Pissing Up a Rope: Is There Anything Left to Be Said?

[babylonsister]

Pissing Up a Rope: Is There Anything Left to Be Said?
by Jaime O’Neill | October 5, 2025 - 5:17am


Like so many others, I’ve been suffering recurring bouts of deep discouragement for a long time now. I could say that has been the case since a tinhorn real estate dipshit with an eye out for little girls who had learned that the art of the steal was easier if you started out with millions of dollars as your grub stake was first elected to the highest office in the land.

But the history of discouragement for people who persisted in believing in democracy and the U.S. Constitution goes much farther back than that. If you’re a liberal/ progressive/radical Democrat socialist/or just someone who believes in the rule of law and the usual smorgasbord of human rights that are under unrelenting attack from the right, then you almost certainly know a thing or two about being discouraged. I'm talking about the dismal election night gatherings that turned dark with the election results that have held us back in so many critical ways.

Are you old enough, or perhaps too old. to remember the nights that gave us Nixon, or Reagan, or the dunce from Texas who wondered “is our children learning?” Do you remember consoling yourself with the thought that since we’d survived those and other swinish politicians, we’d probably be able to survive Trump and his bunch? But do you remember how hollow those words echoed in your ears as we endured a pandemic under Trump’s stewardship? And surely you remembered all the times that he said or did something prompted you to think that those words or deeds would be the end of that son of a bitch's reign of mad misrule?

We went through two impeachment efforts characterized by very strong cases for removing him from office. We saw the sabotage of those efforts. We saw right wing influencers, media outlets and even the fuckin' Supreme Court lining up to maintain that man and his minions in power, and to allow him to later pardon some 1500 insurrectionists who had, quite literally, shit on democracy.

If so, then you probably have known the disappointment I’m talking about here. That disappointment has always been accompanied by keen anxiety about what would follow those dark nights of our souls when we tossed and turned worrying about the cost of gas and groceries, global warming, civil rights, our Social Security checks, our jobs, the air we were breathing, the water we were drinking, and the future being created for our children.

Discouragement? If you tipped even a tad to the left, it was damn near a way of life. And there had been discouraged people long before we showed up.

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-o-neill/115068/pissing-up-a-rope-is-there-anything-left-to-be-said