Thursday, July 10, 2008

Where do we go now???


Sorry for the gratuitous use of W. Axl Rose lyrics. I heard the song this morning and it's permeated every synapse since.

(she's got eyes of the bluest skies...)

I guess I'm easily distracted.

Speaking of easily distracted; What's the story? Do we "libruls" love Obama or hate him? A coworker of mine, who is a staunch Hillary supporter, accuses "us" of having voted for a guy that we knew nothing about (well, not me. I voted for Dennis... even though he'd actually dropped out of the race by the time the California primary came around... I'll explain that one some other time).

Michael Hart over at Urantian Sojourn astutely invokes our blog name:

...it is proving altogether unsettling for these various sub-groups of the electorate, having been so thoroughly and completely indoctrinated in the "Left-Right-Centrist" Meme of politics as usual that they can't see themselves defined any other way, to suddenly find Barack Obama is not following their calcified notions of what they think he should be, and how he should behave. A few weeks ago Karl Rove was all by his lonesome calling Obama "arrogant" and "elitist" (read: "uppity"); now the fickle mouth breathers of teh illiterate electorate are having to change their intellectual underwear almost every week, and they don’t like it one bit.
The typos are courtesy of the author (the big words too!)

Truthfully, this transcends the blogosphere. It's been lodged somewhere in the back of our heads like Monday morning on a Sunday afternoon.

(...pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by-eee-eye...)

So how do we rectify this dissonance? (see Michael, we gots dem big words too! ;) Is Barack's tacking to the center (or right) just pragmatism? I hope so. PhysioProf's post "Why Can't The 'O' Man Ever Shut The Fuck Up?" certainly echoes a lot of what I've been hearing from deflated democrats.

Still, is Hart right? Is this the "new politics" stuff that we're just supposed to become acclimated to? Or will we never recover from the assassination of Robert Kennedy? Never pick it back up where we left off - regardless of how many times we use the word "hope"...

The Fear now seems to be that the center is moving more and more to the right... making us lefties the lunatic fringe. Sure, I don't like what they're doing to the democratic party - but there are a lot of people who do. People who say they're in favor of progressive ideas, but vote for a gameshow host like John Kerry in the primaries... then bitch about how he just ran a bad campaign... and never had any real ideas anyway... but at least he doesn't blather on about the next 25 states on his campaign trail before yelling like a drunken pirate and pumping his fists on national television.

Maybe it's Nader-time folks... throw another one away for a hopeless shot at ending the two-party political system that's completely mired this country. Fuck Michael Hart, we'll make the politics come to us. Yeah, that's the spirit old boy! But once that door is open you've got the socialists, the progressives, the federalists, the populists, the whiggs, shit even the nazis will make a run at it. Pretty soon the Israelis will be mocking us for having too many cooks in the kitchen.

I guess I'm just confused... and tired... and vague.

The day-job calls... gotta go soak up some fluorescent lighting now...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Sal,

Back in April I cascaded into Illiterate Electorate one night, and immediately added you guys to the Sojourn blog roll, as the problem of an illiterate electorate has always been one of my pet evil issues. Before long Bradda dropped over, and in a senseless act of kindness reciprocated the blog love. (I've noticed you've been sloggin' the dog pretty much by yourself lately; did Brad leave the planet?)

Anyway. I could be wrong, but I think you may be taking my use of "teh illiterate electorate" above to be a reference to Illiterate Electorate, the blog. The "fickle mouth breathers of "teh illiterate electorate" of which I spoke are in fact, the actual ones who breath with their mouths open and their minds closed. The ones who are a smear or two away from believing Obama is a Manchurian Muslim and Bush is the greatest president ever. Not you guys, with whom I've noticed a considerable like-mindedness, beyond our affection for Hunter S. and an abiding scorn of Jesse H., and despite my pervasive religious perspective, and Bradda's quiet atheism.

I had a great prof like Physio back in school, who, like him, dresses every thought up in little fuck pants and projectile vomit accessories. But it did make it that much harder (for me) to drink the milkshake, and deal with the dissonance, er, cognitively. ;-}

The short answer is always no, you don't have to rectify the dissonance; it will always be with us, just like the poor, and the poor in Spirit. Still, it takes transformed individuals to transform the world. It won't happen with cadavers like McCain, who can still walk around, or cadavers like Jesse Helms, who are finally in the ground.

But breaking out of their meme, finding a new world-political paradigm, is only accomplished with a fierce, two-fisted kind of grip on Hope, and Obama has been fortunate to have tapped into it at an important, maybe even unprecedented cusp. I hope to keep writing about it at US, and I hope you'll continue to drop in and share your thoughts, both here and there.

Don't forget to use plenty of florescent light-block; that shit will fuck you up. ;-)

puddy said...

Hey Michael,

Thanks for the response... but for the record, I posted that one - not Sal. I'm not surprised at all that you mistook us as I've been posting entirely too rarely to show up on anybody's radar...

Also for the record, I fully understood and appreciate your reference to "teh illiterate electorate" - I intended to reference our namesake in your statement, but my lunchbreak just isn't long enough to address these subtleties in any type of meaningful way.

Thanks for dropping by - I am a fan of Urantian Sojourn - although I am still trying to wrap my arms around it. An ambitious endeavor for sure!

Randal Graves said...

Don't sweat the Dennis vote. He had dropped out by the time the primary hit Ohio, but was still on the ballot, so he got my vote. Last chance to vote my conscience before the Anyone-But-McCain Fest in November.

The thing that bothers me about any move, real or merely perceived, to the great mythical gooey center is whether it's even necessary. It's accepted, but the ones who crow about it the loudest are talking hairpieces and centrist concern trolls who feel anything with a whiff of right or left is an automatic death knell.

Funny you mention the lighting. They replaced some of the dull ones above my desk and now it's too fucking bright. Bastards. ;-)

Kup said...

Great points Mr. Graves...great points indeed.

puddy said...

mr. graves - ah-ha! another denny supporter... knew there were more out there somewhere. he might be a weird little bastard, but he's "our" weird little bastard.

puddy said...

not to beat a dead horse...