It’s a real mess out there:

I have a very good friend who is an immigrant from Central America. A conversation last year over immigration got to the point where she accused me of being a “racist, just like the rest of those people” at which point I told her she was welcome to call me when she realized she owed me an apology, and I hung up.

Settle in, folks; this one’s gonna take a while.

(Update below the jump)

I said it was a mess, and I wasn’t referring to Ragnar’s thinking on this. Dimwitted demagogues like Linda Chavez aren’t helping, either:

What is said today of the Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and others was once said of Germans, Swedes, the Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews and others. The only difference is that in the past, the xenophobes could speak freely, unconstrained by a veneer of political correctness. Today, they speak more cautiously, so they talk about the rule of law, national security, amnesty, whatever else they think might make their arguments less racially charged.

Where once the xenophobes could advocate forced sterilization and eugenics coupled with virtually shutting off legal immigration from “undesirable” countries, now they must be content with building walls, putting troops on the border, rounding up illegal aliens on the job and deporting them, passing local ordinances to signal their distaste for immigrants’ multi-family living arrangements, and doing whatever else they can to drive these people back where they came from.

There is no chance this small group of xenophobes will succeed — ultimately. The victories of their predecessors have been short-lived and so obviously wrong-headed we’ve always finally abandoned them, from modifying and then repealing the Asian exclusion acts to scrapping the nationalities quotas. But we need to quit pretending that the “No Amnesty” crowd is anything other than what it is: a tiny group of angry, frightened and prejudiced loudmouths backed by political opportunists who exploit them.

Nor is our dolt of a RINO President, who, lest we forget, wanted the defaming blatherskite quoted above to be our Labor Secretary once upon a time:

I understand it’s going to require a lot of work, because this is a very emotional issue. And it’s not only emotional, it’s a complex issue, with a lot of moving parts. That enables critics, those who don’t believe we need comprehensive reform, to pick one aspect out of the bill and campaign against that aspect.

That aspect being the complete and utter lack of any real border security/enforcement provisions in the useless PoS.

Sir.

And the problem is, one, assuring the American people we can better enforce our border; two, recognizing there are jobs Americans are not doing that can be filled by people to do that work for the good of the economy;

There’s that damned “jobs Americans won’t do” hoo-hah again. Try this on instead: “jobs American businesses aren’t willing to pay a decent wage to have done.” Might be nearer the mark. That might sound somewhat Leftish to some, but the plain fact is that if businesses weren’t willing to undermine our border security by hiring illegals at coolie wages — and weren’t being encouraged to believe they’ll get away with it by every word out of Bush’s mouth — a big chunk of this problem would melt away like sugar in a rainstorm.

and, three, there are millions of people living in the shadows of our society which, in my judgment, is inhumane and doesn’t uphold the ideals of America.

They shouldn’t oughta have flouted our laws to come here then.

Sir. Spell that with a “C” and a “U.”

And they shouldn’t be listening, either, to La Raza types who advocate the violent overthrow of large swathes of American territory. Nor should they be getting drunk as a boiled owl at quitting time, then winding up their fun-filled evening by driving on the wrong side of a 6-lane freeway at high speeds, thereupon Slaying Families of Four, as the fluffy TV newsbunnies always end up saying next day — capping the whole whoopjamboreehoo with their sixth DUI arrest in the ten weeks since they got here…illegally. Which lamentable (and preventable) sequence seems to happen bimonthly, around these parts anyway.

My only point is, is that I have seen firsthand the beautiful stories of people being able to take advantage of opportunity and make solid contributions to our society.

Secondly, I’m deeply concerned about America losing its soul.

Can there be any doubt of who Bush is trying to appeal to here? “America losing its soul?” My God, he sounds like any starry-eyed sophomore smitten with her liberal American Injustice Studies 101 professor you’d care to point and snicker at. Or Andrew Sullivan after being informed that Osama had finally been found — lying dead in a Tora Bora cave with a panty on his head.

Meanwhile, Jeff is sounding pretty disillusioned:

Still working on the WordPress build—a process slowed by doctor’s appointments and some other medical issues. Once it’s up and running, I’m going to give it 2 months to gel.

After that, if I don’t see an improvement in traffic I’ll be calling it quits as a daily blogging site. It takes a special talent to hemorrhage readers like I have, so I think it best to put that talent to use elsewhere. Like, maybe I can be Rosie O’Donnell’s PR guy or something. She could certainly use a decline in exposure.

And further:

Nothing here really matters, in the scheme of things. I’ll never be takes seriously by the Captain Ed’s of the world; and the libertarians are so interested in Bush bashing that they view me as an enemy.

I deplore the cliquishness of the blogosphere. I hate the “message unification” on the left, and the stodgy, uncontroversial inbred linking from sites on the right wishing to avoid being sullied by potty mouths and degenerates of my sort.

And if you think the issues so far brought forth in this post are unrelated, well, I think you’re dead wrong.

For what it’s worth, this seems like a good time to mention that this here site has been consistently stuck on between 2000-2500 daily uniques for a good while now; it gradually dropped from its highest daily average ever (just over 4000 uniques, back during the runup to the ‘04 election) to the current level of 2500 or slightly more that it’s been enjoying the past couple of months.

I say “enjoying,” and I mean it; that level of traffic may be low compared to the big guns out there, but I’m satisfied with it. And given several factors which I either can’t or refuse to change, CF is likely going to remain exactly what it is. The prospect of this site ever getting a Malkin or Captain Ed or Powerline link — two of which Jeff specifically mentions in regards to his own blog and its relationship to the “serious” blogger clique, which I happen to think he’s perfectly correct about — hovers somewhere between “don’t hold your breath” and “no way in Hell.” That’s fine with me too; I’ve got my own thing going here, and it’s a bit spicy for some who prefer blander or less exotic fare. I’m not doing this for any reason other than that I like it. When I stop liking it, I’ll stop doing it. Period.

But I’ll also say this: there’s a creeping despair lurking out there on the Rightosphere these days, and the apprehension, frustration, and ennui looks to me to be pretty well justified. Jeff isn’t the only one feeling its chill grip; Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House is getting all shivery himself:

Know exactly how you feel. I’ve lost about 30% of my readers since February and am contemplating life without blogging. Sue has taken to keeping ropes and sharp objects out of my reach it’s gotten that bad.

I’ve been thinking of starting a reader poll on whether I should stay or go but fear the trolls coming out of the woodwork to vote – not for me to go but for me to stay so they can continue torturing me.

Now, even though I’m perfectly satisfied with the readership of this blog and still enjoy doing it a great deal, I must admit it: it’s hard to even bring myself to read about politics these days, much less write about ‘em, and sometimes, frankly, I can’t. I just can’t.

The news is bad just about anywhere you can stand to look.

For one thing, I don’t know how you get from “axis of evil” to “productive and comprehensive negotiations,” and neither does Lileks:

What really irks me more than the Administration’s mulishness is their tone-deaf replies to the (immigration) bill’s opponents, and it really is Le Straw Finale. Add to the list of lesser mistakes to which any administration composed of human-type people is prone, add the ham-fistery evident in their handling of those events, add the attenuated death of the Bush doctrine, interred quietly in the first bilateral talks with Iran since the war began almost three decades ago, and add the nagging, itchy suspicion that Iranian involvement in the Iraq conflict might have been turned away at an earlier opportunity with a judicious, gravity-assisted MOAB in a crucial industrial facility, and you have a general Throwing Up of The Hands on the right. Self-inflicted wounds, every one of them.

Not to mention the failure to aggressively confront — or for that matter, deal with at all, beyond kicking the can on down the road — a whole host of other issues bearing directly on our success or failure in the War on Something or Other, and the cumulative picture you get ain’t an encouraging one. The West as a whole is reeling; even the Pope doesn’t have courage of conviction enough to resist the onslaught of the unholy alliance of expedience between the unpatriotic antis on the Left and radical Islam:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – In a surprising about-face, Pope Benedict has decided to restore power and prestige to the Vatican department that oversees dialogue with Islam a year after he controversially downgraded it.

The department’s return to its former status occurred as Catholic-Muslim dialogue is still suffering the negative effects of Benedict’s Regensburg speech last September in which he appeared to equate Islam with violence.

Hey, Islam means submission, right?

For our own part, I can’t really remember American strength and resolve ever having been weaker, except perhaps in the aftermath of the Vietnam defeat (a production of Leftocrat Studios Inc, which production will soon be in reruns), and the reasons for it are numerous and manifest. We who actually don’t consider American power something to be railed against and scared witless by have now been forced to realize that we have ourselves a President who attacks his own natural base of support much more readily (and vigorously) than he does political opponents who have become completely irrational under the influence of a mindless, incoherent hatred for him; who cares more about appeasing foreign leaders than doing what must be done to guarantee American security; who is perfectly willing to put American action to guarantee the safety of its citizens and its interests on hold for more than a year, while he goes crawling to a council comprised of thugs, dictators, commies, and religious fanatics, in a pathetic bid for a UN validation that he never had the slightest chance of getting and that, in the end, provided him not even a moment’s political cover or forbearance from his opponents; who still — STILL — refuses to name Islamic radicalism AND TERRORIST-SPONSORING GOVERNMENTS as the deadliest imaginable enemy of liberal Western civilization, much less take serious action against them; who squanders Americans’ tax dollars like Paris Hilton on a post-incarceration booze-coke-and-cock binge, on entitlements that the Teddycrats have been drooling over for years; and who, finally, has spit in the face of all of us who have gone far and away above the call of duty to make his arguments for him, ever since Al Gore’s attempt to hijack the 2000 election by force of lawyers.

Iran will get its nukes. Iran will continue to slaughter our soldiers in Iraq, until we turn tail and flee, which will be sooner than most of us suspect. Hordes of illegal immigrants will continue to pour across our southern border, along with any Muslim terrorist with the gumption to try. We will eventually become accustomed to the occasional car bomb going off in the streets of New York, LA, Washington. Israel will grow more and more hopelessly beleaguered, and we’ll do contemptibly little to help our only true ME ally. Billions in American aid will continue to flow to America-hating terrorist-loving scum who danced in the streets of their shitty little cholera-hole countries in celebration on 9/11. Liberals will continue to make steady progress in their mission to make this a truly socialist nation, a cradle-to-grave nanny-state; government will get bigger and more intrusive, taxes will go up, we’ll see more restrictions placed on us “for our own good,” and billions will be squandered on utter nonsense — “threats” like “humanocentric global warming.” The military will be ignored, when it’s not being gutted and demoralized outright: “billions for bullshit, but not one penny for realistic defense” will be the operative words.

We will do nothing, about any of it. Well, some of us will complain about it. But that’s about it.

This country is in serious danger, and some of us have been around long enough to have seen all this coming; we’ve seen it before, after all. A President whom we fervently hoped was going to rise to the occasion of the most perilous challenge this nation has faced in our lifetimes has instead let us down, and badly, by reverting to mediocre type. After 9/11, he said all the right things and made all the right moves, and as a result some of us were willing — eager, in fact — to put aside the doubts we’d had about him all along, and to offer him our unqualified support.

We were wrong.

In fact, with his remarks above, he seems not only to have let us down, but to have outright disavowed us — on an issue of great relevance and vital importance to how and whether we’re going to meet the Islamofascist challenge — and some of his minions are doing so in a particularly contemptuous and nasty fashion, too. We’ve certainly come a long way from “you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” and in precisely the wrong direction. “Don’t want to do what’s right for America?” Mr President, you’ve rendered those words worse than meaningless, worse than a joke; you’ve stood them on their heads.

Sir. With a “C” and a “U.”

No wonder there’s a general malaise wafting like a bad smell around the Right blogosphere; the whole country has come under a cloud, and once again, we’re the only ones who truly realize what it’s going to take to wake our countrymen up to the threat it faces.

Feeling a bit depressed, are ya? Hell, who wouldn’t? After all this time, after all the effort, the expense, the bloodshed (both figurative and literal) — in the end, we’ve learned (again) that politicians remain sneaky, dishonest, untrustworthy weasels who will stab their own supporters in the back, to advance an agenda that is very clearly detrimental to the very nation they’ve sworn to protect and defend, if they think there’s any political gain to be had from it. And that now goes for both of our deplorable political parties.

It’s been a race to the bottom of the cesspool all along. The Republicrats won.

Welcome to 9/10 America redux, folks. Isn’t it a lovely morning?

Update! Got to thinking this morning that I hadn’t checked my Webalyzer server stats in a very long time; the numbers I gave above are from a WP plugin called WP Stats, which is supposed to count hits from WP files only. But there are several fairly well-trafficked CF pages not associated at all with the WP install, making Webalyzer the more comprehensive and accurate number; therefore, I figured I was probably short-changing myself on the traffic numbers here. And boy, was I ever; the actual daily-uniques average seems to be around twice the number I quoted:

You can click for the full-size image, if you’re really all that interested. It would seem that after the usual election-time spike in November ‘06, traffic dropped some, then started climbing back up again in April. Aww, who even knows what it all means. I’ve got better, more important, and more amusing things to worry about today anyway (try this link if you’re a MySpace dork).