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The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round

My daughter, who is in the third grade, came home and told me that on the school bus an argument broke out among Obama and McCain supporters. I asked how many there were of each, and she said that, of about 30 kids on board, it seemed to break down to something like 20-10 in favor of Obama, but it was hard to tell because everyone was shouting back and forth. “The kids who liked McCain were shouting bad things about Obama,” she said.

“Like what?” I asked.

“That he’s a terrorist.”

You wonder where they picked that up. As the Oompa-Loompahs do, I tend to blame the parents, but put that aside for now. What really interests me is this: what are all the paranoid nutcases and the bought-and-paid for Fox guys and Limbaugh and so on going to do if an Obama administration actually goes well? Say a year goes by and there’s not much sign of Obama being an Arab and a terrorist. It’s probably too much to hope for, but say he’s disciplined and helps ameliorate the financial crisis. Say he doesn’t get caught knocking boots with any interns. Say we get out of Iraq with some dignity. Say you do your taxes and you’re actually paying less money, and you don’t have to sell a kidney to get your kidneys fixed thanks to health care reform. Yeah, I’m dreaming now, and it’s practically the third reel light show of “2001″ it’s so fantastic and bizarre a dream, but play along with me for a moment. If people are actually HAPPY, do these professional complainers actually shut up?

If not, on a patriotic level, it seems to me that they’ll have moved away from even the pretense of honorable dissent to something more like anarchism, of assassination (character assassination, that is) for its own sake. On a business level, it would seem to be a dumb decision as well, given that fantasy fiction has always been a niche product. There will always be paranoids to preach to, but that would seem to be a fairly limited audience, unless I’m underestimating that particular edge of the fringe.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round”

mike fenger Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I would harken back to the Carter presidency — it always seemed to me at the time that lots of forces were at work trying (with success) to undermine Carter. I don’t think we should underestimate the power that can be wielded by those with significant economic power, to make things worse in the short term with an eye towards their longer-term interests. Certainly they’ll have “complainers” working with them, trying to make the case that left-leaning government cannot work; just look at [the stock market/interest rates/capital flight]!

Remember Hunter Thompson’s review of the Law Day speech that Carter made? He thought it sent signals that Carter was more liberal than his image. With Obama, the right has made more of a public show of what it (perhaps rightly) points to as signals that Obama might also be more liberal than his image. Hard for me to believe that the cries of “socialist” will go away after the election.

BTW, just found your blog [via BP], keep up the good work.
Craig Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 10:52 am
If your dream of Obama’s presidency becomes a reality, he’d be a conservative. So, in answer to your question, it is unlikely that the complainers will shut up - there won’t be any reason to. We haven’t had a great president since Reagan (before that you have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt) and it is unlikely we will have one any time soon. A McCain presidency will unquestionably be a dud; an Obama presidency will most likely cause irreparable damage that this country will never recover from. For the record, I have never called Obama a terrorist. My concern is that the terrorists want Obama to be elected - that’s not encouraging.
Michael Says:
November 1st, 2008 at 8:57 am
Craig-”irreparable damage”? That’s a little rich, assuming you have been paying attention during the last 8 years.

I was asked recently by a client who I favored in the Presidential election. He assumed I would support McCain, because my company’s interests probably lean that way. I assured him that my bosses probably thought so, but I disagreed. I argued that change will be painful, but hardly less painful than continuing in the same vein.

To bring things into a baseball context, we’re down 13-5 in the fourth. In the end, whether we lose 13-5 or 24-5 is of little importance-it’s still a loss. What we need, if we want any hope of winning in the end, is to stop the bleeding-we can’t allow the opposition to put any more runs on the board (or as few as possible) while we claw our way back into the game.

As Steven pointed out, you’re wrong-what the terrorists have said, clearly, is that they favor a McCain victory. Comedian David Cross has a joke where he states that he thinks 9/11 happened because of our support of Israel and the presence of our military on Arab soil. “Why do I think that?,” he goes on. “Because that’s what they f&*king SAID.”

To the extent that we can believe anything those semi evolved humans say, they have made it clear that the current policy of invasion and occupation suits their needs just fine. To argue otherwise is, in Christina Kahrl’s immortal word, wishcasting.

The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round

3 Responses to “The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round”

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