks didn’t apologize for calling George Bush an embarrassment. Because real liberals don’t apologize. Pete Stark ought to turn in his liberal card where it can then be shoved up his ass and burned with a blowtorch, in that order.

Speaking truth to power and then apologizing for it is bad enough.

But speaking truth to powerless entities like George W. Bush, a man who makes Gerald Ford on his worst day look like Abe Lincoln, and powerless entities like the Democratic party, a majority only in a technical sense…

…well, that, Leader Boehner, is “despicable behavior.”