It’s sad, but true: tales of protest don’t always end with “and then you win.”

A couple of weeks ago, Rowan summed up the hopelessness that plagues many progressive activists with a poster reworking Gandhi’s old slogan to read, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you die.”

That got me to thinking about the funny mix of determined action, despair, nonviolence and stark rebellion that characterize so many people in the activist community. There’s another classic protest figure who may be in your social circle: the sweetest, most tender, gentlest, most nonviolent vegan anti-war activist… who loves to stay up late at night blasting the hell out of video game foes with a tricked-out laser pistol.

For that loving, lovable master of virtual mayhem in your life, here’s another Gandhi reloaded t-shirt: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you level up. For the virtual side of life, it’s drawn in classic 8-bit style. For the principled side of your activist geek’s life, it’s printed on your choice of sweatshop-free American Apparel shirts.

The longer we can laugh at our own foibles and silly bits, the longer we can stay sane in our struggles. Right?

The following quote came from a member of Congress this week – but not in this form. I’ve made it into a cryptogram. That means that every letter in the statement, and in the name of the person who made the statement, was switched with another letter.

To solve the cryptogram, discover the code. Who can figure it out first?

“fb fiw zg vuipb sz ize wjijsgz gn rgqbhzxbzj izl kb zbbl jg hbiusob jfij fb sw iz bzbxe gn faxizsje.” – jybzj nyizdw

I’ve heard a lot of Republicans quoting Ronald Reagan lately, as they’re arguing in favor of continuing to neglect Americans’ health care. Their favorite Reagan line:

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’

Really? Those are the most terrifying nine words in the English language? Are they more more terrifying than, “My insurance says it won’t cover my cancer treatments”?

How about “Republicans want to take away my Social Security again”?

My four year-old daughter is starting participation in a Pre-Kindergarten program tomorrow. It’s run through the cooperation of several levels of government, running up from my village and county all the way to the federal government. It’s a terrific program for families in my community, and people from all sorts of economic backgrounds participate.

No one I’ve talked to about this Pre-K program has reacted in fear because it’s a government program. Everyone I’ve talked to seems to appreciate that it’s available for kids who are ready for exposure to an educational environment before the age of five. It works really well, and our community would be much poorer if it didn’t exist. My village is grateful for these people who come from the government, because yes, they’re here to help, and they do a great job at it.

Ronald Reagan may have had a lot of funny Hollywood stories to tell, but he didn’t know what the heck he was talking about when it comes to the role of the government in the everyday lives of the American people.

“You ask me my feelings on an issue and I’ll give it to you straight up, because that’s the only way a voter knows where his employee stands. Elected officials are exactly that—employees.” — Sarah Palin, September 30 1992.

9 days since Sarah Palin was announced as VP pick.
0 press conferences with Sarah Palin answering reporters’ questions.
58 days left until the election.

Sarah Palin is still not ready.

Go ahead, steal that little web badge. I want you to. I want you to stick it up on your blog and remind everybody who visits that Sarah Palin is still not ready to answer the questions a Vice President should answer. Remind your visitors that, should John McCain kick the bucket, Sarah Palin is still not ready to answer the questions a President must answer.

To point this out in even larger style, steal a larger graphic:

Once you hyperlink to one of these graphics, it will automatically update on your web page every day that Sarah Palin refuses to stand before a room full of reporters and answer their questions.

It’s time to apply pressure. Please help.

“I am so sorry I’m such a weasel.” — Sarah Palin, October 8 2000

“Alaska is all over the world map right now.” — Sarah Palin, June 8 2008

“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” — George W. Bush, January 21, 2000

Sometimes it’s nice to pull an old classic out and sniff it. Piquant. But sometimes a fresh one has more zing:

“And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq.” — George W. Bush, March 3, 2008

There’s an idea for an anti-McCain button that’s been floating around in my head for a few weeks now. See, John McCain would be in one of those striped nightshirts and a sleeping cap with a little tassle on it. He’d have his head on a pillow and look all sleepy and dreamy. And then there’d be the text around it saying, “John McCain? Good night and good luck.” I think there’s a certain cleverness to it in the way that it brings in a bit of Edward R. Murrow, classifies John McCain as sleepy McOldguy and suggests that the presidency is too much for him to handle.

I’m pretty sure it would be a good seller. But I haven’t been able to get myself to go ahead and make that button. The truth is, when I get down it, I just don’t want to make it. I think it would be wrong to make it. There are a number of reasons why John McCain would make a rotten president. He’s sided again and again with corporations against individual rights and interests. He’s sided again and again with those who have laid siege to our constitution. He helped lead the charge (that too many others followed) into an unnecessary and brutal war that has done little to nothing to aid American interests and done much hurt to the world. I could go on with a long list of wrong-headed policies that define the John McCain agenda. But see, then there’s the fact that he’s relatively old. It’s just a fact about him. I could try to take that fact and use it against him, making some argument that because he is old, he is unfit to be president. But I don’t actually believe it. I’d be making shit up. Now, if he had some early form of Alzheimer’s or something, that would be different. Ronald Reagan did, and it made him unfit to be president while he was still president. But John McCain doesn’t have any symptoms of Alzheimer’s or any other dementia sometimes but not always associated with age. Just because John McCain is old doesn’t make him unfit to be president. I can think of a good handful of elderly people who I think would do a great job in the presidency. John McCain’s age is not the reason I oppose his candidacy, and so I shouldn’t pretend that it is.

If I did make that button, I’d be participating in a little campaign game that lately has been turning my stomach sour. I used to like to listen to the Stephanie Miller Show on AM 1580 here in Columbus, but lately I can only take a few minutes at a time. They’ve got this schtick they’re pushing lately in which they play audio clips of Grandpa Simpson (from The Simpsons) prattling on and losing track of what he was saying and mumbling and groaning and then telling the kids to get off his lawn. And then they say, “Grandpa McCain!” And then their voice impersonator, Jim Ward, says a few lines in the voice of John McCain about how he wants those pesky kids to get off his lawn. And then everybody on the air giggles theatrically. And then they ring a bell. The Stephanie Miller Show does this every day. Every single day. I’m sure it has the desired effect. I’m sure it gets a lot of people to assume that McCain is a senile coot through the effect of sheer repetition. But it’s still bullshit. First the Stephanie Miller Show decided to be against John McCain for other reasons, be they market demographics or idealism about policy. Then they noticed John McCain was old, and so they decided old was mockable and pursued that angle. If the Democratic Party runs an old person for president in 2012, the Stephanie Miller Show will talk about the value of the Elder Statesman (or woman) and make fun of the Republican candidate for being foolishly, goofily young. That’s bullshit.

It was bullshit when the Republicans went after John Kerry in 2004 for windsurfing. If he’d been the Republican candidate, they would have called him a “sportsman” for it and said he was vigorous. The Stephanie Miller Show caught on that George W. Bush rides a bicycle, and so once a week they toss in twenty seconds or so of Jim Ward the voice impersonator snickering like a six-year-old and chiming a bicycle bell over and over again while he says something inane using George W. Bush’s fake Texas drawl. That’s bullshit too.

It’s bullshit when people like Loren Davis and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and others try to cobble together conspiracy theories that use genealogies and political events occurring when Barack Obama was five or seven years old to assert without any factual basis that Barack Obama is a member of a secret Muslim Islamofascist conspiracy to blah blahdee blah blah blah. I mean, why should I even fill in the blanks? It’s bullshit!

It’s bullshit when people talk about the foibles of Bill Clinton as a justification for not voting for Hillary Clinton, as if it is legitimate to judge the merits of every woman by the merits of her husband. It isn’t. It’s bullshit. It’s bullshit when people write that they’ve “never known a woman who could be trusted to spend someone else’s money,” or when they show up at Hillary Clinton rallies with signs that read “Iron My Shirt!” It’s bullshit.

It was bullshit when people said in 2000 that by gum, they’d vote for George W. Bush because he was the kind of guy they’d like to have a beer with. Come on, fess up: have you EVER had a beer with George W. Bush? You never will. He isn’t that guy, and to pretend otherwise is bullshit. It’s bullshit now for New York Times columnist David Brooks to write:

The fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences. Fairly or not, they look at symbols like Michael Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry’s windsurfing or John Edwards’s haircut as clues about shared values…. when he bowls a 37 for crying out loud, voters are going to wonder if he’s one of them. Obama has to address those doubts, and he has done so poorly up to now.

Yes, a New York Times columnist is seriously suggesting that Barack Obama has to bone up on his bowling game if he wants to be a good president. Bullshit! And, by the way, Barack Obama only bowled seven frames. It’s still a bad score. But who cares? Any way you parse it, it’s bullshit!

I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is “shrill.” I don’t care if she’s “abrasive.” I don’t care if she has an annoying laugh. When the Stephanie Miller Show (yes, them again) broadcasts Hillary Clinton cackling as if that was an actual argument against her, it’s bullshit!

Every time I get exposed to this bullshit, I get a little bit more corroded on the inside. I get a little bit more bitter. I get a little bit more angry. I’m tired of being poisoned by it. I don’t want to listen to it any more. I don’t want to read it any more. And you know what? I don’t need to read it or listen to it any more. As a citizen, I’ve already voted in the primaries. My role in that decisionmaking is done. I don’t get to vote again. As a writer, let me be blunt: what new and actually relevant piece of information am I going to impart to you about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama before it is decided which one of them is going to be the Democratic Party nominee? If you’ve been paying attention to Clinton’s and Obama’s policy statements, you should already know what the two of them have stood for in the past and what the two of them stand for now. And if you’re the sort of person who loves to wallow in bullshit claims about who is supposed to iron whose shirt and who is a member of a secret Islamofascist cabal funded by the Illuminati, then I’m never going to reach you anyway.

So I declare for myself a one-month sabbatical from writing about campaign politics. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that the frequency of my posts on the subject has declined; now I’m just making it official. Why expose myself to the poison when at this point in the campaign there’s no good to be had from it? Why expose you to it? I’m just not going to do it. After a month passes, I’m sure there will be new things to say, not least because I’m pretty sure the nomination will be wrapped up or on the way to wrapped up within the month. Until then, I’ll have nothing to say about campaign politics. Sure, if someone gets shot or something I may call a break. But nobody’s going to get shot, I hope. So until then, I’ll write about substantive policy matters, and social movement activism outside electoral campaigns, and the interplay between religion and politics, and some other things that have nothing to do with politics. I hope the poison leaches out by then.