I may have to give up on commenting on American politics.
I mean, really, what's the point? Things have descended to the level where a major party is running a senatorial candidate who is incapable of distinguishing getting busy with a copy of Hustler from having an affair--and is apparently equally incapable of telling the difference between attending a seminar at a university and receiving a degree from one. The only "jobs" Christine O'Donnell have ever held are running for public office and telling college students that touching their naughty bits makes Jeebus cry-- yet the blistering idiots that have taken control of the GOP regard any effort at fact-checking this female Munchhausen as equivalent to a witch-hunt... perhaps not wholly without reason, given that one of the more credible claims she makes about her past is having once made out with a would-be Satanist on a sacrificial alter (apparently she wondered, briefly, about the blood).
Meanwhile, the bloodless corporate sellout who could very possibly have run for and won the U.S. Presidency as an independent has the nerve to wonder why the people who put their passion, time, and money into his candidacy are not prepared to do the same for the party he decided to place ahead of their aspirations and hopes. Barack Obama was by no means the candidate of choice for the corporate establishment (that would've been Hillary Clinton), but as soon as they realized that he was almost certainly going to be elected, they began the process of making sure that their interests would be represented.
Obama was always far more centrist than either his campaign rhetoric or the despairing hopes of progressives led one to believe, but by the time he took power the principal difference between his positions and his predecessor's on matters of economic and military policy... amounted to little more than the ability to describe them in complete sentences. His administration continues to prosecute an utterly pointless war in Afghanistan, continues to conflate the welfare of America with the welfare of corporations, continues to watch on in apparently helplessness while the planet's capacity to support human life is eroded, and happily contributes to the even faster erosion of U.S. civil liberties.
I am beginning to think that the main reason the Election of 2008 produced so few real results is that the Democratic Party has no real interest in governing. I mean, come on--in the entire horrific eight years that Bush and his junta held power, the GOP never once had the kind of mandate that Obama and the Democrats received in the last election... yet they still managed to impose upon America a radical ring-wing agenda that at this point appears to be permanent. I don't know if it was always so, but the contemporary Democratic Party resembles nothing so much as a dog chasing a car--neither one has the slightest idea what to do if they actually catch the object of their pursuit...and, perhaps equally, neither one has the ability to actually do anything with it.
Contemporary Democrats seems quite content to be the permanent minority party Karl Rove once envisioned--after all, if they don't have power they can wring their hands over the GOP's open whoredom to the same wealthy elite that they merely service with greater discretion. They can wring their hands, protest, and attempt to convince gullible voters that things would be different were they in charge--and on the strength of that promise, win votes and campaign contributions and retain what a lot of Americans would like to have...a job.
One of the more hypocritical criticisms Democrats level at Christine O’Donnell is that she’s nothing more than a con artist who discovered that politics is the sweetest con of them all. Such criticisms amount to little more than an elderly prostitute telling a young upstart to find her own street... since this one’s already taken. It would be a lot easier to take seriously the idea that the dangerously cute Ms. O’Donnell was a threat to the Republic... if the Republic weren’t already such a monumental threat to itself and the rest of the planet.
I was recently interrupted on my nightly walk to the neighborhood supermarket’s beer and wine aisle by a call from a volunteer working for the organization formerly known as “Obama for America”, who was contacting those who had contributed time and money to The President’s campaign in hopes of soliciting more of the same on behalf of The President’s party.
Because I was raised in the traditions of the American Old South, I actually let her launch into her scripted litany of why now--more than ever-- the Democratic Party needed me. Life more recent (and the impending need to select a bottle of wine) eventually brought me to interrupt her.
“No offense,” I said, “but I’m going to cut this short. You’re right--in the last election, I firmly believed that Barack Obama was the last best hope for America as a country... I still do.”
“And that’s why, unfortunately, you’re not getting a dime.”
