Tea Party Election Hangover: 30ish Days Later!
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[NOTE: I wrote this the week of the election, edited it about 10 times, decided it wasn't current enough anymore, and then, just today, decided fuckit, I'll post it anyhow. Enjoy! Post about WikiLeaks coming up next, but hopefully not a month late. 
]
So, the election here in the US was kind of a national fiasco for anyone who gives half a fuck about social services, equal opportunity, or the poor & darker-than-thou folks who are most often the ones in need thereo. Interior Alaska oddly did a bang up job of electing Democrats to State office, but on a national level… Yeah.
When the black Democrat can't fix everything the Republicans broke during 30 years of Republican dominated policymaking—in TWO FUCKING YEARS—it only MAKES SENSE to send a bunch of Republicans back to Washington to clean up the mess they spent most of the last three decades making! Even if numerous economists credit Obama's policies with preventing a second Great Depression, fuck him and his funny name. He had a half term to to fix shit, and my stepmother's neighborhood isn't all pretty-middle-class like it was during the Clinton years, so fuck off with the bum already!
Seriously, people, did you spend even five minutes actually thinking about who's been winning elections for most of the last three decades before you punched your ballot?! The Republicans had 5 of the last 7.5 Presidential terms and control of at least one house of Congress the majority of the time from 1981 through the 2006 midterms, and they spent most of it trying (mostly successfully) to deregulate the fuck out of everything. Hell, they even had Bill "Send Jobs to Mexico" Clinton's help fucking us all over with NAFTA.
And while the GOP has been busily doing their darndest since 1980 to defang labor unions, workers' wages have been dropping, and CEO pay has soared:
In 1980, CEOs made 45 times the pay of production and nonsupervisory workers. By 1990, the CEO-worker pay gap had doubled, with CEOs making 96 times as much. [In 2000], CEOs made 458 times as much as production and nonsupervisory workers. —commondreams.org (ed. The pay gap did get a little better as the recession started, but no worries, the poor CEOs still haven't dropped to anywhere near 1990 levels.
And of course the Glass-Steagal act (which had been holding Wall Street at bay since the Great Depression—roughly 6 decades) was entirely repealed in 1999, allowing commercial banks to get in on ridiculous investment schemes their own bigwigs didn't even understand. Clinton signed the repeal (thanks, buddy!) after it was passed overwhelmingly by both Republican-controlled houses of Congress. And in less than TEN years the fucking economy collapsed, again. On the Republicans' watch. After 30 years of Republican dominated policymaking.
Why would we reelect Republicans (or corporate Democrats), who've become increasingly shameless in their "fuck Regular Joe" policies, after all that? Because Americans as a whole have the memory span, political savvy, and native curiosity of hedgehogs. And that may be slandering hedgehogs, which are at least pretty cute, and probably more curious about their world than most of the current American electorate.
Really, look at the tea party rhetoric! Oh my fucking Socialist GAWD! He wants to allow Bush's tax cuts to expire (for people who make over a quarter million dollars a year)! MUSLIM SOCIALIST BASTARD.
Wait, what? He only wants to let the tax cuts expire for the people who can fucking AFFORD it?
That's right. Obama's hellacious abusive proposed socialist tax "increases" would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for couples making less than $250K & singles making slightly less than $200K. And after the cuts expired for the top two tax brackets, they'd be paying slightly less than they did under Clinton, and only marginally more than they did under Ronald Reagan. So take your Socialist Kenyan Hitler Muslim Taxation hysteria and fucking shove it, unless you're willing to call Reagan a thieving socialist bastard too.
Let's just reiterate that bit one more time. Obama's proposed tax levels would be the lowest of ANY Democratic President in US history, even though he's the Socialist Muslim Antichrist who's stealing all our money. You fucking blind morons. Fuck you. It took me 10 minutes to look that shit up online, and you couldn't be bothered to spend that much time thinking for yourself before pulling the voting booth lever for whoever Fox propped up in your state.
Maybe the Democrats should have saved Obama for the 2010 election, after McCain had let the economy REALLY tank. Maybe if the unemployment rate was at Depression levels when Mr. Hope We Can took office, small improvements would have had more weight then Glenn Beck's fat mouth? Or maybe it's just too soon for a black man to get much credit for anyfuckingthing in this country. I don't know.
I do know electing fucking Tea Party assholes sure isn't going to help anything though. To hear the jackals at Fox tell it, he wants to put the 1970s' top 70% tax bracket to shame, and THEN kill everyone's grandmas. Me, I'm still pissed about the health insurance reform shit, but I can't help but think, for a guy who's been trying to keep this damn country afloat against the biggest bunch of rational-debate-phobic filibuster-happy jackals I think I've ever seen in a Congressional minority, he's not doing that bad.
Now I guess the big question is, are the Democrats (Obama in particular) going to take some fucking lessons in modern American political rhetoric, and start giving the right wing blowhards what-for on their bullshit lies and elitist economic policies? Is Obama going to start bombastically announcing when he does anything that will help the little people of the US? Will they even listen if he does? Clinton managed to get reelected after a Republican congressional takeover (although if Obama starts pulling a bunch of NAFTA type shit to keep his job, I hesitate to count him as worth keeping).
Honestly, I'm starting to think that this country is going to have to damn near disintegrate before regular people start noticing they've been had. Because when you can be called "un-American" for eight years for disagreeing with one President (even though he barely & questionably won his elections), and then be called "un-American" for supporting the next President (who won by a healthy margin, but apparently ran for the "wrong" party), I really don't know how much hope there is for the US political system. Republicans act like they should own the government by birthright, regardless of the fact that our political system was designed to take advantage of dissent and disagreement to hopefully find a sensible middle ground.
In summary, FUCK the two party system.
Postscript:
I have been asked before, via email, to settle a bet whether or not I am a man-hating minority lesbian, because I bitch about racism & sexism. I'm actually a white female with predominantly male friends who loves cock. Given the content of this article, I'd also like to preemptively point out I'm a natural-born US citizen, with a political science degree and no communist or terrorist allegiances. I also happen to believe dissent should be held up as one of the foundational principles of the US, kinda like the right to bear arms. So you can take your "love it or leave it" and "we're taking our country back" bullshit and shove it so far up your ass, you choke. Thanks.
Alphabitch, you are so incredibly right on, as always. It is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the average amerikan.
15th December 2010 at 6:18 pm | permalink |And I'll be damned if I have any clue what to do about it. :-/
15th December 2010 at 8:30 pm | permalink |You make valid points AB. I wish I had some clue as to how to get more Americans involved in the voting process.
16th December 2010 at 7:32 pm | permalink |More Americans? Christ, we need to make sure the ones already voting are factually informed first! lol
*sigh* If I don't laugh, I'd cry.
17th December 2010 at 1:38 am | permalink |i also suspect that as long as large numbers of people are not in imminent danger of starvation (or otherwise seriously inconvenienced) .. they are unlikely to suddenly start thinking. and even then, it's questionable.
democracy still strikes me as an experiment with uncertain outcome.
17th December 2010 at 4:22 am | permalink |Benevolent dictatorship is unquestionably the most efficient form of government, but it's kinda hard to ensure benevolence… Then again, anyone who thinks the US government is benevolent toward anyone but the multi-millionaire & up crowd is lying to themselves.
17th December 2010 at 6:55 pm | permalink |I think of American politics compared to British politics and am reminded of the OldSpice commercials with Britain being the one on the horse/boat.
"Look at me. Now look at you own electorate. Now look at me. Now look at your own electorate." Granted, I'm not making the argument that some chav scouser or manc is going to be able to explain the power sharing agreement between the Tories and Lib-Dems, but on the whole, Brits tend to be a bit more politically aware than do us Yanks.
9th January 2011 at 6:21 am | permalink |I went to a biker rally in the Midlands one year. If you want to talk to someone about world history or international relations, talk to a british biker. Except for history and poli sci majors, I think they averaged greater comprehension than most US college graduates.
11th January 2011 at 5:38 pm | permalink |I sure as fuck did not vote for any TP candidate (or even for any Repuglican).
Still, as a former ardent supporter of Obama, I won't be supporting him again. Why? Guantanamo. Afghanistan. Iraq (still!). USA Patriot Act (again!). Rendition (Still!). GMO (and Mr. GMO, Tom Vilsack as DoA Secretary). That Public Option-Free so-called Health Care Reform Law that hands everything over to the same insurance companies that have been screwing us all along).
I could go on, but shy should I? We thought we were electing a visionary, but what we were electing was a mainstream factotum.
28th January 2011 at 5:59 pm | permalink |PS — I get really turned on by Poly-Sci Degree-holding women with strong views.
28th January 2011 at 6:04 pm | permalink |So, you'll just give an effective vote to whoever the Republican candidate is by not voting?
30th January 2011 at 5:27 pm | permalink |You know, there was a time when I was opposed to voting. My rationale at the time was that it was morally repugnant to participate in a system which only offered up those candidates best able to take advantage of lobbyists, corporate influence, and perpetuation of the status quo. In my view, participation was tacit approval of a corrupt system and the candidates it produced (ever wonder why turnout among minorities is always so low?).
My view has changed over the years after watching George Bush be elected due, in part, to voter apathy, and also after watching Howard Dean's campaign implode over something as politically insignificant as an isolated mic. Today, I see voting is a necessity in order to fight the stupidity of an electorate with the collective intelligence of a pitchfork mob (GOP and hyper-partisan loonies) and the leaders who egg them on (Palin, Bachmann, Beck, et al.). It is impossible to change the system from the outside by not voting or the use of wishes and fairy dust.
To the disillusioned who are willing to vote Republican or not vote at all because Obama isn't the messiah you wanted, I'd say "Grow the fuck up." Political change takes a long time. The GOP has slanted the national conversation so far to the right that the "center" today is yesterday's conservatism. Political change takes a long time to effect, and there is a lot of damage from the last 40 years that needs to be undone. (Side note: Look at the GOP stalwarts today, the really nasty ones like Rove, Cheney, Armey, Rumsfeld, Buchanan, and on and on. Look at their histories and you'll notice that a lot of them trace their political roots back to Nixon and his bare-knuckled, dirty politics. They were born of Goldwater and Buckley, raised by Nixon and Reagan, and came into their own under Bush. And they've now spawned their own legacy with a whole new generation of political miscreants spewing empty political platitudes and who see politics as only about winning and enforcing their views upon the world.)
Before you can start to look for the viable progressive alternative to Obama, the national dialogue needs to first be changed to a point where we can actually discuss reasonable ideas instead of having to mount a full-scale assault to defend against the latest manifest ignorance uttered by Snowbilly Sue and the retard from Minnesota.
1st February 2011 at 7:31 am | permalink |