Talk About Your Angst!

Well, here we are . . . what is it? . . about six days out from what I'm thinking is the most important election of my lifetime. Any election involving Nixon, Reagan, or either of the Bush gangster family was, of course, important, but this one - whew! After eight years of so thoroughly screwing up everything they touched, I am on pins and needles waiting to see if we get a brand new start at fixing things, or if we get something possibly worse than George Bush.

I think I need to explain something too. Although I take the position George Bush and his administration screwed up everything they touched, I think it's important to note they did exactly what they had planned to do all along. The failures were not truly failures, as they fit into the general plan. Don't think for one moment these criminals weren't working toward the dream so famously articulated by Grover Norquist when he said his goal was to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

I have no doubt that is exactly what has been going on, especially when government means services for the people, as opposed to handouts for the well-connected. We have witnessed the most massive re-distribution of national wealth, certainly in my lifetime. Now, perhaps, we can see some of that bleeding stanched.

Six more days! I am on pins and needles. We so desperately need to take this nation in another direction; to back away from the arrogant unilateralism and the move toward the so-called "unitary executive"; the use of torture and the spying on our own citizens; and the outright flaunting of the Constitution when it serves the narrow interests of the administration.

Obama has created one of the flattest campaign organizations ever, thanks in large part to his team's understanding and use of information technology. Let's see if they can translate this knowledge into a new politics of engagement and involvement . . . and - dare I say - democracy.

Cranky

Checking out Disqus

Just associated a commenting service with my blog - Disqus; not that I expect to get many - if any - comments on my posts, but just because I wanted to sign up for the service to see what it was all about. I noticed Dion Hinchcliffe offers it as an option for signing in. Now I need to learn how to make it work and, better yet, what it does once I've ensured it's working. Hence, this rather terse entry. This is probably something I should really get used to doing.

Throw the Bastards Out!

So, here's the deal. The Republicans have all but had a lock on every branch of the government for the last close to eight years, and what have they done for us? On every level I can think of (and probably some I haven't even considered) they have made things worse. Our standing in the community of nations may have never been worse, thanks to the use of torture and extraordinary rendition, the abuse of power, the curtailing of civil rights (including wholesale spying on citizens); our economy, now besieged by the ever-growing loss of jobs, the sub-prime greedfest, and the implosion of Wall Street, is pretty much in that tank and now those of us who can least afford it - and have benefited the least from the excesses of these Republican dominated years of deregulation - are going to have to pony up the money and resources to bail out the very crooks who we were led to believe would (thanks to the "wisdom" of the market) be prudent stewards of our economy. Need I go on?

Now we have an opportunity to change the game - to vote the worst of these fools out of office and replace them with Democrats. Now, there is really no love lost between the Democrats and me. I think Ralph Nader was at least partially right when he described them as two sides of the same coin. They all, after all, will defend to the death (probably ours, not theirs) the righteousness and efficacy of Capitalism, regardless of ever-growing evidence of its predatory nature and its penchant for consolidation and monopoly.

However, given a choice between the likes of Grover Norquist (who famously said he wished to shrink government to the size where he could drown it in a bathtub) and his ilk, and the possibility of a nanny-state where bloated bureaucracy and wasteful spending runs a bit rampant, I'm inclined to think I'd prefer the latter. At the very least, more of our children would stand a chance of being well educated and we could ensure everyone in the country had health care. This may seem somewhat ridiculous to those who believe self-reliance is the paramount virtue in this life.

However, I think if one takes a systemic view of not only the nation, but also its place in the world community, making a priority of taking care of everyone; of removing some of the pain and uncertainty - and the unnecessary competition for what are not scarce resources - from the daily lives of all our people, it would go a long way toward creating greater security and that oft-referred-to domestic tranquility most of us crave. At least those of us who don't wish to live in gated communities and lock our car doors whenever we drive through the city.

So . . . I say we give the Democrats a chance to fuck things up which, I have no doubt, they will almost certainly do. As I said, given the choice between the greed and corruption, and the zero-sum, no holds barred, Social Darwinism of the far right, and the pork barrel corruption and bureaucratic tendencies of the not-so-far right, I think we stand a better chance of having decent lives and a safer, more secure nation.

PS - I find it interesting people who don't believe in evolution find it so easy to apply Social Darwinism when it suits their avaricious needs.