Words From an Un-American Elitist

So as you may or may not have noticed, there has been a bit of a delay in my blogging. You could blame this on my being lazy but you would only be half right. Actually, my life has been quite busy for the last two weeks following polls and reading every news report on the elections that I can find on the internet. So yes, with this blog post I am joining the road of every other liberal blogger and opinion writer in America and putting in my two cents on the election. And let me tell you, with all the hours and hours of work I have put in following the election coverage this week I am left with one question for America. In fact this is the same question I asked a female friend of mine (I will spare her full name in case the Federal government is watching my internet usage, which I assume they will be soon if they are not already) one fateful evening when she introduced me to the womanizing-theater-douche-of-a-man that she had once been interested in. This question being:

"Really? This guy?"

I mean seriously America, John McCain? For me the presidential election is not even a question and I cannot fathom why according to the most recent Gallup polling data, Obama/Biden is still two percentage points behind Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dumb (though I am still working out which one is more deserving of the title of "Tweedle Dumb"). I mean really America? Is party identity that important? It seems to me like we have a ticket with two legitimately viable candidates, an inspiring intelligent young Senator with real policy ideas who looks to improve the lives of Americans and an established Senator who has extensive experience with foreign relations, versus a ticket with an incompetent war hawk who has spent the last eight years abandoning every policy stance he once held to get in good with the Republican party and a woman whose only qualifications seem to be that she comes from a state that borders the Bering Sea and her son plays hockey, making her a "pitbull in lipstick."

Oh yes I can't forget that. That witty little quip that made me cringe ("Really? This woman?") and the Republican base cheer. But I will do you one better, Sarah Palin. Here it goes America:

Question: What's the difference between John McCain and a prostitute?
Answer: John McCain doesn't wear a wig

Yes, the self-proclaimed "Maverick" has sold himself to the Republican Party. And the price? The American people. I for one am livid and terrified with McCain's choice of vice president. It shows that the old man wants to be president so bad that he would put America in grave danger to get it. Just watch the guy on any interview and you will see that even he cannot logically explain why he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate without mentioning lies or the fact that her state is "right next to Russia." Good God. Really? By this reasoning, the mayor of my home town, is just as qualified to be president because he must have intricate knowledge of political dealings with Mexico. In fact I have studied the maps of Alaska and California (yes it has been a sad week) and I am quite certain that San Luis Obispo is closer to Mexico than Wasilla is to Russia. So with that I am pleased to announce Mayor Dave Romero's candidacy for president. Yay! Romero '08! Ro-Mer-O! Ro-Mer-O!

But Seriously. We all know the reason he did it, and you can find this argument on many conservative message boards and facebook walls all over the internet: "but dude, she's hot." Yes dude, she is hot, and somehow this is supposed to translate into leadership abilities and foreign policy skills. Yes America, her tits will save the economy, end the energy crisis, and stop global warming. To me, this decision seems like the last act of a man who always wanted to be president and is so close that he will do anything to get into the White House. To quote the great political theorist, Matt Damon, in this interview, "it is absurd."

Now I know why John McCain did it, but what I cannot get my mind around is how America could buy this load of crap. No, this isn't politics as usual, this isn't even politics. This is tantamount to giving the keys to your new Porsche to a chimpanzee wearing a blindfold. We are running a beauty contest, or better yet, a high school popularity contest, for the most powerful position in the Western World. But I digress. Back to the question at hand: why America, why? I cannot understand how this disaster actually gave McCain a boost in the polls that has yet do go back down to its pre-convention level. I have heard the argument that she is "real," that she is "just a normal American," that she isn't "elitist" like Barack Obama. People like the fact that Sarah Palin makes them feel that "anyone can be president." Once again I must ask, "Really?" I for one do not want to think that just anyone can be president. I don't think I am capable of running the United States and neither would I trust the bulk of Americans with that position. This is what the whole election process is about. If we thought anyone could be president we would just draw a name out of a hat and say, "ah yes, this year the president will be Porky Pig. Good luck Porky. See you guys in four years, th-th-th-that's all folks!" But no, we don't do this. We have this long and intense process to decide who can be the president because it is an important job that cannot be trusted to just anyone (the last eight years notwithstanding).

What I am trying to get at in this rant is that I believe the McCain/Palin ticket to be making a mockery of American institutions and attempting to destroy the once-great democracy that was the United States of America. I believe that at this moment George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt are rolling in their graves, outraged at what has become of their office. I honestly believe that if McCain and Palin are elected, the American experiment as we know it is over. We will go the way of the Mongols, the Romans, and the Ottomans; great states that fell by the wayside as other states took over. Actually, that would be fine. Decline is part of the natural process of states. What I am predicting is something far more sinister than that and I hope you will bear with me and not see me as some nutty conspiracy theorist.

In the past few weeks my resident German history scholar and I have been discussing the appalling correlations with the developments of our present conditions and those of the fall of Weimar Germany. In fact, a man named Lawrence Britt has identified 14 characteristics of fascism that I have found correlate eerily closely with our present leadership. I encourage you to check them out here... no here... no right here. Included in this list are such aspects as "powerful and continuing nationalism," (we call it "patriotism" now) "obsession with national security," ("bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb Iran") "religion and government are intertwined," (I believe that calling the war on Iraq part of "God's Plan" fits in here) and "controlled mass media" (ie Fox news). Seriously, it's scary.

And I have watched the reports on the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and other late night talk shows and have laughed at the incompetence of the Republican nominees, but I am done laughing. I find how close these people are to being president seriously disturbing. I care too much for the real American values to sit back and laugh while this happens. I am not talking about these "small town values" that the Republicans are pushing, but the real American values of liberty, freedom, individuality, things that are represented in a couple small insignificant documents called the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. It is funny to laugh at the mess ups and ignorant baffles of these candidates, but it is terrifying to think that they are still out-polling Barack Obama and Joe Biden. On this point I will leave you with a quote from Hannah Arendt, refering to the early days of Nazism. Arendt's account shows the liberal media making quips and charicatures of the Nazi leaders while they gained more and more power: "We young students did not read the newspapers in those years. George Grosz's cartoons seemed to us not satires but realistic reportage: we knew those types; they were all around us. Should we mount the barricades for that?"

Sorry to get all doom and gloom on you like that, but I had to share my feelings and fears for the coming weeks. If the unthinkable happens and we somehow elect John McCain and Sarah Palin as president and vice president, I will know that America has truly embraced fear and hatred over freedom, and the United States of America I was taught in school will be if not dead, seriously incapacitated.

But, I hope it will not come to that. I am holding out for the lies of John McCain and Sarah Palin to be identified and chastised by the nation. I hope that America can get over the problem of race and elect the right man for the job. I am counting on the presidential and vice presidential debates to show flat out the incompetence of the Republican ticket when matched with the abilities of the Democrats and sway the nation in Obama/Biden's favor once and for all.

I guess only time will tell. On starting this blog I was not intending for it to be overly political, but I just had to get these feelings out. There may be more of this in the future if I see it necessary to write about. Thanks for bearing with me. Now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to my news sites.