The GTL Brooklyns Up. Follow Me.

I spent today whining at work like a typical liberal asswipe. "We're gonna lose," "we're losing," "what's wrong with our country?" Sarah is a phoney, and she's so mean! McCain gets some poll traction and wah wah wah. Boo effing hoo.

Then I came home and watched a few moments of campaign advertising and news and there they were, the Republican foot soldiers, marching, marching, marching on, shamelessly catapulting the propaganda. Smiling. Invigorated. Almost gleeful, as if they'd invented a hybrid Ferrari that runs on hot air and bullshit from their own bodies and were driving it pell-mell through the protected habitats of the top half of the endangered species list.

These are people whose new campaign mantra is "Drill, Baby, Drill!" So goddamned what if new oil drilling in Alaska won't do a damn thing to help America, even ten years from now when the first drops will flow? Who cares? Who CARES? Who wants to fix anything? Not them! They just want the taste of blood, the slap of entrails along their flanks. The hot dust, the whine of the engine, the demolition-derby rush of adrenaline.

It occurred to me moments ago that the Right are in it for the blood lust, perhaps even more than for the win. To tell you the truth, I don't think they even enjoy the governing, they only truly enjoy winning. Sure, they'll use the office to reward their friends, but their friends are already rich and powerful. They don't need to go to Washington to stay rich.

So it's not for any burning need to take office, to run things, that they fight the way they do. Campaigning is simply what they do best and they love it the way Patton or Stonewall Jackson loved battle. Just get OUT there, make it WORK, beat those voters SENSELESS and get those friggin' votes! This is the American schoolyard, now go and steal their goddamned lunch money!

The Republicans have very little to offer but they make every last ounce of it fly. This is a party so wedded to moral decay and moribund ideas that their favorite ice cream flavor is rust. But man, do they ever enjoy the game. And it's this love of the bloodsport of politics, the joy of scorched earth, the smell of napalm in the morning, that Americans respond to. We're ready to elect a psychotic bully, and keep on electing psychotic bullies, as long as they can bring some triumphalist sadism to the game.

Even if our own interests are the first to get tossed over the side.

So. What do we the Liberals do in the face of this?

With all due respect, the only way to win this thing is to love the game. Bill Clinton did. He lived in campaign mode like a phoenix in fire. It was his genius. The more shit they threw at him, the more it slid off, the more powerful he became. He left office as loved as when he arrived.

We have to Brooklyn up. We need to raise Hell. We need to laugh those dangerous psychos into the ground, we need to dance, we need to celebrate our wonderful reality testing, our love for each other, our generosity, our sanity -- our values. Read Bob Herbert's column in today's paper. He and I think alike, though he gets paid for his writing, while I give it away for free.

Many of you know and understand me well by now. Despite this blog name I hardly ever carry a gun. I do not belong to the NRA. I am the GTL because I can, and because I am filled with love and I say it loud. No one can call me a bleeding heart or a punk or a patsy because I love my fellow man. It gives me strength.

I am here to remind you all what I forget from time to time and need to remind myself: Liberals are powerful, we can make noise, and smoke, and a mighty concussive force. And a joyful noise.

So tomorrow - no whining. Tomorrow I sing.

"Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." - Che Guevara