Frustration with (and without) Representation

I just got back from voting and I can’t shake a feeling of anger and frustration. I feel angry that these four jokers are the best we can do. Seriously? This is the best we can do? The mightiest, wealthiest, and arguably most egalitarian nation in the ENTIRE history of the world, and these are our options? I feel like a Scandinavian prince who, in the land of beautiful women, sends official word that I will be holding auditions to pick my princess, and, inexplicably, the only two candidates who show up on the appointed day are my grandma’s best friend and a dude. And the dude isn’t even handsome or pleasant. WTH (“h” for hud)?????

Back to the Future president:

On the one hand I can pick a total rookie who has chosen as his successor the biggest goofball we have seen in public life since Jerry Lewis retired (the latter of who, to his credit, was actually trying to be laughed at). Now this rookie has an obviously high IQ, is possessed of an admirable degree of intellectual honesty (for a politician) and curiosity, has a gift for social inspiration, and is apparently adept at political strategy and organization. Then you have his many liabilities, the captain of which is his HAVING DONE NOTHING OF HIGH-LEVEL SIGNIFICANCE EVER IN HIS LIFE! Nothing. We’re going to elect him because he’s young, charismatic, eloquent, and very originally wants change. And the fact that he’s black doesn’t hurt. He could turn out, like almost all other dem presidents since Truman, to be a more conservative executive in this center-right country than his past experience indicates. Or, he could turn out to be what the Hannity/Coulter bodagets would have us fear; a couple clicks away from a European neosocialist. Honestly, either is absolutely plausible and we just can’t tell because, for the average voter, 1. There is very little Obama history to look to as precedent, and 2. what record and personal history there is has been largely obfuscated or totally ignored by a mainstream media that seems to have decided that suspending their jobs as dispassionate journalists for a time in order to achieve the greater good of getting this demigod elected, is more than justified. Billy C. was right. This is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.

Or we can pick a very obnoxious, immature, emotionally unstable , vindictive, arrogant septuagenarian who has made one of the stupidest, pandering, political, short-sighted VP picks in American history. This man has run a deplorable, shameless, disorganized, “erratic,” and often blatantly dishonest general election campaign. He is known for letting his anger and spite take control at a significant political cost. I don't trust this guy with the nukes key. Don't trust him with the most powerful military in history. Don't trust him to be open minded and smart and calm. He has recently shattered the only two reasons I used to like him (1. acting out his conscience independently, with comparatively little regard for political consequences, and 2. decent, steady judgment) by displaying a disingenuous willingness to do and say anything to get elected, and by picking the aforementioned vapid, uninformed, right-wing-pandering, stuttering, anti-intellectual S.P. as his number 2. If Sarah Palin is the future of the party, I’m moving to Somalia. I’m so sick of the conservative ideology and Republican Party being too greatly influenced/tainted by the uneducated, reactionary, largely evangelical right wing of the party. I’m sick of our coonskin cap-clad political cousin Jethro speaking for the whole family. It irks me to no end that these people sank Romney—by far the best chance this country had at some stability, constructive change, and intelligent policy—for no other reason than that they are staggeringly ignorant and contemptuous of other.

In other words, there is a 100% chance that I will wake up November 5^th, learn who won, and be depressed. That sucks. How I long for the good ol’ days of Hoover and Carter.

Christian