Do we really hate each other?

Holy mackerel, every time I’m about to post about what’s going on in the election, another ridiculous thing happens. Why just this week…
- Famous conservatives jump ship to endorse Obama.
- Colin Powell, the only man in the White House who didn’t want to invade Iraq, endorses Obama and is dismissed by McCain because he's got the support of plenty of other military folks.
- Joe the Plumber turns out to be a fraud in every way but Palin's still chanting his name at rallies.
- The McCain camp continues to call Obama a terrorist and supporters at a rally in Minnesota held signs comparing him to Charles Manson.
- Palin is suddenly a feminist and shows up at a rally with a cadre of Clinton supporters despite the fact that NOW and Hilary herself have endorsed Obama.
- A Republican club in California mails out a racist anti-Obama flyer and makes one of their members cry for 45 minutes.
- Palin makes an appearance on SNL and Alec Baldwin, who made fun of her on Bill Maher only a week before, tells her she’s hotter in person.

I mean, you can’t make up stuff like this! It’s juicier than any TV show. Once again, this election has brought out the worst behavior and the ugliest thoughts of the Americans. But here's what’s really disturbing to me. Last night I saw these videos from the Alfred E. Smith annual charity dinner that all these people were at: McCain, Obama, and Hilary Clinton. It's traditional during election years for the candidates to roast themselves/each other, so John McCain gets up there and makes jokes about replacing his staff with Joe the Plumber and hiring him to work on his seven houses while Barack Obama makes jokes about his middle name really being Steve and how he wasn't really born in a manger, and they both joke about Hilary voting for McCain. They make jokes about Acorn registering Mickey Mouse and are all cracking up at each other; they can barely contain themselves.

So here they are, really, making fun of all of us for getting sucked into the bullshit: Democrats versus Republicans, us versus them, everyone calling each other ignorant and stupid and even the candidates call us names. And all the while, this is just what they do to win. It doesn’t mean anything. McCain doesn't REALLY think Obama is a terrorist; it's just a campaign tactic and Obama knows it. They oh-so-casually make stuff up about themselves, relying on the fact that we'll use it to make assumptions about how they'll govern. But while Americans are hating each other and fighting over this stuff, these guys go to a fancy dinner and have a laugh about it. At the end of the day, they're all buddies and they’ll still be running our government no matter who ends up as president.

Noam Chomsky said in an interview that if anyone is undecided, they should just vote Democrat because most people’s lives improve when a Democrat is in office. It’s that simple. Unless, he says, your personal beliefs are more important, in which case, vote that way. Then he said something else, about how public policy isn’t based on what the people want anyway. Politicians don’t talk address issues that are important to us, they talk about issues that are important to business and sometimes they just happen to be the same thing. For example, he says, health care has been the number one issue for the voters for decades. It’s a horrific system, totally broken, and another embarrassment to the rest of the civilized world that has already socialized their medical system.

Here we are being brainwashed, repeating “socialism is bad” without most people even understanding what it means. We have already socialized parts of our government and taxes are a form of socialism that, in fact, enable the American Dream and McCain knows that as well as Obama. Socialism is a red herring, it's just a campaign strategy to get elected. The reason health care is on the agenda this year, says Chomsky, is because big business is finally complaining about it. When GM says it’s cheaper to make cars in Canada because of the outrageous cost of providing health care in this country, lawmakers start to listen. See, the fighting isn't real. They just pretend to fight and disrespect each other so they can get into office. The two parties, Chomsky says, are really two branches of the same party, the business party.

I just finished watching Why We Fight, which is totally excellent and I highly recommend it. One point made in the film – which was also discussed at length in Gore’s book, Assault on Reason – is where was the fighting when it really mattered, when our Congress was deciding whether to go to war? The truth is, there wasn’t any debate. Republicans largely voted for it and Democrats mostly voted against it but they didn’t convene for a week or two to hash out the details and make sure this was the right thing to do. Not only that, they gave Bush the power to decide all of that for himself! They totally circumvented the checks and balances and said “Sure, the President can do whatever he wants in Iraq with our permission,” and sent us war with no budget and no exit strategy.

See, here’s what I think. I think people are angry, and rightfully so. We inherently know we aren’t being represented. We can’t trust our government and frankly, we don’t know whom to trust. We’re seeing our lives get worse and don’t know how to make them better. We see other people’s lives getting much better and suspect massive corruption, but aren’t sure if laws have been broken or if those people are just smarter than we are. We might also understand, although it’s difficult to admit, that for the last fifty years this country has taken whatever its wanted from the rest of the world and we’ve prospered even as we’ve fallen behind in education, health care, industry and infrastructure. The anger, though, has mistakenly been directed at each other as if all of this is the fault of people who don’t believe in God, people who hate gays or Jews or blacks, people who abort babies, drug addicts, perverts, socialists, because it must be someone’s fault, right?

This is, I must admit, the main reason that I support Obama. It's been a very long time since a politician has been so positive. He has managed to keep his head above the negativity and continue to call for togetherness and understanding. It's also a major reason that Colin Powell endorsed him. He says this country can't afford to be torn apart and I agree completely. Of course, the internet amplifies the negativity with its continuous critique and rehashing of every moment. Now a negative event doesn't happen once, it happens thousands of times. And people don't seem to need much encouragement for joining in the fray. But it makes me wonder yet again, if we are as backward as we appear. After all, we're about to elect a black man as our president, so clearly we are a progressive society no matter what the candidates or the media lead us to believe.

I had to post this

It's too funny how easily situations reflect each other, further evidence that humans keep playing out the same dramas, just with different players.



Replace "hobnobbing with crooks" with "pallin' around with terrorists." I also love the reference to The Penguin's "enthusiastic fans." Tee hee.

A freedom-fighting power-grabbing maverick

A few thoughts on the debate last night:
1) The whole maverick thing is baffling to me. The dictionary defines a maverick as a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates. Our current president is a maverick and look where that has landed us. McCain keeps talking about Obama's liberal voting record and wondering how he can possibly "reach across the aisle from that far left." I wonder, how does a maverick reach across the aisle? It would seem to me that a maverick doesn't give a fuck about the aisle at all, or about bridging differences. Palin said that she never compromised when she was governor, somehow things just worked out and she also said that McCain would give up nothing to accommodate the bailout plan. Both of those sound like statements made by a person who gets what they want (what THEY want) no matter what. No one likes compromising but we all know that to get anything done in politics (and in life), compromises have to be made. And with a nation as ideologically divided as we are right now, I sure don't want someone in office who is going to tell us all to fuck off while they get their way. Last but not least, let's have a chuckle over her description of herself, McCain and the rest of their camp as a "team of mavericks." Sounds like an oxymoron to me, a team of individualists? Interesting.

2) When she started the Reagan quote that "freedom is always just one generation away from extinction," it made me think about watching the mini-series John Adams, and how concerned our founders were about freedom. It's what our country was founded on, why people fought and died and why the constitution was so vital to establishing the new government. What they warned against and what our government is set up to prevent is a consolidation of power. They knew that unchecked power is the single biggest threat to freedom. We've seen that freedom eroded by the unchecked power of Bush and the most indicting examination into the record of Sarah Palin is how she has wielded power in ways that go beyond the boundaries of her office. But then she continued, saying that "We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream" and there was something about the use of the word blood that made me think "yes, but we do pass it to them in a stream of blood." Her and McCain's rants about how we're WINNING in Iraq but those damn liberals want to pull us out waving "the white flag of surrender" before we've had a chance to really fully kick some ass made me queasy. Fighting for freedom to me means fighting against the corruption of power in our own government, not killing people thousands of miles away.

3) Speaking of power, did you catch this statement by Palin? "I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are." I don't know what the last half of that is supposed to mean but holy shit, the woman's already power-grabbing and she's not even there yet! Did you see the twinkle in her eye when she said it? They're combing the constitution looking for loopholes that extend the executive branch even farther into the other branches than Bush did. God help us. She's a shark in the skin of a kindergarten teacher (with the vernacular of Ned Flanders) determined to have history remember Dick Cheney as a pussycat.

4) Last but not least, Palin said many times said government should get out of our way and let us live our lives but still believes it has the authority to deny gays the right to marriage? Actually, I was pretty dismayed that this was one of the only issues both parties agreed upon. How does shrinking the role of government and defending freedom fit into a belief that people should be denied the legal right of union? She said "Ameerican peeople" eleven times in the debate but I still don't believe for a second that she cares one iota about me. And what about her confusion between government and Wall Street? She mentioned the greed and corruption on Wall Street every time she made reference to how government has failed us. Unbelievable that she still can't make sense of the issue. You can't say you stand for smaller government and bash the players running the deregulated markets at the same time, jeez!

Biden, I think, came across like a guy just as capable as Obama of being president, who has his own opinions but is also committed to supporting Obama's agenda. He seemed comfortable and natural while Palin was running on such a high level of adrenalin, I thought she might collapse at the end of it. Did anyone else notice how red her eyes were? I guess she's probably been practicing twelve hours a day for a week and hadn't had much sleep. About half-way through, the whole thing turned into a big love-in with those two swapping comments about how much they admired and respected each other. Biden was definitely under her spell. Did you see Palin's husband hovering over her shoulder at the end when she was chatting with Biden? Hilarious! He doesn't trust her any further than he can throw her and, I'm sure, rightfully so.