Okay, so I've been inundated over the last few weeks against my will with the opinions of others who, like me, have never heard the term "debt ceiling" before this year, who have never once considered the idea that the world economy affects our own markets, and that really, for god's sake, how much you are taxed is not the fundamental problem with our country's stagnation.
Over and over I've had debates in my head with the idiots who surround me (I work in retail in the type of store where you're welcome to come by and chat about anything, but more often than not the "anything" reflects the talking points of the most mainstream media. Also in this job we are, of course, discouraged from berating the customer for having political Downs Syndrome). Yet there is no safety valve, and no release for me, the person smart enough to know that I have a basic understanding of the facts and no real pivotal ideas and arguments of my own to offer the world at large. What I do, however, realize, is the complete insanity of the republican party at this juncture of our country's lifespan.
At this point, I don't consider myself a Democrat, and I'm not sure 95% of people in Congress do either. A Democrat in office, right now, is a person who opposes Republican ideas, but isn't completely sure why because so many Americans seem to be for them. He can't understand why his old chestnuts about hating Dubya just aren't quite getting the same applause as they used to. And he definitely doesn't worry about coming up with solutions. That's the White House's job, not his. Right now is hunker down and party with the donors time. right now is pray to God that Michelle Bachman doesn't mention me by name time. Right now is the long midnight.
However, a realistic Democratic voter, right now, is probably a passive-aggressive mess who wants to push people down five flights of stairs but at the same time recognizes that that is an unethical thing to do. He wants to urge on the social reforms that have taken baby steps since Obama's inauguration, but at the same time can't bring himself to offer any vocal support of a president who seems so hell bent on compromise. I truly believe that if someone came to Obama with the blueprints for a car with two steering wheels, he would say, "Do it. Whatever it costs, do it." If a democratic voter is lucky enough to be in a state where both parties are on semi-equal footing, I hope he's overcompensating for the vast majority of us poor bastards who are stuck in red states who can't even start a conversation without first overcoming "Michelle Obama looks like a gorilla in a dress" talking points. Granted, not everyone in a red state is racist. There are still the "How dare Obama use tax dollars to take a vacation" type of arguments. and the stirring "Did you know that whenever Obama is on television, the stock market goes down" bullet point. And the "Obama is spending all of my social security money, somehow, on his own, without Congress' help, even though the president has no power to directly spend money except in extreme cases like a war" tirade that always has me conjuring up images of Obama diving, Scrooge McDuck style, into a bin full of freshly minted pennies....because that's how he rolls. The average democratic voter has gone from the extreme highs and jubilation of Grant Park in 2008 to the rocky Healthcare Reform debate where they were called upon to somehow defend the alterations to a vastly complex system or suffer quick jeers to the most recently horrifying stalemate where their homeboy offered up $4 trillion in cuts in exchange for $1 trillion in raised revenues and was rebuked because he was the president and had the audacity to bring up a proposal based on his own party's core beliefs. Who then swallowed that rebuke. Then asked all of us to agree to disagree and kick the can down the road. BLEAH.
I say all that to say this: my current hatred of the present state of affairs in the Republican sect has nothing to do with hating "the other" for its own sake, or out of jealousy of a party that seems to be humming with its own "we're ready to rock and roll" vibes, or even just out of sour grapes. My current hatred of the GOP stems from the fact that somehow, beyond all reasoning, despite the fact that they have offered zilch in the way of applicable ideas to current crises, despite the fact that all 8 of their candidates range from successful by way of exclusion (Rick Perry) to successful by way of Attraction to the Crazy Broad (Bachmann) to successful by the way of we've never done this before, so let's give crushing, legalistic faux libertarianism a whirl (Ron Paul), these people still hold the upper hand when it comes to the national consensus. When they were the party in power, they were a foothold against insanity. Now that they are on the outside, they are somehow the disregarded Brand X that we have somehow ignored.
I don't know who is pulling the levers here, but to watch Brian Williams and his peers swallow bitter pill after bitter pill as they report GOP talking points or to read hundreds of milquetoast qualifying paragraphs appended onto the end of AP articles that shouldn't have been written in the first place is worse than sickening, it is mind numbing. To think that the United States, of its own volition, is growing stupider and stupider by the day is not so wild a thought. To think that this is accelerating due to a, bascially, stoned out of their gourds media and at the encouragement of Congress itself is horrendous. My only solace is that the republicans are so disorganized and frenetically anti-everything that they are attractive to only the basest individuals, and tonight's primary debate apparently underscored this fact. There are only two people who could really give Obama a run for his money, and then only if they play their cards perfectly. But what won't occur, sadly, is the nomination of one of the true lunatic goons so that Obama, for once, could unload his full fury against a worldview without fear of reciprocity and show our nation how violent Moderation can be.
Until then, I have to keep praying Jenny's prayer from Forrest Gump: dear god, make me a bird so I can fly far. far, far away.
(whew...I needed that. back to real life now!)
