I've been accused of pretending to be an independent. I'm not pretending. I am an independent and have voted Republican as often as Democrat. I voted for George H.W. Bush, it's only our latest version of Republican that truly upsets me and pretty girl is one of them...guns, bedrooms, money, oil, Christianity and jingoism are her themes...she just looks better saying it than all the others have. Kind of makes me want to gag, yet it's a stroke of political genius by McCain and has solidified the right wing of the party that was threatening to stay home. The right wing enthusiasm for this woman is just about the biggest pot of hypocrisy I have seen in a long time. Just put this shoe on the other foot and try to imagine how it would fit. And let me get this straight...McCain is a maverick? Huh? Bush's go to guy on the war, a maverick? Spin, spin, spin. This Republican party is the party of Karl Rove as described by George Orwell. Almost every time a pundit talks about McCain they bring up the maverick label, but good ol' boy John has been with George W. 95% of the time. Some maverick.
The fact is, Palin's nomination changes nothing in reality. The Republicans are still the warriors, the de facto big government spenders, the authors of the greatest infringement on civil rights in our lifetimes, the people who would drill and soak every drop of oil out of the ground rather than develop alternative energy, the global warming skeptics who believe in wishful thinking over science and the men and women who are afraid of other men and women loving each other, the people who would never abort a baby but certainly not pay it any special attention after it has been born, the people who have turned a surplus into the greatest debt in our history, who could have used that money to pay every mother who had an abortion a lifelong wage to keep and care for her baby. Based on conservative figures, we have already spent enough money in Iraq to give every mother $40,000.00 per abortion since Roe v. Wade was legalized. That's 40k for every abortion in the US since 1973! Do you think we could have cut those abortions in half with a little better education, health care and effort? Do you think the Republicans in power really care about eliminating abortion?
The Republican party of John McCain and Sarah Palin is the Republican party of George W. Bush not the Republican party of Colin Powell, or Dwight Eisenhower or even George H.W. Bush. This crop are mean spirited people who only learn to love and forgive and embrace differences and difficulties when they happen in their own immediate families and even then they have a hard time with empathy. These are people who believe in helping only people who help themselves; they think that people who are raised in the habit of helplessness and hopelessness are better off dead. These Republicans, and John McCain has been firmly ensconced in their center for a quarter century, have opened the income gap wider than at any time since prior to the great depression. Guess which side of the gap McCain is on. These are oligarchic capitalists who believe in the God-given right of the very few to take from the very many. These are the men in boardrooms who take huge payouts while their companies go down the drains or get bailed out by the feds. I'm not talking about small businessmen and women whose backs bear the burden of this economy. These are the people who created the savings and loan crisis in the 80's, and the credit crisis now. They believe in private profits as long as the risk is borne by the public. Free market my ass. These are greedy, greedy men.
Please don't let the abortion issue blind you to the life sucking policies of the morally and fiscally corrupt party currently on the right. I understand the deep moral quandary abortion creates and so do these cynical Republicans. The real party was hijacked by a few people for their own benefit using a smokescreen of social issues that they barely care about! C'mon, get the wool off of your eyes. Since Roe v. Wade was passed we have had five Republican administrations who haven't changed the law because the majority of Americans don't want the law changed and that includes plenty of Republicans. If you want the abortion law changed, convince the people who you live with, don't elect another fat cat who would just as soon send your son or daughter to die as he would threaten the Iranians and North Koreans. You might be able to convince me that abortion is immoral, but you'll never convince me that pre-emptive war is moral or that burning all the world's fuel is moral or that letting people drown because you don't want to spend the money teaching them how to swim is moral. And guess what? We need the government to help us change those things, we are in a collective mess and the way out is collectively. We need tax breaks for creative companies, we need help to buy solar panels, we need early childhood education, not for the rich, but for the poor, we need remedial education for those who fall through the cracks, we need universal health care. We need, we need, we need. Since we cannot shrink the government, we need an activist government that does a few things very well.
We need Muslims and Jews and Christians and Atheists and every variation of people to work on these problems together. Righteous Christians are selfless. Self righteous Christians are part of the problem. George W. Bush sold us a bill of goods on the back of so called religious values. He even hijacked Christianity! Don't be fooled again. Sarah Palin doesn't believe in abortion. So what, she believes in war and she doesn't believe in global warming. She thinks having a gun and being tough is important. She thinks that spending $720 million a day, $500,000 a minute, on war, John McCain's war, is just fine thank you. Fine.
I'm voting for Obama, he did pull himself up by his bootstraps with a little help from a strong mother and a country that was making an effort for people like him. He is the product of a society in which people of little means could rise to the top based on their effort. Too bad we don't live in that country anymore. The next Einstein could be a poor kid in Appalachia or NYC, but no matter how smart he is, he cannot make it on his own. He needs a measles shot or some other government sponsored handout like a polio inoculation, he needs cultural good will and access to education. And if he's smart enough to make it to the best colleges, he'll need help with the $200,000 tuition. He's the real American dream. Not any son or daughter of George W. Bush. We know they'll do fine. Oh and by the way, if he goes to war and gets hurt we should treat him in a network of premier hospitals not the substandard ones we currently maintain across the country which during recent Republican administrations have required their patients to sue for treatment of exposure to agent orange and for mental health counseling.
Speaking of veterans, what's John McCain's claim to fame right now? He can win the war we should never have started. That's right, he'll arm our soldiers better. He'll empower the generals, he'll make us strong again. Sorry John, I don't want an America that thinks the way to change the world is to beat it into submission and as far as I can see that's your only asset, you just might be able to do it. No thanks. I'll take my chances with the tax and spend Democrats, they look a damn sight better than the Republicans who aren't taxing us but are spending us into poverty while they let everything go to hell. They'll let our kids fix everything, even if they don't have the support or the money we grew up expecting. I'm sorry, she looks really good, but Sarah Palin is nothing but a pretty young face on an old man's ugly game.
3 comments:
Eloquently put. Quite convincting but then I already see your point of view.
Unfortunately, too many of us get stuck into positions and won't let our position go even when it proves to be wrong.
I fully agree with what you've said, but there's a deeper problem that has begun to worry me. How can democracy survive in a nation rendered catatonic by TV? We seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between arguments based on fact and solid reasoning and those based on fantasy. The quality of public education has been undermined, perhaps deliberately, by those who fear an educated electorate. The economic security of the middle class has also been undermined--surely deliberately. Thus, fear-mongering has become persuasive. When we cannot be confident of our personal well-being, it is easy to harbor irrational fears. The 60s, a period when many Americans tried to create a more inclusive politcs at home, was made possible by the long post-war economic expeansion. Most young people could realistically assume they would have economic security, and were able to turn their energies to larger questions. Now, our youth are frightened of the future: frightened that they will not be able to afford basic necessities like health care, and frightened that they are vulnerable to the rage of the rest of the world. It has led to a profoundly selfish and short-sighted politics.--Arlington Africanist
Thank you for those thoughts.
I shudder to think that our dummying down was deliberate, that there could have been a conspiracy that enormous and that dastardly. I'd rather believe that the conditions you describe that produced an uneducated electorate were and are a function of greed, soulless capitalism, market creation and penetration. I can accept the pervasiveness of greed more comfortably than I can accept a conspiracy.
Additionally, I think the conditions of the "idyllic" post war expansion were fueled by fear, fear of the Soviets and the ever-present possibility of nuclear annihilation. As a culture we embraced the need to build the most powerful military/industrial complex the world has ever seen and spent every available dime after that on material luxury. The reaction of young people during the sixties, made possible by that enormous physical luxury, was as much a reaction to the existential angst of nuclear war as it was to the pursuit of soul-emptying economic benchmarks. What difference did it make if you had two cars in the garage and a microwave oven if you didn't have peace, love, and understanding?
Along the way, education, family life, community activities were all lived increasingly more often around the tube where we were being sold to every hour, then every half hour, then every 15 minutes, then continuously inside the entertainment itself, on our clothing, by the people we admired most, etc. etc. And the sales pitches, which started out as purely for our pocketbooks quickly became for our votes and for our cooperation. The sales techniques which we could comfortably accept as a legitimate and necessary function of a market economy were turned on us in a cynical pursuit of our minds. Then when the alarm bells started to go off, it was too late, we were being herded as effectively by the media culture as cows are by gates and shutes. You are so right, that is where we are now, fighting a war for the minds of people whose minds are not trained to evaluate their own circumstance but instead accept what a few powerful image makers feed them.
I am hopeful that the advent of the Internet and the resulting fragmentation in markets that has already increased participation in the creation of culture will have a long term salutary effect, diminish the strength of those who want to set the agenda unopposed and allow us to get back to conversations like this one about where we have been and where we go from here.
I'm hopeful that electing Obama will be the first national step in that direction, but some cynical people will tell you that there is very little difference between either candidate because their main thrust, their true hidden agenda regardless of party is to keep the ruling elite where it has always been, ruling, and the domination of the many by and for the few is a fact which we cannot hope to change.
If that is true, then the only way out would be some kind of revolution. A sudden and violent break with the past that brooks no part of the insidious culture that has turned us into a bunch of stupid and blind followers. That is a deeply depressing thought and I try to avoid it.
Maybe I’m deluding myself.
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