13
Sep
2008
In which we confess our love of uplift and the bright future
Continuing from where we left off, which was with the explanation that however poorly you may think of politicians, you are, unless burdened with a constant and absolutely crushing sense of impending doom, nowhere near the awful truth. The reason politicians get away with what they do is that recognizing what they do is the exact opposite of a survival trait. You can’t live with it and what you extrapolate from it.
Avedon Carol quotes lately from Fred Clark on the latter’s long struggle against people who perpetuated the bizarre notion that the Proctor & Gamble logo represented a Satanic bargain that the company’s president once admitted, on national TV, to striking. Here’s what Fred had to say about the people who promoted the rumor.
No one could be honestly misled by such a story. The only way to have been misled by it is dishonestly — which is to say deliberately, willingly and willfully. They are claiming to believe a foolish thing, but they are not guilty of foolishness. They are guilty of malice. They are just plain guilty.
That’s a better summary of my current thinking toward Democrats than any among the considerable number of paragraphs I’ve devoted to the topic in recent weeks. It perfectly describes the people who voted to confirm committed ideologues as Supreme Court judges, and a stone-walling successor to Alberto Gonzales; who more recently voted to expand the government’s already considerable domestic spying powers and excuse telecoms from following the law; who more recently still announced their support of near-term environmental despoliation in exchange for far-off and questionable energy returns; who will in a few months announce their support for pardons of the current president and certain of his factota.
What Fred said. Anyone stupid enough to believe any of those things will turn out well for the country, which is its people, is far too stupid to have made their way into office even allowing for the low bar.
But we didn’t come here today to talk about that. We came here to talk about why someone with an essentially sunny outlook and a profound faith in the human capacity for good has been schlumping around badmouthing Barack Obama while audibly hoping for the next thing to the end of the world.
And of course it’s the “scratch a cynic” bromide. Disappointed romantic. While I never held the flaming brief for Obama that some did, it did seem to me for a while that he might be capable of getting shocked into becoming a good president. If, for instance, he took office during the next thing to a depression, with the country stuck in not one but two nasty, hopeless occupations, with jobs skidding off into the dark and home ownership plummeting and banks dropping like flies … well, maybe he’d fall off that old Dem donkey and wake up as FDR.
Instead, he’s busy turning into FDRnt. As little regard as I had for him, it would never have occurred to me to guess how assiduously he would come to work at avoiding the promise of doing anything one might call progressive.
It’s heartbreaking.
I want to be uplifted. I’d like to trust a politician who stood a faint chance of winning the presidency. I’d like to look four years down the road and see something that makes me go, “Fuck, yeah!” I’d settle for “Hey, cool.” Or even “Okay.” In fact at this point I’d swoon for someone who could guarantee a good yawn. But I can’t even get that.
So I’m mad at Obama. That’s silly, since he’s obviously among the people Fred Clark tags as “just plain guilty.” I suppose what I’m really mad at is my own genuine stupidity in hoping, even to the limited extent that I did, for a goddam change.
My punishment is to be told, over and over, that Republicans are just plain guilty of things far worse, and on a larger scale, than the Democrats. Honestly, this is doing nothing for my soul; I am attempting to learn to dance with my fingers in my ears.
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Weldon,
September 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pmSuggesting that Obama and McCain are equivalent (that is what you’re suggesting, right?) is like asserting that Gore would have attacked Iraq too. It just ain’t so. While you may not get what you want with Obama, you’re likely to get some of it. With McCain, no chance. But you knew that.
The only hope we ever had with Obama, was that if “he took office during the next thing to a depression, with the country stuck in not one but two nasty, hopeless occupations, with jobs skidding off into the dark and home ownership plummeting and banks dropping like flies … well, maybe he’d fall off that old Dem donkey and wake up as FDR.”
It is increasingly difficult to maintain the audacity, or foolhardiness if you will, of such a hope. We are left with only 2 reasons to select Obama over McCain: he is quite obviously much more intelligent, and he is not stark raving mad. It’s the same choice we had in the last 2 races, so I think we can confidently predict that Obama will win and McCain will take office.
September 14th, 2008 at 3:32 amWell, one difference is that Nixon was facing impeachment for crimes committed while in office. In Bush’s case, I don’t think he will be pardoned, because I don’t think there will be a need for him to be pardoned.
I’ll say this for Obama: his manner offends my intelligence a lot less. (Which is also a lot like four years ago.)
I didn’t quite realize that was a well-worn bromide. George Carlin evidently–I could’ve stolen from worse.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:21 amJack, no, that’s not what I’m suggesting, or saying, or implying. I think Obama is considerably worse than I originally thought he was, which you may recall wasn’t all that good, but not as bad as McCain–I wouldn’t be touting a McCain presidency if I thought Obama would plumb the same depths.
To be clear: I think an Obama presidency will be a garden variety disaster, while a McCain one would be a full on nightmare. The reason I’m cheering for the nightmare is that it might lead to an actual leftist government in these here united states, where an Obama presidency is pretty much guaranteed to lead to a Republican government, and one in which every bad impulse has been vetted and de facto endorsed by those oh so forgiving Democrats.
So in four years, following the first and only Obama term, we’re going to wind up with a nightmare GOP presidency anyway. Why put it off?
In Clarksian terms, the foolish things Obama pretends to believe are not as bad as the foolish things McCain pretends to believe. That’s not good enough for me. I think Obama will win handily, but he’s going to get his ass kicked by reality and himself and leave us all worse off than we were.
Keifus, I think a blanket pardon is the only way to keep him out of dock in this country, given people such as Bugliosi and others who will be wanting his hide once it’s not so well protected. There’s a downside, too, for him and anyone supporting a pardon — a pardon here makes prosecution abroad more likely, and it takes a chunk of the Fifth Amendment out of play.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:49 amGuess we’ll have to agree to disagree. If McCain wins, for whatever reason, your dreams of collapse and the phoenix arising are just that: dreams. Consider the last eight years. Consider the downside of your gamble. Freedom’s just another name for nothin’ left to lose? The state isn’t going to collapse to let the “new” arise and I think you really know that.
September 14th, 2008 at 3:59 pmI think it’s more realistic than that: if both Republicans and Democrats are discredited, and the country is more dysfunctional than it is now — something I think we can count on McCain to deliver — then some other party can step in.
Obama has signalled in every possible way short of simply announcing it that his administration will be unimaginative and intellectually corrupt; a perfect recipe to deliver the White House back to Republicans in 2012.
And, as I said, and as is really tremendously significant, the Democratic failure to punish Republicans has validated all the power-grabbing, anti-constitutional behaviors of the past eight years and assured that the next crop of executive branch Republicans will pick up where this one left off, which is somewhere we don’t know.
Obama will be facing an economy that redefines “nose dive.” He’ll have, I’ll wager, two hundred banks going down the tube inside his first six months. He’ll add hundreds of billions to the deficit in his first year through financial bailouts, and at the same time be spending more on Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush is now.
He won’t be able to deliver his pathetic little health care plan, or anything else that costs real money. He has repeatedly shown during the past few years, including since he began his presidential candidacy, that his instinct is to cut deals with the right rather than with what is laughably called the left, and we know exactly how effective and inspiring the right is in a crisis.
This is going to be seriously ugly. As I’ve said elsewhere, my support for the McCain scenario is heavily influenced by my frame of mind, which isn’t positive. But, I think my assessment of the impending Obama presidency will prove to be pretty accurate, and I want to innoculate against any absolution for what will be, in the end, a self inflicted massacre.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:06 amWhat new party might that be, the Bull Moose? That one had nothing to do with Alaska as I recall.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:48 amI’m sure Teddy had something to do with Alaska, since it is large and much of it is outdoors.
The key to the scenario is whether or not enough people feel sufficient pain to turn to a third party to alleviate it. That’s not especially arcane, and it really doesn’t seem much of a stretch to me that McCain, coming after Bush, could drive the country over the pain threshold.
Whether a third party would actually emerge, and which it would be, are questions I can’t really answer since I don’t have an actual script from which to work. I’d say the Democratic Socialists would have a shot on the issues, only they’re even less assertive than Democrats. Maybe the Greens could do a little something; they’re at least players in a number of other countries.
These aren’t normal times.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:41 pmIt must an be amazing for the pwogwessive Obama personality cultists. Not only do they get to support the MESSIAH, but they’re also granted the ability to foretell alternate futures. Amazing!
September 18th, 2008 at 8:37 am