Amerika Uber Alles

I didn't even know the Senate recently passed a resolution declaring that the national anthem should be sung only in English, which is such a fucking dipshit stupid move that I am literally slavering on the keyboard right now. This is fucking fascism in a fucking suit, you people. English-only? For the national anthem? The Founding Fathers are not just rolling in their graves, they're weeping. Their beautiful dream of a country is going down the toilet almost as fast as the turd that is Cheney's approval rating. We are led by a group of racist warmongers. Period.

That having been said, watching these congresspeople screw up the words to the national anthem -- which, by the way, you Republicans who are wondering, I can sing very beautifully and have even done so on karaoke night -- is just depressing. Even Chuck Hagel pretends he's too busy. Chuck Hagel. The darling of the center-left wing of the Radical Center. If anyone knows what this guy's politics actually are, please let me know.

Anyway, the tally in case you don't watch the video: Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) nails it from start to finish; Reps. Mark Kennedy (R-Min.), Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), and another from each party all flub badly, while they don't show whether McCain gets it all right (I assume he does, although I would have thought it was a no-brainer for anyone who gets to vote in Congress) and suggest that Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) did well.

I may have to start following this ugly nativist trend, especially given my current reading of a great book by the Austro-Hungarian writer Joseph Roth on his time between the world wars in France and Germany called Report From a Parisian Paradise. As with all his work, the title sort of has ironic overtones but is also very sincere. Unlike the cries of pro-American patriotism now erupting in Congress, for instance.