Misanthropic Californian

Do you remember how Michael Moore was advocating possibly leaving the country when Bush won in 2004 (though few if any liberals did)? There are actually conservatives saying the same thing about Obama. Aside from the fact that all of the other English-speaking countries an American expatriate might go to have pretty much already done whatever crazy liberal stuff they think Obama will do to ruin the country, it’s just hypocritical. Republicans are all about loving this country, and all of a sudden when they don’t like the guy in charge that kind of fell by the wayside. If liberals managed to weather 8 years of the Bush administration, conservatives should be able to handle the Obama presidency just fine.

If you look at the crazier conservatives, they’re acting like America is Over, like November 4th represented the end of the good old U.S. of A. Soldiers have said “you’re not the real Americans I swore an oath to protect.” We’re doomed to become some socialist nightmare (never mind that the Socialist Party candidate said in no uncertain terms that Obama is not a socialist), so you’d better stock up on guns and ammo before Obama tries to take them away. Oh, and apparently since Obama isn’t vehemently trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, he’s 100% in favor of murdering babies, and thus unfit to be president, because this isn’t an issue where we can afford nuance or realism.

The one thing that’s come out of the conservative reaction that I will agree with is that the GOP has lost sight of its own core principles. It got in bed with the religious right, and became distorted by their anti-intellecual evangelical tendencies. Real conservativism, which is about limited government and federalism and such, hasn’t been around for a while now. The current Republicans certainly aren’t shy about spending; it’s just that they have different tastes in government bloat from their opponents. (Pour as much money as you can into defense; why should the military try to be fiscally efficient? You support the troops, right?) The real question is which way the GOP will go from here, because it has to refine itself in some way. I’d like to see it become classically conservative, because that’s a value system I can actually respect and might even vote for once in a while. However, it’s entirely possible that it could become that much more crazy and anti-knowledge. I suspect a lot of the Republicans who were replaced by Democrats in this election were the more reasonable ones, and the survivors will tend to be more the crazies with crazy constituencies.

The election reflect on race relations in odd ways too. Although a lot of people, even some people who don’t like Obama’s policies, are glad to see the first black president (setting aside the militantly racist fucktards, whom the FBI and Secret Service and such will continue to watch closely), there is now a routine accusation that “People only voted for him because he was black.” This line of thought requires flagrant, willfull ignorance of everything that went on during the election. The Obama campaign used a brilliant, unconventional strategy, and carried states that had not gone Democratic in decades. The campaign was agile, funded by millions of small donations from individuals, and stayed much more positive than the opposition. As an orator, he schooled everyone he went up against. And if you believe the exit polls, age was a much bigger deciding factor than race. Furthermore, the people for whom a candidate being black would be a plus? They’re mostly liberals who would’ve voted for the Democratic candidate, regardless of that person’s race or gender or whatever. Black people in particular have long voted close to 100% Democratic, so it’s not like there was any significant base of black Republicans that he could’ve stolen away because of his skin color.

Now, I’m not so naive as to think that Obama can go in and fix everything. For one thing, there is some truth to the notion that he’s inexperienced. Whatever one thinks of her overall, Hillary Clinton was better connected and more experienced in politics, and with Ameircan politics being the mire of bureaucracy and stupidity that it is, it takes more than optimism, intelligence, charisma, a party majority in both houses, and lots of ideas that are popular with the general populace, to get things done. Obama is a very, very smart guy (magna cum laude from Harvard Law School; McCain was near the bottom of his class at the naval academy) with a lot of smart people around him, and to be sure I have my fingers crossed, but I will assume nothing. The advantage of being a cynic is that most of life’s surprises are pleasant ones, since a cynic already saw the bad stuff coming.

The part that gets me is that when McCain gave a stirring concession speech, some people in the crowd booed. Needless to say I disagree with McCain on a lot of things, but he showed real class there, in a way that makes me respect him, and tried to end things on a high note. And his supporters booed. Some people are too caught up in labels and absolutes to even see straight, much less be rational.

It’s not the first time a different party has come into power, and it won’t be the last. I have no doubt that conservatives will make a comeback in some form–hopefully a more rational form, but I’m not holding my breath–and swing the pendulum back the other way for a while. Whatever you believe in, be patient, be reasonable, but speak your mind. Be a part of this, be informed, and let your voice be heard. If you don’t like how things are, work to change it. That’s how it’s always worked, and that’s how we’ve come this far. As long as you’re looking to do good for the country and her people, that’s much more important than whether or not I agree with you personally.

For the past couple of years I’ve tried really hard to give George W. Bush a fair shake, but he keeps saying things that make my brain hurt. At this point it’s very hard to feel guilty about criticizing him; I think I can see his basic methodology, and I find it to be completely wrongheaded. He appears to pick out a position based on whatever he feels like, and then ignores any evidence to the contrary. He also seems to select people for important government positions based on their loyalty to him and agreement with his ideas rather than their actual competence and how well they’ll serve the country. The business with allegedly firing competent attorneys on the basis of failing to serve a Republican agenda is just the latest example to come out in the media. There was also the whole Katrina/FEMA thing, John Bolton, and entirely too much stuff about Iraq and 9/11.

Not everyone who works for him is incompetent, of course, but I think it’s safe to say that everyone who works for him agrees with his ideas, or else they wouldn’t be working for him for very long. When John Bolton was on the Daily Show he said that the President should serve the people who voted for him, and bring his own views to the fore. Does that mean he doesn’t need to serve me or the majority (about 70%) of Californians? I want a President who serves America, not just the bits of it that agree with him. Respecting and considering other people’s opinions is an important part of, you know, being a functional adult.

It won’t be too much longer before the presidential election season starts up again, this time without Bush campaigning. I know Cheney isn’t running — apparently he’s too mean and scary or something — so I’m hoping the GOP puts forth a candidate I’ll at least feel is worth giving some consideration to. (And while I suspect a lot of Hillary Clinton’s negative press was manufactured by her conservative opponents, I’d still rather see someone less divisive on the Democratic side). In 2000 and 2004, I wanted a president who:

1. Was smart. Bush’s GPA was supposedly 2.0, and that was with intensive tutoring. Granted he went to Harvard and Yale, but you’d think we could find someone better to be the leader of a world superpower.
2. Wasn’t a total ass. When I watched the debate between Bush and Gore, I hated both of them. When I hear about what Bush was like in college, it seems like we have a frat boy in the White House, and I don’t really like frat boys.
3. Was a good speaker. Gore and Kerry were just boring, and when criticized Bush gets this whiny, flailing demeanor going that I can’t stand. If Colbert’s Better Know A District is any indication politicians who are good speakers are surprisingly rare, but again, leader of the free world and all that. We should demand the best.
4. Likes to read. A president has a lot of stuff to keep up with.

Admittedly, I’m just going with my impressions from the news, and not doing a whole lot of research, but plenty of people who are smarter than me have already said their piece on the subject. What I’m really hoping is that for 2008 both parties can put forward better candidates than they have been, people who are intelligent and non-divisive. Granted, politics seems to push candidates towards being negative towards each other, even if it is all in veiled political-style speech. Still, although I tend to hold liberal views I don’t think Republicans are evil or anything, and I really think they can come up with someone better than George W. Bush if they try. With McCain and Giuliani among the front-runners, and guys like Ron Paul (who I might be willing to vote for, though he probably has no chance) also in the running, I’m a lot more confident of that than I have been in a long time.

I hate pundits. I fucking despise them. I’m not usually all that much into hating things (“hate” is a very strong word when you have a flattened affect like me), but this is one of the very few things where I make an exception. I’m not sure what the proper dictionary definition is, but they seem to be irrational blowhards, who pick a side first and then vigorously defend it and trash the opposition, facts and logic be damned. Talk radio is infested with them, as is Fox News (I don’t have cable anymore, so I can’t speak for CNN, MSNBC, etc., but I suspect they have some too). They are a class of people who get undeserved media attention by being loud jerks and demonizing both any actual opponents and whatever imagined or exaggerated opposition they can come up with.

Conservatives seem to have a larger, more prominent selection of pundits, but the liberals aren’t lacking per se. While Limbaugh incorrectly thinks he’s clever for calling Al Franken’s network “Dead Air America Radio,” I’d like to think that their financial troubles are an encouraging indication that whatever other virtues or faults or derangements they might have, liberals by and large aren’t interested in listening to pundits spoon-feed them one-sided garbage. I’d like to think that, but it may just be that more liberals have iPods. I know I gave up on radio years ago, and not just because of talk radio.

So, if you really want to listen to pundits on the radio or watch them on TV, I can’t and won’t stop you. But the more you listen, the less I respect you. Seriously. I can’t help it.

When I go to the bookstore and make the mistake of looking at the current affairs section (and these days it is a mistake to do so) and I see a book like Sean Hannity’s Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, I really worry about the state of the nation. Hannity is apparently describing other Americans who he disagrees with politically as “evil.” The word “evil” worked well in Lord of the Rings when talking about the red eye of Sauron and his orcish armies intent on destroying the world of Men, but it’s really, really hard to use it in real life without sounding insane. That’s before we mention Anne Coulter. Even other conservatives tend to try to distance themselves from her, although in spite of her apparently being either completely insane or very good at acting as such, her vitriolic books sell distressingly well. That a book about liberals called “Treason” can become a bestseller does not speak well of the health of American democracy and discourse. I’m not about to defend liberals’ own pundits and their own insanity; the best I can say about Al Franken and his ilk seem to lack some of the vitriol and vicious edge of their conservative counterparts. The truth is much more complicated than they would have us believe.

Pundits are not funny people either. They ones who used to be funny (if you liked Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo back in their SNL days) aren’t, and the ones who never were funny are painfully unfunny. Mostly they’re angry and the entertainment value they offer is the heady, uncomfortable rush of watching someone else getting really angry. No wonder so many people listen to that format alone in their cars.

I hope I’m not acting like a pundit on this blog. For one thing, I have to get very, very worked up (which doesn’t happen all that often) to start insulting people, and I really don’t think I have all the answers. At best I know what helps me stay sane and lets me make sense of the world, which admittedly isn’t a great metric for determining truth. I’m writing this stuff mainly for myself — both to practice writing stuff in general and to get my thoughts out and in a written form — and not particularly to try to influence others.

Incidentally, it’s St. Patrick’s day. My rant on why I don’t drink alcohol (or coffee, or smoke cigarettes or do any other drugs) isn’t ready yet. Irish people living in American supposedly call March 17th “Amateur’s Night,” for all the people who don’t know their own limitations when it comes to alcohol. Stop it. Our slightly schizophrenic internet oracle, Wikipedia, tells me that St. Patrick is remembered for taking the lead in converting the people of his native Ireland to Christianity in the fourth century. I have mixed feelings about Christianity, but I’m not sure that the guy would’ve wanted to be remembered through binge drinking.