I'm EMail Sniping With One of My Brothers
I’ve spent my adult life being the liberal, commie, pinko friend and relative of my friends and relatives. Understand, I don't think I am that, though I am if compared.
My relatives, I understand, they and I don’t have the ability to pick and choose. We are bound by blood and love. My friends for the most part are unrepentant right-wing wing nuts, smart wing nuts, but nuts all the same. My family is more subdued, not a nut among them, all smart, and all for the most part, disagreeing with the way I look at life, as do my friends.
But, for the life of me, I do not understand what is happening today in the world and its effect on this election.
We all jab at each other, thrust, parry, try to get the intellectual best of each other. This time around, the country, my friends and my family are becoming alienated, angry. We are looking for saviors and villains.
Family and friends, there are no saviors. Maybe we could all agree that there are enough villains to go around.
One of the things that is bothering me is that I don’t want to vote for Obama, I just could never vote for his opponent. McCain and Palin are all of the worst of the last thirty or so years of our political life. Polarization. Good and Evil. The big stick that that will beat their opponents, foreign and domestic into submission. There isn’t a lick of real difference between them and Bush/Cheney, other than the fact that McCain is probably smarter than Bush, and Cheney is much smarter than Palin.
Obama, with Biden in reserve, will make a better President than McCain with Palin as a quick study back-up.
But, a big but, neither ticket has a real clue what to do with the economic meltdown. Neither ticket has any clear direction for our role in an increasingly smaller world that we can’t push around anymore.
Remember back in the Eighties when the Soviet Union was falling off the world economic and military map? Remember USA! USA! “Do you believe in miracles?”
Reagan made himself an icon by calling the bluffs of a failed power. I think we are now the fading evil empire, evil in the sense that everyone else has always been envious and is now happy that we are having our comeuppance, other than the fact that we and they may sink together.
We have been living in a very different world for a while now. We are just becoming aware of it. We and our want-to- be leaders don’t know what to do about our new world, so we fall back on bromides.
We have lived decades on the idea that everything will always grow and get better. We’ve based our economy and our diplomatic policy on paying for now, later. Later has come and we have come up short.
I don’t have any answers. I am very unhappy that where we have been has brought us to where we are. We are in a world of hurt and all we can do is snipe at each other.
The title of the post? That’s my brother and me. We should be thinking and talking.
9 comments:
Oh boy! I don't even know where to begin ... but to say thank you for voicing my own thoughts and feelings.
It's gonna get alot uglier before it can even start to look better. And just today, I had vowed not to listen to any more radio/TV ads before the election.
*bleck* on all mud slingers!
Hi, Dave. My take on this is that it's really not about Obama, even though I really believe he's the smartest guy or gal on the ticket and the best organizer of talent.
This election should be a referendum on republicanism, which now resembles the USSR of the 1980's. We've had republican domination or obstruction of government from 1994 to the present, and our economy and foreign policy are in tatters. Moreover, minimal progress has been made on energy policy, entitlements, and education. And we paid these guys? For what?
This election should be about 1) accountability for failure, and 2) giving a majority government a chance to devise and implement a policy. Electing a republican president and a democratic congress would be the worst possible outcome - more gridlock and name-calling, presidential vetoes followed by legislative overrides followed by half-hearted executive implementation of laws republicans dislike.
Time to clear the decks!
You are wise to be reflective. If your concern is that neither has the answer the worst thing to do would be to create an absolute unchecked majority. The congress will likely tend more toward democrats due to sentiment like lifehiker expressed. With a republican president there would at least be some balance in power that would cause at minimum some converstation and debate. With Obama, Pelosi and Reid running things I can forsee the goverment heading unchecked down what could very well be the wrong path. In that case the democrats will have no one else to blame. This alone should be reason enough to vote for McCain.
All,
There is no good choice. My brother with whom I've been sniping sent me an Email that suggested that the problem isn't just with the to be new President, but with the 535 people in Congress.
The system is broken because we don't have intelligent representation. LF is right that the election is a referendum on Republican politics. Jay is right that a division of power is often a good idea, it is an idea that I've followed for a while now.
My problem with with the system, the Republicans, the Congress and my past method of dealing with all of them is that McCain/Palin will have too much influence over a lot of things that matter if they are elected.
Were that the GOP was poised to control one, the other, or both parts of Congress, I'd happily vote for Obama. But the idiots are at the bottom of their cycle.
No, my choice is to sit out the Presidential race or bite the bullet and vote for Obama.
What lifehiker said. I want to send the 'Thuglicans into the dustbin of history. Short of that I want to see them bleed.
But, that said, I'm not happy with the Democratic ticket, and I'm really, Really, REALLY not happy that the House will probably continue to be led by my own representative, the moronic Ms. Pelosi.
Recipe for real change:
First, eliminate all income restrictions on members of Congress (I suppose you can restrict lawyer members from practicing in the Federal courts... but that's about it... and, if you'll recall, John Quincy Adams, then a Congressman from Massachusetts, argued the Amisted case before the Supreme Court, so I'd really rather not have even that restriction.)
Second, abolish all campaign finance restrictions. If the citizens of Illinois' 9th District want to elect a congressperson who takes $10,000,000 from the Red Chinese, so be it. If the citizens of Ohio's 4th District want their Congressman using the phone on his House Office Building Desk to call potential contributors, fine and dandy. There will be only one finance rule: Disclose who gives you money.
Conflicts of interest will be cured by disclosure.
You recoil in horror at the prospect, of course, thinking that the crooks will take over the jail... but I ask you to look at the present representatives of the people before you condemn this. I think it will help dilute and perhaps someday eliminate the professional political class.
If you find the national candidates deficient, consider the rank ranks from which they are of necessity recruited.
If I were in my mid-twenties, I don't think this election would weigh so heavily on my mind but now that I'm middle aged and am watching my world and 401k slip away into the pockets of rich executives. Or wonder at the amount of tax dollars spent daily for the fuselage of naval aircraft shipping guns to the Middle East. Or watch sickeningly at my insurance benefits shrinking each year.
I am afraid that McCain will not live long enough to make any great decisions, I also don't feel Obama has the knowledge to carry us through this.
God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the Light from above.
Hope you and your brother make it through this. Remember, you have the blood and love to bind you.
Curmudgeon - I have proposed a similar campaign finance reform idea for years. Here is my wrinkle, the money cannopt be placed in any account where it can be used until the donor, donation date and amount are posted on the FEC web site. I got that little idea form W, who posted his donors in the first campaign on the web.
We work with non-profits and for-profits debt help alike.
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