The Case For A McCain-Palin Presidency
If Barack Obama is elected, 25% of the country is going to have a gigantic freak-out, arming their preachers with .50 cals and their lawyers with rocket-propelled grenades. Hell, they're already filing lawsuits on early voting, lining up the post-election objects to burn in protest, and making death threats in advance. In their private moments you can almost hear them wistfully ask, "Can a President be impeached for spending too much time in the gym?" For yea, verily, black terrorism will stalk throughout their lands, and it will all be extremely annoying, and horribly, hysterically bad. I mean for the period of at least 4 years when 25% of the population and 50% of the volume continually threaten to secede and publicly long for the good old days of Slick Willie.
But what if McCain and his odalisque Basemonger got elected through, I dunno, the Diebold Effect, or the weird vendetta someone upstairs continues to hold against America? What would actually happen then?
75% of the country would have a gigantic freak-out, arming their preachers with .50 cals and their lawyers with rocket-propelled grenades. Now, to my anarcho-syndicalist little brain, that might just be a good thing. It's high time for another Constitutional Civil War to set a few things straight. Like for example this confusion over the public trust and commercial contracts our elected representatives and judges have been having, oh, ever since Eisenhower (and he woulda known) warned us over becoming hostage to the Military Industrial Complex that's steadily poisoning and robbing and killing everybody. I take that back--actually, there's no longer any confusion, because there is no public (9/11, Katrina, Galveston, collapsing bridges, medical billing systems, collapsing cranes, and whatever you do, don't think of a Major Earthquake) trust anymore. Public trust is so far gone, the Bush Administration is getting dragged kicking and screaming like an angry drunken conservative socialist back into its yawning dead vacuum.
A McCain presidency would be totally unacceptable right from the word "Aaawwwgggghhh!" First off, his Cabinet wouldn't even wait to be formed before starting to tear itself apart. These execrable fools hate each other, they hate McCain (who hates everybody), they hate Palin (who hates nearly everybody), they hate liberals, they hate themselves, and hate means never having to say You're Sorry. In fact his campaign is busy tearing itself apart right now, making Hillary Clinton staffers finally seem like they were re-enacting the Summer of Love. However, the wrack and ruin would be really cool to watch, and I would cackle daily with the same destructive glee you can only experience when irrevocably breaking something very expensive, like sending a rock through an old but still functioning vacuum tube TV set at the town dump, or setting fire to one of those quaint covered bridges they insist on still having in New England. Because that's just what it would be like, only with a government.
But there's an even better, more awesome thing a McCain presidency has going for it. How do I put this...what if Marvin Gaye had it wrong? What if war is the answer?? People, and I don't just mean any people, I mean soldier- and spook-type people, would damned fast be wondering who they had to kill to cut this avuncular, ongoing, surreal disaster short. And it would just get more "interesting" from there on out. According to my handy actuarial chart on geriatric subcutaneous melanomas, McCain has at least a 50% chance of announcing his cancer is back in the next 3 years, that it's inoperable, and he's handing the reins of this busted-down scalp-hunting party over to the aforementioned Basemonger, she who believes North America will be ruled by a supernatural Christian entity named Seth. Which would mean, of course, that's it, bye-bye, the end, no more country. We'd have the Un-tied States of America. We'd hold this thing, this big and chaotic but very determined and process-oriented thing...and we'd call it The Big Do-Over.
Now, maybe I'm wrong here, but I think that would bring a whole lot of folks together. Jefferson said the tree of liberty needed to be nourished with blood every now and again, and our Little Shop of Horrors growth has never been so parched. Sure, McCain-Palin might mean bringing on a military coup, but is that not a compelling alternative by comparison? Not to mention, coups have worked out pretty well for a lot of South American and even a few European countries. This may be a little risky, but everything has risk, you know, like mowing the lawn has risk, like buying money market mutual funds, shopping for baby formula. Sky-diving.
Risk, schmisk. We're probably screwed one way or the other, and the fact is it's still not too late to unleash the cleansing powers of a good old fashioned leap into the abyss, and I sure as hell know my country well enough to know it doesn't want sanity--like how "McCain's just too liberal" for some of my classmates and kin to vote for, ha-ha-ha, speaking of sanity, but go ahead, you can do it if I can, wussies--vote McCain. C'mon, it'll be like bungee-jumping an entire nation! Vote for Big Do-Over! Vote for Civil War II!
16 comments:
Cor blimey.
LOL, vincent, I don't know whether to what extent to take myself seriously here. But I get the sense that we're in a high risk/high reward equation, on a knife edge, where it really could go either way. And that's if Obama is elected. With McCain it's flat-out guaranteed, and that would have drastic consequences. I suppose for you folk over on your side of the pond as well.
Let's hope for the best, shall we?
I infer that you believe that the democratic process is a polite fiction in USA, as in many other "democracies" in the world.
But... but... I think of South Africa. I know Obama isn't Mandela, and US is not an apartheid state, but South Africa surely did something bigger without bloody revolution.
There seems to be some information that I'm missing and I'd like it spelled out, as to a simpleton.
Obviously in my above remarks I'm ignoring your McCain/Palin dream ticket scenario, and referring to the more likely outcome.
The first part of the post is utterly true. If Obama is elected, there will be blood. It might not be his, but it might be, and a faction of America will violently oppose dignified multiculturalism as a general principle. It's a transformation that is both logical and relentless, and was staved off as an original constitutional compromise, but that doesn't make it any easier. White (mostly Christian) Europeans founded this country, and seeing it taken over by Muslims or other races simply will not go down easily.
That said, a meritocracy is much closer to the intentions and structure laid down by the founders themselves. Although privileged, although elite, they thought a system which rewarded life, liberty, and the pursuit of property (as the first draft stated) was the most sustainable going forward. So I think it will come through.
As to polite fictions, yes, the system itself is entirely corrupt a la the Soviet Union was. All dissent or opposing views have been trash-binned, and the orthodoxy doesn't know how to solve the problems they've made. Obama is keenly aware of this, and of what is required to get inside the structure as well as to upend it, but he may be either subsumed or killed by it. Which seems likely.
If you hear talk of a Green Deal in the future, it means we're on the right track, and that something has systemically changed.
I have some similar fears about violence, but keep thinking that maybe changing leadership - or finally having some, really - could be the finger on the scales to tip it back, sans bloodshed. That sounds sort of like hope, doesn't it? Something I've been trying not say out loud, for fear of jinxing it...
The only "someone upstairs" I wish for is an alien mediator.
iz--
the alien moderators are pleased you're thinking about them, and especially your admission of hope. ;-)
I just watched Palin stand by her man McCain on NBC. I am voting for Palin because I wish my wife would support me as much as Palin supports McCain.
I was hoping someone would take this post seriously.
What I saw during that NBC interview was two unhappy people who clearly wanted to be anywhere else.
I don't think there will be a violent reaction, other than the isolated incident perhaps, to an almost certain (mathematically anyway) Obama presidency. My concern would be that the "violent" reaction could be an assassination attempt. I say attempt because I am uncomfortable saying anything else.
A McCain/Palin win is just unthinkable for any number of civilized reasons.
I enjoyed this post Marc. Great graphic BTW. I spend a lot of time on Google finding appropriate illustrations....
Mike,
I haven't seen the "McCain Wife-Swapping Project" NBC clip yet. Classic, I'm sure. As to post-Obama violence, yes, that's what I was obliquely nodding to, but don't want to say the word either.
As to graphics, yep, any secret time-savers you've got up your sleeve would be welcome. I generally use The Google.
“If Obama is elected, there will be blood. It might not be his, but it might be, and a faction of America will violently oppose dignified multiculturalism as a general principle.”
Forgive me but I still see something completely unexplained here.
What is it about USA that makes it so different from South Africa and Australia, both of which have indigenous populations who were there first, both of which have a shameful past?
South Africa had its first black president and a complete abolition of apartheid. No bloodbath. Australia has not had an Aboriginal Prime Minister or Governor-General, but it’s conceivable. A bloodbath would be unimaginable.
US has had slavery, but so have many other countries in the Americas.
But here are my most important questions.
(1) Why in US does its famous “freedom” fail to embrace “interdependence”, in both internal and external relations?
(2) Why is US politics divisive instead of convergent, as it has become in UK and other European countries? Why do the parties seize on issues which inflame and not issues which unite?
(3) When Obama wins, surely despite his inexperience he is savvy enough to use his power to propitiate his enemies and do whatever is needed to unite the country, rather than contemptuously defy the Republican viewpoint? As Winston Churchill pointed out, the victor’s role is to be magnanimous. And this means to reward his opponents if necessary more than his own supporters, for the country’s and the world’s sake. Unless he, like you seem to do, considers that a civil war wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Please excuse me for a further question. I have just read this on Huffington Post and wonder if such phenomena have fuelled your fears of hatred coming to a head within the nation, in the form of violent conflict?
In UK we had the phenomenon for many years of Sir Oswald Mosley stirring up the mob with his fascist speeches and organization. I think it true to say that he was defeated by government and the enlightened public uniting to express disgust and intolerance of anything which incites to hatred.
As a result we have always sought to deal with such dangers with legislation even though it limits free speech.
Responsible politicians have always sought to distance themselves from racism & other forms of prejudice amongst their supporters, even though it may help their cause. I'm not sure if McCain is being careful enough about this, and if he thinks it is his trump card, I suppose he cannot afford to be careful enough.
vincent,
Family in bed, weekend done, I can give your questions cogitation they deserve. Being such good questions, I'm not sure they're answerable, nor that I'm the intellectual challenger required even for questions in reply. But I will take the gloves off.
This post sprang out of my smartass. Still, there is much truth in it. I don't want further senseless waste of life. Yet I and many others do want a victory in the culture war which started after 9/11, an event we consider as something like the Reichstag Fire, and we do work for victory over Nonsense. Which will lead to incidents of violence, and may lead to internal war, which it has before.
The Blogsphere, net-net, is all about waging an information war over belief, or if you will over theocracy and the concept-gods we worship.
The hereditary priesthood feels threatened enough to launch artillery barrages of untruths every day over us in the service of a corrupt and broken catechism, a rameumpton intended to drown out alternatives and solutions. How successful are they? Well. In the whole of my country, there was only one liberal talk radio station (Air America), and it went bankrupt. But the Blogsphere doesn't need money, so we're winning anyway.
The wranglings over legal definitions of property, those which pertained to slavery and preceded the American Civil War, provide clear parallels. Are we to be the chattel of immortal corporations, their henchmen and their laws?
The current structure mouths an unequivocal Yes. This could easily lapse into organized violence, unthinkable as it may be, and there are principles in need of redress which I would give my soft life for. I don't wish to countenance the lives of my sons, but I would not have them be the followers of friendly fascists.
Fascist? Yes. As of 9/11, my country became fascist. Regardless of how various analysts think it went down, fascist sentiment, legislation, and wars ensued thereafter. 9/11 destroyed the Last Arcadia, or in other words, subtracted America's blessed remoteness from the rest of the world.
As to question 1), America was always a place which drew refugees and extremists, and the two are not mutually exclusive. As for polite interdependence, ask the native tribes about "Elbow Room." We struggle for diversity here, and when I see two lesbians come into a cafe with their adopted Chinese son, I have to fight with all my being to say, "This is where we're going, we are the world, this is a good thing."
2) America was divisive from its roots, and has always had difficulty reconciling interest groups. By comparison, Australia and South Africa were homogenously colonized: one of them had a major war which Churchill cavorted in, the other sustained a 100-year campaign of flogging and extermination. In my New England, the colony at Plymouth Rock was a short-sighted mathematical exercise in financial fascism, one which took literally no account of the natives. Those co-op members dug up their buried dead to eat the corpses their failed second winter, and we celebrate it as Thanksgiving.
3) Inexperience is not Obama's challenge--he's a great leader on the stage of world history. He's masterful, but staying alive is his problem. He will be magnanimous to the losing side, and they'll try to kill him anyway. He is the perfect symbol of their fears, and he must turn the security apparatus against apartheid and to his protection like Mandela gave sanctuary to the South African secret police in exchange for rule.
Even so, I'm not sure 3) will work here. Because we're meaner than the Boers ever were, or the English who eventually defeated them for the hell of it, more all-or-nothing. Plus the entire logic of the American Empire has failed, and if it doesn't keep expanding, it must fracture. So no I don't want a Civil War. I just hear the tearing of canvas.
Thanks Marc. I cannot fault the breadth and accuracy of your learning here; and I'm beginning to get on the wavelength.
We've seen from Hurricane Katrina, at least as internationally reported, how America is riven. A come-uppance as big as the financial crunch, but nastier, has been due for some time, but now I see how it's linked to this momentous election.
The powder-keg is ready and the tinder is dry (right to bear arms). The classic strategy is to unite the country by attacking a common enemy. That doesn't work any more as we have seen.
vincent,
there's really more to your questions than I scratched the surface of. Populism can take the face of Solon the Lawgiver, or of Robespierre, and I certainly don't know which way it'll go. Probably no one does, but I sure can feel its gorge rising. People are starting to get angry, and given the flat-out naked communism for the rich that's just happened, it is going to turn into rage.
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