I am so very weary of having people tell me that if Hillary were a man, no one would object to her shrillness, her aura of being owed the presidency, her schizoid lurches from hard-working policy maven to finger-pointing fishwife. Solutions, indeed. The current approach of her campaign is to raise anti-intellectualism to the height of patriotism. Man or woman, the qualities Hillary Clinton reveals turn me off totally, and I do not buy into the notion that all women must promote HC, all blacks must back Obama, etc. etc.
Identity politics is quickly and thoroughly ruining this country. One thinks of the Preface to Winesburg, Ohio where Sherwood Anderson describes people dragging around huge bags filled with a single truth: race, gender, beauty, capitalism, communism, whatever. The focus on a single measuring stick and focus in The Book of the Grotesque leads Anderson to note, “It was the truths that made the people grotesques.” And the “truth” of voting for a woman because one is female or voting for a war hero because one is a veteran creates grotesques in the voting booths of America.
It also makes my teeth itch to hear that Obama is “all words” and must produce actions to support these words. How in the name of lecturns is a candidate for the presidency supposed to produce actions before he or she gains the office? Obama has built a platform for his words by voting against this idiotic war, by voting against the Senate approval for the extension of the FISA legislation and its tacked on immunity for telecoms who conspired with the Feds to spy on American citizens.
I truly believe that Obama is a threat only to the tiresome among us who would limp along playing the old games, packing their bags of truths with the twins and offspring of wealth, position, and power. They have fallen in love with their own brains and given the delicious phrase head fucking a whole new life.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Tex // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:47 am
I have some good friends (online) that objected to the costs related to the pittance the Pentagon spent on improving the service of medical personnel to the wounded military patients at Walter Reed Hospital.
It was a minute amount considering:
$2.5 Billion a year is spent on MEDICAID for illegal aliens. http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
$12 Billion/year spent on primary and secondary education for children here illegally and they CANNOT SPEAK A WORD OF ENGLISH!
http://www.transcripts.cnn.com
Just to name only two.
2 admin // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:58 am
You make a pretty good case against your OL friends, Tex. Although I am not sure that three instances of foolish spending justifies any one. I’m also re-thinking my position on illegal immigration and when I get it more or less settled for this moment in time will be posting it. And looking forward to your comments.
3 Tex // Feb 26, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I listed only two (2) Puffin…I have many more, but did not want to use up blog space.
Foolish spending by most governmental agencies is a rancid cancer fostered upon all hard working tax paying citizens of this great land.
4 admin // Feb 26, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Amen, bro. But how about Congress get to work and deal with some of this? And how about member of Congress end attaching pork to various bills. And how about donkeys fly, I guess.
5 Tex // Feb 26, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Looking to Congress to heal the ills of this society is simply illusion.
They are there for themselves…bureaucrats, under the age of 60 writing their own tickets to paradise.
Unless you join ‘em..we can’t beat ‘em!
But…we can criticize them and stick them in the eye now and then.
6 admin // Feb 26, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Sounds pretty hopeless. We could vote out the large pockets and vote in some people with ideas and more interest in the country than in those pockets. Too romantic?
7 Tex // Feb 27, 2008 at 7:33 am
Political idealism should never die. We all must retain some simblance of hope that men and women of stately character will come to the fore and lead this nation properly.
There have been and there still is, many crooked politicians residing within the framework of the halls of Congress and yet, this country survives them and remains…the greatest place on God’s green planet.
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