Not so Subtle

It appears that tonight, finally, the Democratic primaries are going to end, with Hillary Clinton admitting that Obama has won enough delegates to secure the nomination, while stopping short of actually conceding the race, whatever in the blue hell that means.

Now that the race is over, alot of people (mainly Hillary supporters) are very, very PO’d.

They have every right to be. People were calling for their candidate to exit the race months ago, and the media has trashed Hillary at every turn. (She has certainly deserved some of it, but the extremes to which the MSM has gone to degrade her are absurd.) What the DNC chose to do with the delegates from Michigan was undemocratic, unfair, and unreasonable. While there may have been no clean way to sort that mess out, the fact is that now the Democratic Party has a huge problem on its hands. Hillary’s people are ready to jump ship and vote for Mccain.

Folks, I have supported Hillary’s right to stay in the race until the very end, I have tried to defend her from personal attacks, and I am one of the last people who would vote for Obama, but voting for John Mccain in November is not the answer.

The only way to solve this may be to force Barack Obama to take Hillary Clinton on his ticket for vice-president. That may go a long way to bringing back her supporters into the fold, but it shouldn’t be necessary.

I am not a supporter of party politics. But just because you’re completely, completely disappointed with the Democrats doesn’t mean that the grass is greener on the other side. In fact, that grass is brown, dried out, rather disgusting, and the country is tired of eating it.

If they don’t put Hillary in as VP, why don’t you come up with a better response than just voting for the other guy? If you’re a true Clinton supporter, there’s no way that you can believe John Mccain represents your interests more than Obama does.

Or, even better yet, vote Third party and teach BOTH the Dems and the Reps a lesson.

 Yes we Can, but No I Won’t.

First of all, I am a racist fundamentalist who clings to guns and religion and could never vote for a black man and besides, I think he might be a secret Muslim communist sympathizer, who should have left that evil, evil church a long time ago.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are the real reasons why I will not vote for Obama:

1. Bad Fruit from a Bad Tree

The tree I refer to here is not his mixed heritage or unconventional upbringing. The bad tree that has borne Barack Obama is the Democratic Party. For one, the notion that we have to choose the Democrats over the Republicans because they’re the lesser of two evils is flawed and ignorant. If you got your political coverage from somewhere other than the idiot box or major newspapers, you might discover that there are a whole number of political parties, and if, God forbid, you do some research, I’m certain that you’ll find one that reflects your values more than the Democrats and Republicans, no matter what your values are.

The Democrats have failed at every turn to stop the funding for Bush’s war, they have failed to impeach a President and Vice President that have broken the law and the Geneva conventions, and they have failed to convince me that they will truly change the way business is done in Washington. The donkey party has had it’s fair share of scandals, and I’m not talking about oral sex in the Oval office, here. Once they are back in power, we will quickly be reminded that they can be just as corrupt, inept, and smug as the Republican machine. The party is a bad tree, and anyone who comes out of it can only be bad fruit.

2. Realism

The realism here is not what most people complain about in regards to Obama’s ideas. Many of his critics say that he’s naive for promising to end the war in Iraq, to bring more Americans healthcare, and to heal the divisions in Washington. I say that we would be naive to believe him. If you listen carefully to his speeches and read his policy statements, you will find nothing radical in his rhetoric. His promises of bipartisanship are nothing that a hundred slick political anglers haven’t peddled to the American public a thousand times already. Critics will say that he has a radical voting record, that he is by far the most liberal member of the senate. Other than his extremely creepy voting record on abortion, I see nothing radical at all in his proposals. He’s progressive on abortion, gun control, and immigration. But I don’t see Obama being progressive on the issues that really matter.

When you hear him wax on foreign policy, he’s so eloquent compared to Bush that you can easily believe that he will end our destructive imperialist policies. But he promises to do no such thing. Barack Obama has no intentions of ending the permanent state of militarization in this country; Obama has made no promises to address the military industrial complex, which is the single greatest impediment to our own democracy, and to the lives and freedom of people around the world. Obama speaks of managing America’s image and empire in a more responsible fashion, but he never has shown a desire to “end the mentality that got us into war in the first place,” as he has promised so many times.

The realism needs to come from the American people here. Are we going to believe that one charismatic man can solve every foreign policy issue we have, just because his name is Barack Obama? Talking to terrorists and rogue states is not a radical idea, we have been doing so for decades without any serious intention of engaging their interests. Talk is hollow when it is done from a point of unprecedented military leverage. Obama has no grandiose notions like nuclear disarmament or withdrawing the hundreds of thousands of troops that we have stationed all over the globe. No, there is nothing radical about his ideas at all.

3. Arrogance

The issue of character will rear its ugly head again and again during this election. I am not going to claim that Obama has any less character than the lying Clintons or pandering Mccains, but one thing I do take issue with is the fact that his entire candidacy is based on a platform of arrogance.

Talk to any supporter of Barack Obama and try to see if they can find any flaws in him. I’ve tried, and I’ve come up short every time. Obama has done a superb job of convincing us that he is the coolest fucking thing that has ever walked the Earth. The groundswell of his support comes not from people who desire a real change in American ideas and actions, but from people who believe with all their hearts, minds, and souls, that Barack Obama can fix anything. It’s a point that he has hammered home again and again by claiming he feels the most qualified in the realm of foreign policy, when the man has absolutely no experience in the arena. There is no doubt that Obama is a confident man, and people line up behind confidence like sheep line up to get skinned. My problem is that Mr. Obama’s arrogance has become the driving point of this campaign season, and almost everyone down the line has fallen for it, except for the radical conservatives who will despise him no matter what he does or says.

The media loves Barack Obama. The people love Barack Obama. But don’t forget that the person who is most enamored with the Barack Obama phenomenon, is one Barack Obama.

Ralph Nader will not be our next President. But I’d rather back a humble civil servant over an egomaniacal, slick snake-oil salesman any day of the week.

It is an unbearably hot and humid day in West Virginia in 1998. We are building a small flight of stairs for a family living in a mobile home; for hours we have been pounding nails, sawing, measuring, and sweating in the heat. “We” is a group of kids from Chicago on a mission trip to this impoverished state. The family is a single mother and her son, who have lived together her for several years. The stairs need to be built because recently the mother tripped on the makeshift staircase: a pair of cement blocks.

Every hour she comes out and gives us a new container of lemonade, which we accept gratefully and greedily. This lemonade is sweeter, cooler, better than the granulated stuff that we buy at Jewel back home.

We continue to toil in the sun into the afternoon, only being interrupted to shew away a snake which has strayed into the family’s garden. We don’t have snakes where I’m from. But here it’s not uncommon to be bitten when strolling through your yard. Here everything is a little bit different than back home. Us city kids are worn out easily by the labor, and the older youth group leaders take over the majority of the work soon. Inside, the mother is working just as hard, preparing a feast of chicken and dumplings for our entire group. It will be ready by sundown, she says in her friendly drawl.

Finally we finish the project. Four sturdy wooden stairs now lead up from the muddy ground to the door of their trailer. The son, Ben comes out when we are finished and he marvels at them after skipping down the steps in his bare feet. His mother comes out to see, and he nearly shouts:

“We got stairs, mama!”

I feel a slightly embarassing wave of warmth come over me when he says this. Maybe it’s satisfaction at having helped this family in need, maybe guilt over living in a two-story, middle classed mansion compared to their home. What strikes me is how excited Ben is over having stairs. The family has been living on food stamps for years and simple pleasures like a working staircase bring them the kind of joy that only Christmas usually carries along.

The poverty in West Virginia is real, and it is still as much a problem today as it was then. Today they vote for who they’d like to represent the Democratic party, and more than likely, they will choose Hillary Clinton, even though she has no chance of winning the nomination. There are alot of reasons why they will do this, and I don’t know them all. A great number of people will claim that they are stuck in a racist ideology, bred by time, ignorance, imbreeding, and poverty. On the road back to the school where we stayed for the week, there was a broken down stone wall that was spraypainted with an all-too-common message: “The only good Nigger is a dead Nigger.” We held our breath passing by it every day.

Racism is a fact of life in America today, especially in poorer southern states such as West Virginia. But I hope that Barack Obama’s supporters do not think that just because the people of the state chose to vote for Hillary over him means that they are racist. It’s certainly going to be one reason, but it is not the only one. To lump all of West Virginia together as a pack of ignorant redneck racist hicks is no more constructive than the claim that everyone who votes for Obama or Mccain is a sexist pig who loathes her and could never vote for any woman.

West Virginia is a real state with real problems, and no matter what happens with the voting today, I hope that we keep in mind that these are not stereotypes: the people I met in there were among the kindest, most generous, most genuine that I’ve ever met. The legacy is there, but do not belittle the people of this state by labeling them as anything.

While I don’t vote based on a candidate’s personal character, I know alot of you out there do. So let’s take a moment and examine the “character” of our 3 presidential hopefuls.

1. John Mccain called his wife a cunt in public. While I’m the last person who can call someone out for having a dirty mouth, I think that’s a bit extreme. He was a sailor, so you have to expect that, but still.

2. Hillary Clinton lies about anything she can.

3. Barack Obama is the most popular because you don’t know him. He’s a new face and we have yet to see his personal flaws, beyond the obligatory arrogance. If knowing that he’s Dick Cheney’s cousin doesn’t bother you, perhaps this will: it turns out that Obama has roots to the British Royal family. If you really want to get creeped out, look up the heraldic symbolism of the British coat of arms.

So there you have it. The establishment presents us with 3 options for the President:

1. The sexist sailor with a temper worse than Albert Belle’s.

2. The woman who is incapable of telling the truth.

3. The guy who has ties to the monarchy.

Awesome.

I really would love to list a full 365 ways to bury your head in the sand, or up your ass, but I don’t have that much time. Instead, I will explore the 3 most common and politically infamous ways of ignoring reality or lacking any grasp on the way things work here in this country.

1. Be a conservative who supports the free market but wants a border fence. These two ideas are about as incompatible as it gets. Opening up the market means opening up borders to anyone who wants to participate in the global economy; and the global economy depends on the cheap labor that immigrants provide, especially here in the States. The same people who talk about big government interfering with hard-working Americans generally use the same tone of disdain when talking about Mexicans who come up here and take away (white) Americans’ jobs. I’m sorry folks, but you just can’t have it both ways. The free market ensures that labor costs and immigration policies will be linked.

Today thousands of immigrants and their families and friends are marching through Chicago and other cities, because they want to participate in this great American experiment of democratic voting and markets. Are you going to deny them that? Well, you can’t anyway. A border fence cannot stop the flow of immigrants into this country anymore than it can stop the thousands of tons of drugs that come across as well. You’re just going to have to accept the notion that you won’t be fulfilling your life-long dream of being a bus-boy. The Mexicans have just as much of a right to be here as the Jews, Asians, Irish, and Germans that came before them. They’re not going away. Just accept it.

2. Believe that the surge is really working. I myself have fallen into this fallacy. But a temporary decrease in spectacular attacks do not prove that the strategy can work. There is no way that the surge can work. And for the inevitable idiot claims that I am somehow disrespecting the troops by saying this, I have no reason to even answer you, but the fact is that the surge is yet another impossible burden that has been placed on our troops. The reason I was opposed to this war from the beginning is because I support the troops who fight it. End of story.

The reason that the surge cannot work is because, just like the entire Iraqi mission, it is a flawed idea to begin with. Democracy cannot be forced upon people with a gun anymore than political reconciliation can be achieved through massive troop buildups. The violence has lessened since the surge began, but that’s not the question here. Without a permanent, comprehensive solution that is worked out by the IRAQIS there will be no end to this war. To expect the American soldier to keep carrying that burden while the corrupt, inept, illegitimate Iraqi government works towards “peace” is the true meaning of not supporting the troops. And for those of you who claim that we just need to give them more time, let me remind you that 5 years ago today, our President stood on the deck of a naval vessel in front of a giant banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” Don’t believe it for a second; then or now.

3. Believing that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John Mccain will truly change things. The very fact that these 3 candidates have come as far as they have proves that their interests lie with the wealthy elite, not with the average American. For all his talk of campaign finance reform, John Mccain has taken millions from PAC’s and corporations and hasn’t apologized for it. Barack Obama claims that he has stayed away from this dirty money but it’s only a twisting of terms; the truth is that he has taken far more money from corporate America than any other candidate. Hillary Clinton is about as entrenched in the Washington power structure as you can get, and all her talk about health care is hallow as hell; in 1994 she may have really meant it, but since she has taken millions of dollars from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

For hundreds of years people have been running on the platform of change and hope, and very very few of them have actually followed through. In order to affect any real change in America, we need to change the way campaigns are funded, and stop voting for a pack of bloated elephants and jackasses.