It’s a great day for a painful story. Here’s another terrific one, from Ryan Bradley, over at Wigleaf. Ouch. I was scared of pit bills anyway. Now I’m scared of metaphorical pit bulls.

Dawn West has a terrific review up at PANK of a book I’m very, very stoked to read: Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water.

I got pissed and wrote how yes, yes YES  THE CIVIL WAR WAS ABOUT SLAVERY. Judging by the amount of comments (0) this is not very interesting to most people, so maybe it won’t be interesting to you, either. But I just thought I’d throw it out there. It’s interesting to me. But I am a history dork.

Today is just a bad day. It’s sunny but the news is terrible and there’s probably going to be a government shutdown and I hate the current crop of Republicans  who want to grind us all down to dust under the boot heel of Big Business more than anything and why are we in three wars if we could just get out of Afghanistan and go back to Clinton-era tax cuts which were still freaking huge our deficit would be pretty much gone but nope, we need to balance the budget on the backs of poor people and the arts and make sure the rich continue to see lower and lower taxes and make more and more moolah while the rest of us toil like serfs down here. Goddamn.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying all these painful, painfully good writings. Good pain breaks open the head, conquers bad pain. Distracts. Puts things in perspective. Read them, won’t you?

I’ll actually be in Indiana next week so I’ll be even more absent from this blog and the writing scene in general than I have been as of late. Hopefully if I owe you something I’ve gotten in touch with you to tell you it might be a while–if I haven’t, then you’re probably still on my radar for now and you don’t have to worry. Think good thoughts for the cause, and if you’re in one of the states above, maybe consider going to a rally or calling your state legislators (if you haven’t already, and I know a lot of you have!) to tell them worker rights are important to you.

See you all hopefully sooner than later!

We don’t have to be, actually. We should be okay with that by now. It doesn’t mean anything bad for us, just as the global rise of China and India doesn’t have to mean anything bad for us. It’s just done being our turn. And if we keep trying to outdo China anyway, we’re going to end up doing stupid things like lowering wages and benefits for our workers in a futile attempt to compete in a race we can never win.

But let me turn it over to Mr. Klein, who does a much better job in explaining:

This bugged me last night, and it’s worth talking about today: One of the first big applause lines of the speech came when Barack Obama said, “For all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world.” But as Matt Yglesias notes, soon, we won’t. China will. And that’s okay.

A decent future includes China’s GDP passing ours. They have many, many more people than we do. It’s bad for both us and them if the country stays poor. A world in which China becomes rich enough to buy from us and educated enough to invent things that improve our lives is a better world than one in which they merely become competitive enough to take low-wage jobs from us — and that’s to say nothing of the welfare of the Chinese themselves.

But perhaps it’s better to think of it in terms of Britain rather than China. Was the economic rise of the United States, in the end, bad for Britain? Or France? I don’t think so. We’ve invented a host of products, medicines and technologies that have made their lives immeasurably better, not to mention measurably longer. We’re a huge and important trading partner for all of those countries. They’re no longer even arguably No. 1, it’s true. But they’re better off for it.

Read the whole thing here.

Maybe it’s time to admit that the people at the top of our political/media heap just aren’t very bright.

I went to grad school for political management. And from what I saw there, and from what I see everyday working and living in Washington, this is absolutely true. Not everyone, of course. There are some brilliant people working in politics and media. But I think the flashes of brilliance are far and few between.

It’s not a system that attracts the best and brightest. It’s a system that (nowadays) attracts attractive broadcast journalists who can sound halfway intelligent, and on the political side people with lots and lots of money and minds made lazy by lifetimes of not having to work very hard for anything. Think I’m generalizing? Look at the incoming freshman Republican Congress: it’s the richest group of people yet. Twenty-five percent of them are millionaires.

You need money to run. You don’t need brains to run. (Hello, Sarah Palin.) In fact, if you have brains, you’re more likely to run from politics–as far and as fast as you can. Poor Obama–he probably wishes by now that he had done the same. (And yes, I can still be angry at Obama and sorry for him at the same time.)

We can’t get anything done in this country, all right, but not just because of partisan bickering. I think DougJ is on to something. It’s because many of the people working in politics are just. not. that. smart.  When they rise to the top, they’re simply swimming okay in a shallow pool.

We’d probably be far better off to fire the lot and hand the sheaf of issues to deal with to the winning American team of Future Problem Solvers. Seriously.

Thanks to Scott Garson for allowing me to indulge a love of firebugs and an intense burning hatred (no pun intended-well, yes, pun intended) for certain kinds of politicians.

Also, I have a postcard up that ties in nicely with the political theme. You may learn a little something today. Or you may just tell me to shove it up my you-know-what.

Because you were my Senator for a long time, and because you were a close friend of my other favorite Senator, the late Paul Wellstone.

Because you took brave stands on things like the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, even when it was highly unpopular to do so.

Because you’re a true liberal, but with a truly independent streak. Sometimes you drove me crazy, but it was always because you were standing up for your principles–even if they weren’t the principles I agreed with. You never wavered from what you believed.

Because you have been a perfect match for the people of Wisconsin, and a very good senator, and they’re idiots to ditch you now in a reactionary fervor. And unfortunately, we’ll all pay for your absence.

Jonathan Cohn has a nice tribute here, too.

Seriously. You really need to vote. I know most of you are voting. Yay! I will be right there with you. But I know (because I’ve had the conversations) that there are some of you who are saying, our politicians are total douches. They’re all contaminated with lobbyist cash. They don’t care about us, or public service. They just care about being re-elected. So why should I vote for any of them?

You wouldn’t be wrong on most of that. Trust me. I live in Washington, DC. I’ve worked in politics. I KNOW most politicians are, in fact, total douches. You have to be kind of a total douche, or a saint, to run for office. There are few saints, so there you are. Washington is filled with douches.

However. That does not mean you cannot vote. The douches are not of equal douchey-ness. We know this is true.  Your senator may be a total moneygrubbing douche,  but what if he or she also voted for health care reform? And student loan reform? And financial reform? And other good stuff, too? And the person opposing him or her has a platform that pretty much consists of “Government, bad. Guns, good.”? Then you gotta get out there and hold your nose and vote for the douche who has actually voted on some good things.

Duh, right? And please, don’t tell me you’re withholding your vote because the Democrats haven’t done shit on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Or because the Democrats didn’t keep their promises on immigration reform. Or cap and trade. Or the public option.  Do not try to tell me that they’re “all the same.” Don’t try to tell me you’re tired or busy or just not inspired anymore.

Withholding your vote to “punish” your party is stupid. The Democratic Party or GOP Party officials are not looking at a list and going, oh, man, Dick McSack didn’t vote this year. He must be really pissed at us. Let this be a lesson to us! No. Instead, the parties go, oh, I guess once again the young people didn’t turn out this time, or the lefties didn’t turn out, or the moderate Republicans didn’t turn out, or the Latinos didn’t turn out, so let’s not pay any attention to their issues next time. Let’s keep paying attention to what the tea partiers and old people and people living in rural North Dakota want.

Because guess who isn’t withholding their vote this year? Tea partiers! Because if you do not go out there and vote, crazy people (Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Carl Paladino, Rand Paul) will win and will take over our government and if you think things are bad NOW…just wait until next year. These people think government is evil, that we should all fend for ourselves, that if we want roads and schools and parks that we should pay for those things ourselves and if we can’t afford to pay (just like those lucky duckies who can’t afford to pay taxes) then we should just eat cat food and die. These people are NUTS. You do not want them in charge. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat or Green Party or Libertarian…you don’t want these people in charge.

So don’t be dumb. Don’t withhold your vote. Get out there and prove that young people care, that we didn’t just come out for Obama because he was so hip and cool, that we’ll vote to continue to push the issues WE care about, like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and gay marriage, and environmental reform, and meaningful financial reform, and immigration reform, and infrastructure, and jobs, and so on and so on. Make our votes matter. And then after the elections–hold them accountable! Make them keep their word this time. With two elections and a strong turnout under our belt, we’ll have more power to scare our legislators and make them take us seriously. That’s what democracy is all about.  It’s also about me not stabbing you in the head with a fork.

If you genuinely don’t know why your vote matters, shoot me an email at anoellesparks at gmail dot com and tell me where you live and I will be happy to tell you exactly why YOUR SPECIFIC VOTE matters.  Seriously. I will do this.

Also: yes, I am familiar with the South Park episode where the kids have the choice of voting for a douche or a turd for their mascot. And while I thought the episode was funny, the message was stupid. Especially this year. Sometimes, it really is kind of difficult to distinguish the politicians in both parties from each other. This year, though, it is not so difficult at all. This year, if you sit this one out–then you’re the douche. And you’ll be a douche with a plastic fork in your head.

Good morning, Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology some time and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.

Anita Hill’s obviously way more level-headed and a billion times smarter than me, and her response was quite dignified. But in her place I think I would have returned the call with this message:

Good morning, Ginni Thomas, it’s Anita Hill. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and slap some goddamn sense into your inflated balloon head.  I would love you to consider an apology to me some time for the fact that your mean, crazy-ass, silenter-than-Calvin-Coolidge husband harrassed the hell out of me and paid no price for it. So give it some thought and certainly pray–pray that I don’t come to your house and beat the living shit out of you for stalking me and leaving crazy messages on my phone years and years after the fact out of nowhere I mean what the fuck is wrong with you? No, really? NO SERIOUSLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU MUST BE AS BATTY AS HE IS, YES? YES???? OK, have a good day, nutsack squared.

It’s probably a good thing that Anita Hill is more level-headed than me.

Illustration by Matthew Lyons

Well, so says I. There are some excellent, thought-provoking types of things and also literary types of things on the intertubes these days, or so I have heard.

Like this.

And this.

And this.

And you should definitely read this, by Roxane Gay.

Also, have you read the new JMWW and the new decomP yet? Both fantastic, as always, as ever.

This may give you a little bit of hope.

And this may give you a little bit of happiness.  Everyone’s favorite smartypants is now an HTMLGiant regular. I don’t always claim to understand everything going on in Kyle’s brilliant writings, but I love picking up the pieces and trying to make them into a prism, or a prison, or a bit of matter or antimatter, or just an anecdote or interesting tidbit or a kind of blind faith tied together with string and salt and something else altogether. Super excited to have him to read more of.