I brought up all the problems in his past: Travelgate, his bad political appointments (Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Lani Gunier), Hillarycare, Whitewater, Welfare-to-(not) Work, NAFTA, and finally, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act. I explained what all these problems meant, and that they weren't simply partisan nit-picking. Further, I proved how his administration was closer to being Republican than progressive. Even with all of these staring in her face, she found the will to utter, "I still like his personality."
Therein lies the problem with American politics: our electorate's chosen state of ignorance of the issues in favor of a mythical fireplace coziness with a candidate. The fatuous idea that the guy on TV could be your neighbor is paramount, even though every day you buy products by people (Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Howard Stringer, J. Edward Coleman) whose personalities you have no idea about.
Two weeks ago, I was hanging with my friend at a local restaurant over in Cabbagetown. We were chatting a bit, waiting for our food, when I overheard a few patrons next to us talking politics. I couldn't resist the chance to run my mouth about this subject to which I've become so addicted. So I asked them if we could join the convo. "Sure," they responded.
The people were certainly nice, and a couple of them were pretty aware of the issues, although they didn't know that Obama has all his policies PDF'd on his website, or that they've been there the entire time. At any rate, they'd been trying to convince their friend to vote for Obama. The guy, I came to find out, was aware of detrimental facts about McCain's record and associations, yet still not willing to let go of voting for him. At the time, he admitted that he was a McCain supporter but visibly unhappy with his choice of Palin. Ironically, he said that he couldn't see himself voting for Obama because "Obama," he said, "is ideological." When I asked him to explain that one, he couldn't. Which tells me that he is the ideological one.
When I talked to the guy last week, he mentioned that he's starting to accept Palin. He's getting used to her being on the ticket and he even kind of likes her. Since I'm a news nut and I'm aware of some really bad characteristics (such as not knowing her own party's policies, being a religious extremist, her charging rape victims for their hospital rape kits, and slashing the budget for the Alaska Special Olympics), I had to ask why. "She just seems so much more real than before," he said.
What is it with this? She seems "real"?!?! Really?? As opposed to, what? Cubic Zirconia? How about she has no idea how to deal with the economy? She's saying - on television - that she understands foreign policy because you can see Russia from the edge of Alaska. She even spoke of going to war with Russia with relative ease. Cold War part II is okay for her, I guess, even though we don't have the money to outspend them this time. Hell, we didn't have it the first time, but the debt wasn't as bad as it is now. She must want us to be the People's Republic of China @ America, since it's apparently okay by her to continue borrowing money from them. She also thinks it's okay to let Israel do whatever it wants. So, while our country is essentially folding in on itself how will we be able to help Israel?
Ideological voters are worse than uninformed voters, though both are equally annoying. Ideological voters know and ignore the better option in favor of some inane sense of duty. The McCain guy can overlook the history of the Keating 5, with the savings and loans scandal back in the 80s, in favor of just having a republican in office. Even though McCain will do nothing to help people making his pay grade.
Low information voters vote stupid simply because they don't know. But they equally annoy me because we are in the effin information age and they choose not to find out. The Washington Post, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and all those mags can report the truth all they want, but the dumbasses in West Virginia (1) don't read those, and (2) still think Obama's Muslim - even though it's unconstitutional for anyone's religion to even be up for debate. Not that the constitution is even an issue, since they're essentially voting for the guy they can have a beer with. (Even though they'll never know him.)
Just like the people at the table that night who were dumbfounded when I answered the McCain guy about Obama not defining his stances, by directing him to the PDFs on his website. It wouldn't have taken them more than 5 minutes to go to his site to see what's on it, yet 80 years into this campaign, they obviously never have. They could've even looked on Wikipedia. That site had a breakdown of all the major points for each candidate during the primary season. But clearly, America is more taken with a cozy smile than actually knowing the policies behind it.
The stock market fell 500 points for the first time since Black Monday in the Reagan administration, yet the IVs (ideological voters) and the LIVs (low information voters) will never know that it's the same failed policy that didn't work the first time it was implemented that has fucked things up again. They'll elect the guy who's all about the deregulation that caused this mess.
"...he has never departed in any major way from his party's embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline," as the New York Times reported. A decade ago, McCain embraced legislation designed "to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace." Sponsored by top McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm--then a Texas senator--that bill ultimately "helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments," according to the Washington Post. McCain's ideological commitment to deregulation has resurfaced multiple times during the 2008 campaign. Shortly before Bear Stearns collapsed last March, for example, the candidate characterized himself as "fundamentally a deregulator" who's "always for less regulation," and even as AIG faced collapse yesterday, he told Matt Lauer that "we cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else." (He's reversed his position now that the government was forced to commit $85 billion to stop AIG's collapse.)
Yet right now, we're basically socializing the banking industry. I'd think that Republicans would be blowing their stacks right now. Government takeover of anything always seemed to induce the red scare in the past, even though national healthcare is in our best interest for the sake of keeping workers healthy and relieving companies of those expenses. An underreported fact is Walmart wanting national health care. GM has moved it's production to Canada because they already have national health care. But any time they bring it up here, the Republicans scream communism. It's retarded. On the other hand, maybe the AIG bailout will actually help us move closer to national health care. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment