Must-read Joe Bageant

Joe Bageant's got a way with words.He takes on the sacred cows of the left, as well as this goddamn war and some other absurdities, with "In the Reign of the One-nutted King":

Pity the poor American left, (who would be considered right wing moderates in most of the world, but in America being against any war makes you a far leftist. Any time American leftists start pointing at the root causes of our national disease, they are neatly handed a fresh bloody war to oppose. Each new generation of the left gets its energies sapped, gets locked into the position of continually opposing one war, then another and another. Ever since World War I they've been standing on the street corners or in the parks -- or more recently, inside the Free Speech Zones way the hell out at the edge of town. At any rate, they can never come close to naming the dark and profitable tumor at the heart of America, the economic system under which we all live. To survive and grow, the American system needs war, making war inevitable. To keep up the pretense of freedom it needs harmless dissent...

And he's not letting Clinton off the hook, either:

The truth is that Clinton, like Reagan, fucked over millions of the poor, sentenced uncounted children to death by embargo, and shipped millions of American jobs wholesale to the slums of Mysore and Mexico City. He was as close to being a Republican as you can be without getting the mandatory GOP lobotomy and a wet kiss from Ted Haggard. Still though, millions of Americans refuse to repudiate him because his right to sexual privacy represented their own, still represents their own, and all the Bible haired gasbags on the Christian Broadcasting Network and all the sexually frustrated Holy Rollers in the country are not going to turn things around. We won that one.

I've often had a love-hate relationship with Clinton, because he really screwed the left in many ways, yet, there's no denying that man was extremely intelligent, and a gifted speaker. And compared to Bush, he's like F.D.R., fer Chrissake. I guess there was something nice about coming of age under a president who wasn't always pandering to the worst elements of society, like Reagan and the Bushes did and continue to do. Politically, I have a problem with a lot of what he did, especially DOMA and NAFTA.

Joe's finally an official expatriate now, living out his autumn years in Belize, away from the hazards of the ever-declining American empire. Best of luck to you, Joe, I can't say that I'm not a bit jealous.