Friday, July 13, 2012

here's a bit of heresy



Willard Mitt Romney being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America on Monday, January 21st, 2013 will not be a terrible, cataclysmic event.

It will be a drag, oh yes, but no toads will rain from the sky; no rivers will run red.

When Bush the Lesser won the second time (the first time he actually won, of course,  but that's at least eighteen other posts) I moaned to my father,

"My god, what is going to happen to this country?"

And Dad said,

"Hey.  We survived Nixon.  We survived Reagan.  It's going to be all right."

Wise words.

I worry about the Supreme Court picks, of course.  That's really the most lasting and potentially damaging thing a President can leave us.  The fact of the national security state (read Police State, read Galactic Empire a la Star Wars, read Orwellian Dystopia in the making) has been growing for decades and my man President Obama has done nothing to check it and everything to grow it and that's one thing I strongly disagree with when it comes to his administration.

So, Mitt's not going to make that any worse.  How much worse can it get?

That's probably not a question I should lightly toss out there; probably not a rhetorical question at all.

Mitt vows to repeal the Affordable Care Act, first day in office.

Yeah.  Guess what, Willard?  Not in your job description.  That's the legislative branch's bailiwick.

The Mittbot is programmed not to tell us what he's going to do when he gets behind the Big Desk, so it's all kind of a national guessing game right now, but seriously, look hard at that hard-working cyborg.  He's the most sane, boring, low-key guy out there.  Yes, he's an unthinking tool of Late (Disaster) Capitalism.  That's not a good thing.  Yes, he assaulted and humiliated a weaker, probably gay classmate in high school.  I'm in no way dismissing that or diminishing it.  Yes, he seems incapable of a genuine, honest, simple, human reaction.  To anything.  If a reporter lit his hair on fire and asked him to react, he'd probably bark out that weird laugh and say,

"Well, where's there smoke, there's combustion!  Ha ha!  More goose sauce?"

Many, many bad things if we elect this particular cyborg.  (I'm pretty sure that's unconstitutional, by the way.   It does say "person" in Section 1 of Article 2, but if corporations are people...  I don't know, I'll leave it to the scholars.)

And I'll be doing all I can to work to keep it from happening.

But let's all stay calm and be honest about it.

It won't be the end of the world.

 

2 comments:

  1. It's true, John. What you've written here is true, every word of it (especially 'more goose sauce?' That's true and funny). I know that electing Mitt Romney President won't spell the end of the world, it won't mean we've doomed ourselves to the End Times. (Oh! Insert promo for “The Apocalyptic Road Show” here – you’re welcome.)

    In fact, there are some good arguments to be made that President Romney wouldn't behave all that much differently from President Obama, who capitulated himself to the center right on many issues. Of course, Conservatives then immediately defined anywhere President Obama was standing as Socialism City. For three and a half years the concepts of 'Right' 'Left' and 'Center' have been so deliberately screwed with that our collective American sense of “political direction” is roughly equal in precision to a blindfolded drunken fifteen year old with an inner ear imbalance wearing the wrong size shoes and trying to navigate a crowded obstacle course. I digress – the point I was trying to make was that there is a valid case to be made that electing Romney will change the political landscape far less that one might imagine – much in the same way that President Obama continued (and in some cases expanded) some programs and policies put into place during the Bush years: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

    Here’s the thing I can’t stop thinking about: What would electing Mitt Romney say about us, about who we are and what we stand for? Hell, what does it say about us now that this is even a race, an actual contest? Because there aren’t enough skillionaires to explain Mitt running ahead of President Obama in one national poll, and while corporations may be people they can’t vote…so people who will actually be directly and negatively impacted by Mitt’s policies are willing to vote for him, against their own best interest. How…how can this be? When I look back to the campaigns of 2008, the emotions I recall are varied and not always positive (no, it wasn’t just cocktails and shiny Hope and Change bumperstickers, that’s a myth) but I know the campaign felt very visceral, immediate and personal to me.

    This year…this year the shenanigans attempted by conservatives have ranged from ‘Congress is Obsessed with My Uterus and It’s Making Me Uncomfortable’ to ‘I Think That’s Satire. Oh Shit, It’s Real?” If ever there was a time when visceral, immediate and personal were appropriate reactions to the political sideshow to which we are being subjected…

    Nope. Nothing. Just crickets, and the occasional nervous cough. I don’t get it.

    Why aren’t we angrier? Protest-ier? Where is the goddamn umbrage?

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  2. Umbrage would be a beautiful thing.
    I don't know, honestly.
    One of the things the last five years or so has taught me is that we look at most politics as a form of "reality entertainment" and sometimes we either just get bored of the same host and want to see a new one, or the narrative that they pitched us originally starts to waver and we feel disappointed or lied to so we switch channels.
    In President Obama's case, Axelrod and Plouffe and the campaign team back in 2007 deliberately pitched a remake of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" starring Will Smith. And man, we bought that one. They used that narrative to get the gig and then they had to actually govern. And it ain't a Capra movie down in D.C.

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