Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Buck Ofama and Buck McFain

Sometimes I get so frustrated I just want to scoop out two thirds of my brain and become a blogging toerag, completely unaffected by reality or common sense. I keep looking around at current events and politics and I just can't see any logic to the way people and organizations are behaving. Neither pole nor the middle of the political spectrum in North America seems to have a grip on reality. It doesn't seem to matter how vile things get we just keep following the best idea George W. Bush ever had. Keep on shopping. We're shopping for leaders by how squishy they make us feel and rejecting anything that doesn't meet the most unreal of criteria. The brilliant guy with a load of relevant experience and the courage to make change... fuck that guy. We want the guy who looks dashing and just repeats the word "change" with no discernible plan to enact it. We reject one guy because his image has been dragged through the mud and we select another because he's a fucking bully, then we accept that as the definition of leadership. Mean and low has come to mean courageous, while calm and measured is the sign of the wimp. Boy howdy, that is some stupid.

Residents of the Canadian bloghovels have been tripping over each other to mark out their territory in another country's election and the sorry state of our own national politics is a distant afterthought. I mean really, how important can our own government be when there is such "drama" playing out somewhere else. Oh golly, who do you think is going to get voted off the island? It is all positively transformative! It makes me cry and pee-spot my kit at the very thought of our next president... that isn't fucking ours.

Steve Harper, this is your lucky autumn! Sure, you're the newly re-elected Prime Minister but right about now you could actually start eating those cute, little baby kittens on live television and nobody would notice. Your massive new minority mandate to rule as you see fit, untroubled by a pesky opposition, is guaranteed. The Liberals, for all intents and purposes, are no longer a political party in the sense of a group of elected representatives representing. Nope, they're pretty much a gang of irrelevant losers jockeying to see who gets to be king of the short bus, who gets to wear the the bright red CCM helmet of authority. You can smell the piddle from here. They won't pose much of a threat to your autocracy any time soon. The NDP are revelling in their new and improved 4th place and the Bloc will actually have some questions for you to answer but since they're all Frenchers you don't have to respect them like they were real folk. As a distraction and attention-span quashing device, the snap election was a rousing success. In 'n' Out scandal... pshaw, all of those committees, questions and investigations are yesterday's news and did you hear about Sarah's makeover? Squeeeee! ZOMG!1!

I went for a cruise through my blogging bookmarks just now and among my favourite Canadian writers, the vast and overwhelming majority were devoted almost wholly to current events elsewhere. Meaning to our south. Listeriosis? Election finance? Canada? Crickets. Not dramatic enough it seems. Are we really and honestly going to become breathless on the
Canadian left because Colin Powell is endorsing "our guy"? Really? If only Albert Speer had thought to endorse Harry Truman he could have had a cabinet post instead of 20 years in Spandau. Well at least Speer had the class to accept culpability for his crimes. And if "our guy" is such a poem, a transformative character, what in the hell is he doing promising a role for a creature like Powell in his administration? Like the old joke says, $20 bucks, same as in town.

Here's the thing, I'm losing patience with my friends. It is becoming really hard to write about our country's issues without having to scream at the damn kids to turn the radio down with all that crazy American beat music. I used to look at America with a combination of fascination, admiration and dread. So much energy, arrogance and compassion stirred by a weird greedy determination to get ahead. Now I want to break off diplomatic relations and build a zombie wall to keep the madness out.

America is dramatic to be sure but at this juncture in history, America is broken at a profound level. And here's where it gets hard to talk to folk. Barrack Obama is not going to transform or fix or even really try to do much of anything about the root cause of the damage. All of the hope, all of the dreams amount to no more than just that, hopes and dreams projected onto a charismatic guy. He is not John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And even if he were, he is not coming into power and prominence on the rising tide of a post-war economic boom of historic proportions. He is not ascending to take the helm of a nation at the pinnacle of wealth and productivity. He is lashing his ass to the wheel of a massive multi-car pile up. Step away from the Kool-Aid.

I've read any number of pearl clutching whispers by some poor dazzled souls fearing for his life, what with all of those evil righties and their bigotry and guns. Know what? If Obama wins and survives the inauguration, the honeymoon is going to be over really fucking quick. And there will soon be a litter of dashed hopes and broken dreams scattered beneath the wreckage of a crippled economy, broken armed forces and deeply divided nation. The twinkle is going to go out of all of those starry eyes because wishing don't make things so. There is no pony. There never was. All of the rednecked bigots will wake up tomorrow and they'll still be rednecked bigots except they'll be pointing their nose picking fingers saying, told ya so. With polls pointing to a Democratic House, Senate and Presidency the wheels are
still going to come off and that sumbitch is still going off the cliff to burst into flames. And when the smouldering wreckage is there for all to see, the real danger will be from the folks whose dreams were betrayed, whose hopes went unanswered.

There is simply no short term solution to problems the magnitude of which America faces. The culmination of years of arrogant hubris, rapacious stupidity and violent disregard are going to be paid off and it will not be pretty. For that reason I am half hoping that McCain and that psycho Palin actually win the White House. If Obama is half as good as all the weeping groupies believe, then he will weather four of what will be that nation's most difficult years and gain in experience and wisdom only to return to the field and fight another day. He is still a young man and his future lies before him. McCain is old and rotten inside and his lust for power is coming to an end. Let him have his prize and with it the full inheritance of the Conservative Movement legacy, shit and blood and lies. His team made the bitter, nasty mess, let his team own the results.

And let us return our attention, friends, to that which we can influence here in our homeland and country. There is much work to be done and troubles ahead. The nights grow longer and colder and we dare not waste them on trivialities and baubles in the pockets of strangers. 

UPDATE:

Just for the record, of the articles currently on our own front page, 30 of the 50 visible are directly or largely dealing with the American election and the players involved. It is a frickin' infectious disease.

13 comments:

Frank Frink said...

Only thirteen more days. This can't be over soon enough for me.

Lindsay Stewart said...

I sympathize with American expats living here but I really wish Canadians would become a fraction as engaged in their own politics. It is argh making.

Robert McClelland said...

I went for a cruise through my blogging bookmarks just now and among my favourite Canadian writers, the vast and overwhelming majority were devoted almost wholly to current events elsewhere.

Has it occurred to you that perhaps you're reading the wrong blogs?

Lindsay Stewart said...

well robert, there's a lot of things in the blogosphere that i don't care for. hyper partisan cheerleading is right up there too. the reality show election will end soon and i hope people will start coming down from the kool-aid high shortly after.

KEvron said...

"He is lashing his ass to the wheel of a massive multi-car pile up."

where as the noble man would hightail it....

KEvron

Prole said...

If you're referring to me at all, you do realize that I'm an expat American, right?

Lindsay Stewart said...

prole like i said...

"I sympathize with American expats living here..."

i do indeed sympathize and that is why i have tried not to be a bee in yer bonnet (a couple of one liners aside). you have a vested interest, a legitimate stake beyond the voyeuristic reality show drama that seems to have infected we humble canucks.

i will continue to hold the opinion that obama is a charismatic but mediocre candidate. should he win, i give him one term for the reasons stated above. if i am proven wrong i will be delighted. but i contend that he was pushed forward too soon and for the wrong reasons. there were better choices, hillary not among them. that is my sincere opinion and i know that you hold a very different opinion. you also hold a vote in that race. nobody else (save your fellow expats) on this side of the border does.

we have a whole host of problems to deal with here in canada and it irks me to see so damned much attention and adoration being poured into a foreign country's politics. we just re-elected steve fookin' harper and nobody seems to be the least bit fucking concerned, after all the "drama" is pasted like explosive diarrhea all over our media and intertoobs. find me an american website festooned with dion or harper flags and pins and posters and slogans and i'll be impressed. try and picture americans electing nixon and the left saying fuck it, look how dreamy trudeau is. it is delusional and incomprehensible on our part. i just can't wait until the bloody drama is over.

KEvron said...

ape, the presidency is more than just the president. look beyond just the man, to those he can bring to the table.

KEvron

JTL said...

I really wish Canadians would become a fraction as engaged in their own politics. It is argh making.

We know that, in a global sense, our election really doesn't make much difference -- so we pay a bit of attention to it, but not much. (Yeah, we should pay it more notice, but to be honest, nobody was exciting this time.)

On a world scale, though, the American election is extremely important. Sure, China might really hold the American cards with all the debt they bought, but the US presidential election is a race that everyone on the planet is paying attention to. Seeing as how we're (a.) right next door and (b.) a fairly global-minded country -- a million times moreso than the average American -- it makes sense that we're all fascinated by it.

Lindsay Stewart said...

okay KEvron, i'm looking beyond the man and who do i see stepping up...

why it's good old colin powell, war crimes enabler. and of course an obama presidency will lend heft to the democratic mandate in the legislative branch where nancy "impeachment is off the table" pelosi has worked tirelessly to, um, what the fuck has she been doing? roll back the usurpation of habeas corpus? nope. hold the telcos accountable for complicity in the blanket warrantless surveillance of american (and presumably all manner of extranational) citizens? nope, have some retroactive immunity. challenge the signing statements and unbridled executive branch grab for power by a lame duck retard president and his evil puppetmaster veep? nope. how about harry reid? quash any filibusters by your own side lately harry? hey fuck barrack old man, let's hustle on back to washington to take part in the big bailout of '08. bend over america! forgive me if my hopes and dreams quotient isn't busting with optimism for america. maybe i just need more bumperstickers.

Lindsay Stewart said...

um jtl, in a global sense i don't fucking care. in a canadian sense, entirely withdrawn from all of the hoohah razzle dazzle global bullshit, we paid more fucking attention to the giant, drunken maniac next door, clapping our little hands than we did to the sinister shits on our own campaign streets. barrack obama can't destroy our social safety nets nor can he reduce wait times in our hospitals or assure our seniors of their pensions. john, every moment a seniors moment, mccain can't raise, lower or abolish our taxes be they personal, corporate or capital gains. he can't introduce legislation that insures or denies a woman's right to choose.

steve fucking harper can and we stood by and let him be elected. we stood by and watched the idiot squad throw puffin shit, run smears and ridicules and leverage thrown feces into a larger minority where he'll sit untouched for the foreseeable future. we spent more of our energy putting up swishy rainbow emblems for hero barrack than we did fighting to stem the conservative reform alliance party.

yes america is important. yes america affects the world. and yes, evidently we are impotent fools who abandoned our responsibility to husband our culture because somewhere else was shiny. nobody in the canadian left has any right to bitch and moan about how awful harper is. not when we frittered away more energy and emotion on some fucking foreign exercise in mass masturbation.

canada is fucking stupid. blah blah blah america is so powerful important. bullshit. america is broken. canada has the big resources. we are oil barons. we have land and agriculture and fresh water, trees and mines and hydro. if we're going to be so bloody worried about global what nots, how is it that we aren't actively pursuing that global market? gosh we wouldn't want to upset the big goof next door by introducing competition. i mean that would be a free market and we can't have one of those.

how is it that places like dubai are building sky cities and sculpting islands and our citizens' average spending power and economic influence is shrinking. could it be that we've been so fucking impressed by the loud bastard next door that we've ceded control of our wealth and clout to the same loud bastard that wastes and squanders same while filling his corporate pockets to the over flowing. nah that couldn't be it now could it.

we are the easily entertained. look balloons!

Prole said...

PSA, it's not fair to lay Harper's election at the feet of your fellow bloggers. I'd wager that they did more to combat the Cons than anyone. Blame the parties who basically phoned this one in, blame the apathetic non-voters, blame the traditional media, but you can't honestly believe that left-leaning bloggers are to blame, that they sat on their hands and watched this happen.

The election here was a bust. It was beyond frustrating and depressing. The parties were a joke, winners included. They didn't engage anybody except backdoor party hack suck-ups like Cherniak. Most of the bloggers I read did what they could for the Canadian election, and worked goddam hard, not getting paid for it, writing in their spare time like we all do (do you have any idea how long it takes pale to make a video, between caring for 4 kids?) Plus doing what they could in their ridings, or at least what their pampered candidates allowed them to do. From where I sit, it looks like the only job would be pounding about 4,000 yard signs in the ground. Shit, bloggers did more to counter the Con spin than any of those asshat leaders did. We got down in the muck so they didn't have to get their precious fingernails dirty defending their own fucking honour. We exposed their Republican connections. We exposed their dirty tricks and bullshit.

So, yeah, I totally see what you're saying but I think your anger is maybe a little misguided. Maybe small-L liberal bloggers here need something positive happening politically to keep them from giving up, and feeling like they're part of the Obama phenomena is just the ticket. Give 'em a break, man. I know you think Obama sucks, but there is something deeper being touched by his candidacy, and it bodes very, very well for regular people like us.

Btw, regarding Obama and Gitmo: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/01/lawyers_for_git.html

Sorry, don't know how to make a pretty link.

Peace.

Lindsay Stewart said...

prole you're right to a degree and i am venting a bit of excess steam. teeing off on my fellow bloggers might not be completely fair but this love affair with obama still is not completely rational and i don't think especially healthy for this side of the 49th. perhaps it is just that the american political pig wrestling championships take fucking years to finish. i was sick to death of both obama and hillary long before she conceded. the kool-aid binge has been going on for month after weepy month. the impenetrable haze of static makes me want to stop blogging all together. sometimes i feel like the only kid at the arty who didn't do the ecstasy and i'm really wishing everybody would spit out their soothers and stop groping each other and acting like rubes.