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.