Whee! It’s Obamaland!
From the start, I didn’t like any of the candidates for president. I admit the fringe guys caught my eye for a moment, Ron Paul for example, guys you knew didn’t stand a chance - and they knew it too, because they brought up the hot, unsafe topics other candidates wouldn’t. Now, we’re down to three. And I’ll spare you the suspense: I’m for Hillary Clinton, though I hope John McCain wins.
Why? The United States is irreparable. It must fully break before it can rebuild itself into something new and stable - two nations most likely. John McCain will hasten that demise, as Republicans have been doing for the past 30 years. He’s a hypocrite, will hire deeply disturbed white men for his administration, and like most Republicans, McCain lacks the ability to empathize, and so will not accomplish the humane tasks necessary to alleviate some of the suffering Americans now undergo. Oh, and we’d be fighting in Iraq for decades. McCain is the perfect prescription to get to where we’re going in a hurry. But let’s get serious, McCain won’t win. This time Bush and his cabal have gone too far too fast even for the diehard cretins who voted for him.
No, it’s going to be Clinton or Barack Obama and my fear is it will be Obama. Though I don’t watch much TV, what I have seen of it with Obama has been alternatingly funny (as in “this guy isn’t serious, is he?”) and appalling (as in “he doesn’t really believe that, does he?”). I have, however, read much about him and what he’s said in papers, magazines and the Internet. In his way, Obama is more dangerous than McCain, which is saying a lot.
First, I don’t know what country Obama lives in. It isn’t the United States of the past 30 years, that’s for sure. We are NOT one nation, as he endlessly rails. The red states/blue states construct is NOT an artificial design meant to separate us, as he’s been repeating for four years. It is an observation (and labeling) of what began at the grassroots level and grew up. No one imposed it from the top. We truly are a deeply divided collection of states. Ignoring that fact, as Obama does, means he will fail in a host of activities, including addressing the stronger ills of this American Society.
Second, he hasn’t got a clue about what his opposition stands for. This nation will not come together smiling, roll up our sleeves and get to work on the challenges of our time. We can’t, because in America we hate each other. Tens of millions of Americans believe that people who agree with evolution are evil. It’s a ridiculous waste of time to try to fix something as complex as the national debt with huge chunks of citizens who reject simple mathematics as being “against god”.
During the 2004 Republican National Convention, thousands of right-wing nutjob christian conservatives wore purple bandaids to mock John Kerry’s Purple Heart honors in a war during which the coward Bush hid behind his daddy’s political skirts. I want to believe that Obama is intelligent, but does he really, for a moment, think that these people are going to hold hands with the gays and the blacks and the environmentalists to build universal health care? No, when they lose, they will bide their time, try to destroy whatever is trying to be built and wait for the political pendulum to swing back towards them, as it most certainly will.
More troubling still is that Obama will not address the grievous harm and crimes these Republicans have gotten away with for eight years - torture, murder, mass destruction, false imprisonment and the obliteration of human rights, particularly at home. Recently, Obama was asked if he thought impeachment or criminal charges should be pursued against Bush, Cheney, et. al. Not surprisingly, he thought that a very bad idea. You see, in “Obamaland”, we’ve got to move on, and to continue this back and forth bickering will only separate us.
Rather, Obama wants to concentrate of what unites us. Move over, Pollyanna! All his philosophy means is that the republicans get away with it - again. If Obama was serious about moving on, he’d understand that human nature doesn’t allow such forward progress until the crap has been dealt with. You can’t clean your house until you take out the trash. Or, as the much more elegant St. Augustine said, absolution can only come after confession. Obviously, the criminals who’ve been in charge would never confess to anything: they don’t see their crimes. Someone else has to point them out to these men and women, and Obama’s not that guy.
Hillary Clinton is (pun intended). Yeah she can be a bitch, yeah she is a power broker, and yes she even has a temper like John McCain’s. But say what you will about her, she’s the last democrat who will put up with the conservative crap that has been going on these past eight years, and frankly, given the current construct of this country, this is the best you can hope for. There are those who will say that she will perpetuate the bickering and stalemate of the past 30 years, and in some sense that accusation sticks. But you have to use one hand to hold the demented wolf at bay while you try to progress with the other.
Obama will gleefully dig into the day with both hands and his opponents will attack from the back and eat him alive. It’s OK that Obama has no experience (though it would be better if he did). Leadership is a quality and not a resume. The problem is his lack of experience has left him wide open, too. He just doesn’t get it: conservative republicans are intolerant, self-ignorant, stupid and vicious people who will never waiver from their agenda of hate and destruction.
This country is in such sorry shape in part because Democrats have been spineless, scared, careless or all three, and they’ve allowed Republicans to get away with much more than they otherwise would. Obama is the worst of that ilk, and the opposition will take him to the cleaners.
That leaves Clinton. And finally, I’ll go so far as to say that Obama should not be vice-president either. John Edwards should be.
– Maui Curmudgeon
Nat’l Macaroon Day
HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — 
by Randy Pausch.