So, the bailout. ZOMG, the House rejected it soundly--before they didn't. A lot was made of that brief blip, calls that at last the government was being held accountable by the American people, etc., but of course it wasn't to last, of course all they had to do was make a few superficial changes, wait until everyone was properly pleased that they had succeeded in stopping a 700 billion dollar check to a bunch of unrepentant morons, then send the check anyway.

But those guys who called this a major development weren't wrong, or at least as wrong as they look now. Because the first rejection of the bailout was entirely against the corporate politics (whatever the fuck that word even means) that control the American government, and entirely because the American people for one very brief moment said No. Yes, it was a hop and a skip of political maneuvering to get over that hurdle, but if things had been going as they should be for the corporatists/elites/special interests/whatever, that hurdle shouldn't have existed at all. Hoi polloi are sheep to be slaughtered, not a voice to be dealt with.

It's interesting to compare this oh-so-brief moment of popular action with the sustained grass-roots support of Obama and other mainstream candidates before him. The difference being, of course, nobody cares about Obama. Why? Because the people behind him--that frothing mass of do-gooding young idealists, absolutely convinced that they are changing the fucking world for the fucking better at long last after all those fuckers before them continually screwed it up--are doing nothing. They are putting all their energy towards getting more people to check a ballot box, which is exactly what hoi polloi are supposed to do, and nothing more.