Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Stranger in a Strange Land

I'm studiously trying to ignore the election today. Whatever happens will not be good for my country, although I truly believe that some outcomes will be worse than others.

But I do want to comment on this piece by Matt Taibbi.

Matt begins by agreeing with me that whatever happens today it's going to suck for most of us. But his main point is that's because "...we all should know most Americans want the same things, but just disagree on how to get there." So - in Taibbi's view - we just need to chill, be calm, and carry on if the "other guy" gets elected.

As short a time as ten to twelve years ago I would have agreed. But not today.

Today the 27-percenters, the people who still hugged Dick Cheney to their breasts back in 2008 when the evil fucker's arc of despotism was clearly visible to anyone not wearing their Rush Limbaugh beer goggles, make up the critical mass of the GOP. The people who vote Republican are either flat-out neofeudalists, plutocrats, Christopaths, or hardcore bananarepublicans longing for a strong nation with an iron will to kill Muslims.

While I agree with Taibbi that these people are "patriotic", that they love the United States, here's the thing; they don't love the United States I love.

Goddamn it, these people DON'T want the same things I do; a United States that tilts towards labor rather than capital, wages rather than trust funds, peace rather than war, small rather than grandiose, alternatives to the old petroleum-based economy, local rather than imperial, atheist rather than devout, equal rather than opportunistic.

They love a United States that is represented by an investment banker wheeling derivatives, a team of Rangers kicking in a door, or a drone strike on a mud hut in the FATA.

I don't.

We are becoming, we have become, two nations, separate and unequal. Most of the people who are out there voting Republican today are citizens of one of these nations.

But not the one I love.

And until that changes while we may share the same flag there can be no peace between us. This nation is a house divided, half Fox News and half free. And a house divided against itself cannot stand.

7 comments:

Lisa said...

So very well-said. We are two nations, and the half to which you and I belong is riven; I see that in the people who will vote (idealistically, sardonically) for a 3rd party. Meanwhile, the GOP is solid; they have embraced the wing nuts.

I'm brought to mind of T. Friedman's oft-used trope: There is no reasoning with people who hate the Other more than they love their own children (i.e., their nation's future).

Hatred and derision is the driver behind many of today's ballots.

Big Daddy said...

Maybe it's time to dust off Blue State Secession again http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/80714812.html
Sadly an Obama victory will just make the yahoos double down.

FDChief said...

Lisa: Sadly, our half is worse than riven - it is driven in, it's positions overrun, it's artillery silenced by the drumfire of Fox and the complacent "centerist" papers and television. The furthest politically tenable Left salient is indistinguishable from the Progressive Republicans of a century ago.

And beyond the howling barbarians bring with them the night.

BD: That path is already prepared. I am convinced that all the bullshit spewed by the Right about how "The polls show a Romney landslide" is to prepare the Pig People for the GOP's DolchstoBlegende of "The Stolen Election of 2012". They are already cutting the ground out from under the next four years...

Lisa said...

Truly the Left is ennervated, and it is so very odd considering they should hold a moral high ground in so many ways. It is hard for me to understand their profound failure.

OTOH, it is easy to understand the strength of the Conservatives: They have successfully reigned in the strength of multitudes -- fearful people withdrawn into cave clans who find some small comfort with the glow of very little light, and throw things at movement outside of the cave opening.

Distrust, anger and fear abounds just beyond the circumference of many lives.

FDChief said...

Driftglass put it delightfully:

"Tonight is the night when our collective civic unconscious puts on its party dress and fuck-me shoes and comes slouching out of the swamp. It is Democracy's Prom Night, and whether you wake up tomorrow full of fond memories and renewed hope, or face down, naked, in a pool of your own sick all hinges on the whim of nine low information, undecided voters in the People's Republic of Ohio."

Lisa said...

I love the "low information" tag; I'll add Cris Rock's, "Low expectation-having" (leaving out the rest ...)

Leon said...

I'd like to congratulate you 'muricans on electing the more reasonable and less nutbar oligarch.

Huzzah!