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if mccain is elected
i'm leaving the country
actually come to think of it
i'm leaving the country
either way
but that said
i don't want to have to explain
to people i meet in istanbul
[for the record
before you ask
i'll be staying in what was
constantinople]
in two weeks
that we're not a bunch of racist idiots
despite the fact that we just voted for
yet another
old white guy
instead of a smarter
younger
black man
who not only has better ideas
but actually talks about them cogently
so really
it's all about me
so when you vote
think of me
thank you for your time
so this is how it begins
sitting in terminal a hearing cnn
report the death of everyone's 401k
it begins to hit me
should i really be flying to denver
to drink a shitload of beer
should i really have booked
that ticket to istanbul
there's no reason not to
really
but it feels that way
and
multiplied millions-fold
that's enough
i'll be perfectly honest with you
i was totally cheering against sarah palin last night
for her to trip over her words and make an absolute
hash of her big night
not because i'm sexist
[for the record though i prefer obama i would have voted for clinton with great enthusiasm]
it's only 'cause i think she and her new friend
senator mccain are wrong about nearly everything
[she's always been wrong, he's taken eight years to evolve wrong positions, romney-style]
and frankly i'm tired of the fight we're all about to have
again
it'd have been so much easier if we weren't careening towards another 49-49
deadlock
teetering on the whims of some benighted constituency in a
backassward state like ohio or florida
but it's looking more likely that that'll happen
mccain shored up his own bona fides by hiring a bright-red-state
[smugly born again]
version of your mom
and it's no stretch to say that big parts of the country are going to eat that shit up
the same parts who thought george w bush was a cowboy fighter pilot
and it's going to be left to the despised elites in the cities
the people who pay all the taxes that build the roads and the schools in 'real america'
and get nothing but shit for it
to vote on issues that matter to us
to get us back to the same goddamn tie we've had in the past
because the rest of the country is going to vote for down-home charm (TM) and small-town values
and mom
it's sox-yanks baseball
a slugfest that leaves both sides exhausted and bruised
and don't get me wrong
experience isn't the issue here
intelligence is
intellect
obama [and hillary] and biden are just plain smarter than their opposition
[in my opinion born-again=dumb thank you good night]
experience matters fuck-all when the shit really hits the fan
do you think bush fucked everything up because he was less experienced than al gore
or do you think he was just dumber and listened to people that were
wrong or stupid or both
john mccain might have been a smart guy
might have even been the much-touted maverick once
but like mitt romney
he found his own glass ceiling in his party
and suddenly had to dress the part of a republican
to break through it
but this is all rantings
i'm pissed off at this
pissed off that it's going to come to the equivalent of a coin flip
when we should be talking about ideas
ideas that are provably wrong
ideas that have some merit
and ideas that are great
and seeing who has more of each
i'll leave my dear reader with some substance
i almost want to take time off and go door to door with that in
'real america'
and wait for people to tell me what's wrong with it
a really fascinating infographic in today's globe
on the results of a recent survey on
religion's role in american life
goodness knows that more than a few times
have i bemoaned its undue influence on the nation
and on my life in particular
and voiced a preference for people to just
keep it to themselves
but if this is to be believed
it also pretty clearly points out the main reason
we all more or less get along
70% of religious americans believe that many religions can lead to
'eternal life'
setting aside the likelihood of that promise
that's an awfully nice thing to think
that even 16% of crazy jehovah's witnesses
deep in the dark cobwebby recesses of their no-doubt
steam-powered clockwork brains
they're perfectly alright thinking that others unlike them are entitled
to their own concept of a happy ending
it shows that deep down
even though many of these are the same idiots who will vote their fears
and demonize homosexuals or abortion-rights activists
they don't really believe that even their
for lack of a better term
enemies
are so wrong-headed that they don't deserve
this promise of eating kentucky fried chicken on a cloud
the only dark side to this is that
out of the groups on that chart
on the lower left
we keep trying to elect presidents
from the back of the class
i just rode by the remains of the
james hook lobster company
downtown
it was still warm and smelled like cooked seafood
among other things
the only real association i have with the place is a
cold and damp day in october 2004
where i was struck by the torrents of water coming from the strange
wooden building surrounded by glass skyscrapers
i'd practically never noticed it before that day
it hasn't really been a good week for a lot of people
crashes and fires and things like that
i don't even watch the local news
but it nevertheless has an effect when you see something that
was some part of your life
large or small
in the newspaper
destroyed
now is the time to say quite archly that the country should
eat its vegetables
and mean several related and useful things by it
the literal aspect of it is driven by the present rise in the cost of food
abetted by the fact that we pay people who grow it to turn it into something that
isn't food
what's worse
that something is fuel for that other insatiable american appetite
the automobile
of course ethanol is something of a white elephant as it is not efficient to produce
or very profitable if not for the rather hefty subsidies involved
who's to say if it's better than oil or not
come a time when we're out of oil it might be a good thing to be able to take corn
or switchgrass
and process it into fuel using cleaner energy
but the second half of this equation is the more figurative reading of
how to eat our vegetables
as a nation
right now
senators mccain and clinton
are both in favor of a so-called gas tax holiday
a reward for american consumers who have sacrificed so much
or to continue to abuse that metaphor
a thick slice of cake for the whiny kid
who pushed around the green beans on his plate
instead of eating them
whereas now is the best opportunity
when everyone's interests are aligned
to set the country to work on the apollo project-like
task of getting ourselves set to face the next century
instead of making it easier for everybody to limp along
and ignore the problem for another ten years
while carmakers and oil companies
continue to profit from our indolence
literal and figurative
we need someone with balls to grab the nation
by the scruff of its neck and say that it's time to change our habits
to maybe do without some stuff that we want and don't need
to say that sometimes doing great things is a hard thing for everybody and that
hard things require effort
effort
you may remember is something that requires work
as in it may create jobs
which are good
but doing hard things is not a way to get elected
getting elected is a short-term concern and that's why it's so tempting to promise short-term fixes
senator
don't let us leave the table until we're done
the story of the atheist soldier is fascinating and frightening to me
the man sounds as if his are reasonable and well-considered beliefs
and moreover are entirely in line with my own
and it's for that reason that the reaction to those beliefs is so worrisome
if one considers the military to be a microcosm of our country as a whole
then it merely reinforces the idea that's been heard on the tip of our leaders' tongues
unspoken but palpable
that it doesn't matter what your faith is as long as you have some
but that the lack thereof makes you a hollow person in their eyes
makes your motivations suspect
your decisions rooted in an uncertain place
like specialist hall i believe in plexiglas and steel and abs
and gravity and friction and seals and levers and pumps
screws and glue
electrons and fluids
these things exist and i can make them do stuff for me and for you
without intervention from any deity
i believe in human courage and ingenuity and that
good people will do good things for people
deserving and undeserving alike
but that you're a lot better off in the former category
but somehow by not believing in a ceiling cat
that's enough for some people in this country to somehow believe that this soldier's
good works alone are not sufficient enough a track record to say he's
a good dude
only some fictional good dude can confer that qualification
fortunately you can spend a lifetime in this country without
risk of being so judged
provided you live in a reasonably secular state and
travel in certain circles
but these people still vote
and they remind me that america has a vast capability to be stupid
so let's look forward to president mccain
but that's a rant for another day
there was an interesting blurb on one of the globe’s blogs today about suburban decay, and how it’s possible that the extruded subdivisions with the identical houses and clustered mailboxes might be the run-down, sketchy areas of the future, thanks to the well-documented overreaching of both banks and borderline homeowners alike.
it’s interesting, for one, because this was a significant part of the last nanowrimo novel i worked on (died on the table at 30k words; maybe i’ll finish it up next november), and thought it was a really interesting concept, considering that exurbs and bedroom communities are predicated on assumptions about human civilization that might not always hold true (namely, cheap personal transportation).
it’s more interesting, considering that i saw that happen in the neighborhood where i grew up back in plymouth. we moved there at the very tail end of the so-called ‘massachusetts miracle’, in time to buy high (after selling low in new orleans, woo-hoo!), and watch the economy go south literally and figuratively. and sure enough, the neighborhood went to shit. lawns went unmowed, shingles rotted and clapboards faded. faded toys inscribed permanent patterns in the grass, and playground equipment peeled and disintegrated. people moved in that weren’t like the people who moved out, chiefly in that they didn’t seem to give a damn. school bus shelters burned down mysteriously. of course, it was all petty crime, and of course, an increase in the rate at which i got threatened and/or beat upon on the way to and from school, but you could see trends. like the buildings fading and turning gray in simcity.
it turned around eventually, but i never made the assumption that suburban cul-de-sac’ed neighborhoods were in any way inherently safe or idyllic. the migration pattern of the indifferent and obnoxious doesn’t necessarily limit them to the big city.
oh, mittens (as wonkette calls him), you didn’t really say this, did you?
If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.
wow.
let’s forget for the moment his claim that he’s patriotically ending his campaign to forestall a dangerous, nay, disastrous loss of republican leadership for the country, rather than his own utter lack of appeal. instead, let’s just rejoice in the level of discourse that our great nation takes part in, politically. it’s no longer a matter of whether or not we agree or disagree; we either agree, or we’re actively inviting osama bin laden to trade his cave for the oval office.
i mean, right now, i think that hillary clinton could guarantee herself a trip to the white house by walking up to good ol’ willard, and punching him in the face. i really think that even ann coulter would say, ‘you go, girl’ if that happened and we’d all hold hands and dance on his impeccably-coiffed head.
this is one of those things that makes you just grunt and gasp for words that are adequate to explain precisely how insulting it is on too many levels to count. using similar leaps of logic, just because i don’t care for the patriots, does that mean i’ve turned my back on the red sox as well? if you think lindsay lohan is unattractive, does that make you gay? is opposition to waterboarding the same thing as being in favor of aromatherapy massage for terrorists?
now it’s incorrect to say that nuance is dead in republican politics. however, i did hear that reason, factual details, and shades of gray were all declared enemy combatants, and are presently being held in guantanamo.
i was listening to npr just now, and someone said something to the effect of, ‘there’s no difference between any of the democratic candidates’. while that’s largely true, from the perspective of positions, and general collective preferability to the loathsome and embarrassing administration currently in the white house, there is one difference that concerns me.
i’ll be fine, frankly, with either hillary clinton or barack obama. both of them carry with them the promise of a presidency that we need not be ashamed of. i think that clinton is the better qualified of the two, but i think that obama is more electable (i.e. half the country doesn’t spit when saying his name). i would put either of them in office over a republican with a smile on my face.
the one thing that gives me pause though, is the pattern that electing hillary clinton would establish. our country was founded by people who were pretty darned tired of dynastic, hereditary rule, and while we’re still able to vote democratically, it’s not that simple. there’s a softer form of succession going on now, born of money, familiarity, and connections. bush the second was an easier sell because we knew bush the first, and it won’t be a surprise to have to contemplate a president jeb someday. and even though it’s wrong to compare hillary clinton to george w. bush, they are alike in that their road to the white house was greased by our already knowing their name.
it’s not monarchy, it’s branding. for the same reasons tv shows have spinoffs, the same reason times square is now a bigger, pricier version of your standard strip mall, the same reason the cookie aisle reduced to variants on oreos and chips ahoy, we someday run the risk of being sold what we’ve shown that we’ve wanted over and over again.
one hopes that we’ll still be able to pick a person, not a brand.
on the other hand, we could all be talking about president huckabee a year from now. the horror.
