The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    Missing President Bush but trying to learn lessons anyway

    By Barth on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 3:20pm |
    Do we miss him yet? Republicans surely don't, but maybe the rest of us, motivated by the daily mess created and exacerbated by the least competent person to serve as president since either Andrew Johnson or James Buchanan, do. It was, after all, his blundering and constant attempts to feather the nests of his benefactors and friends that showed our less progressive friends and relatives that assault on government was inspired by nothing more than greed and was not in the best interests of anybody but those who directly benefited from the bizarro operation of government by those dedicated to its destruction.

    What happened Tuesday really has no overarching importance. I voted at high noon on Tuesday at a polling place that was practically overrun a year ago, and where I was the only voter to be seen for the ten minutes or so I hung around. As much as I believe that everyone should vote every time they are permitted to, in memory of those who gave their lives to give us that opportunity, if for no other reason, I really cannot fault the Virginia or New Jersey Democrat who could not be bothered to vote their party's candidate this week. Neither gets an ounce of my sympathy, though I am sorry for both states, especially New Jersey which will have to slide back into a form of Bush-like government with one of his clones and disciples in Drumthwacket, the curiously named Governor's mansion.

    The talking heads, unbowed by their repeated announcements of the President's inabiity to defeat his primary opponents, or the McCain surge after his "brilliant" pick of a vice presidential candidate, cannot be stopped from their silly bilge. The silliest I am able to stomach, Mourning Joe, whose celebration of imaginary Republican victories would put Baghdad Bob to shame, and his stupid beyond all belief sidekick, were just full of headshaking crocodile tears for the end of the dreams of the Obama administration and health care reform based on the election results (even while warning against drawing broad conclusions from them. Yet, through all the bile one thing did seem worth noting and they did, as I have as well.

    It is that the electorate is unusually angry. They have no real cause to be angry. What has happened has happened in their plain sight and, in voting for The Idiot in 2004 to demonstrate their support for "a good guy" over someone who liked windsurfing, brought all of this on all of us, but we are not allowed to say that the electorate is stupid. 

    But they are and they are blameless and, indeed, there are ample reasons for their anger. We were driven to the edge of a cliff a year ago, by people with resources beyond the dreams of most of us, and the government which is supposed to protect all of us, was even stirred into immediate action. Yet when our new president sought to get us off the matThese Rich People put us on, only the most limited of a New Deal could be enacted, sort of a New Paperclip because the moneyed class and the political party they control announced they would do nothing to help since their party was no longer being allowed to control any branch of the government.

    Rather than insure that The People could never do this again; rather than restore the regulatory protections that the Roosevelt administration pushed to prevent another Depression, which the aftermath of their repeal, if nothing else, proved their effectiveness, Congress --- in the darkness created by an obsession with less important things --- went back to their old ways to protect their contributors rather than do what they were elected to do.

    An electorate which demands health care reform to an extent that even a Washington Post poll can detect it is told it can't be done because...because....because....; well, it just can't be done.

    Neither can we do anything about global warming, campaign finance reform, a proliferation of guns to the point that even people on a military base are not safe, an educational system sliding into the ocean as what teachers are not fired can longer afford to live on the salaries they are paid. We just can't.

    Yes, the electorate is angry, and though their anger ought to be somewhat self-directed and they have not lived up to their own responsibilities there are ample reasons for their anger. The New Deal happened for many reasons, but one of them was a real fear of revolution from a public thoroughly fed up with a government that could not respond to the crisis at hand. No political party saw profit in that state of affairs, a circumstance that may not exist today. 

    We are coming to the same place now and coming real fast. It is time to stop yelling at one another on cable tv, and for something real to start happening.