Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Reflections On The Election: 'Get Over It'

By Manifesto Joe

I'm going to try to restrain myself from being ugly to the vanquished, but only up to a point. For one thing, the defeat is not complete. They still have control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Orange Julius will remain Weeper of the House, and therefore it's not likely that much will be done in Washington for at least the next two years.

But also, being ugly is just no-class, even when I do it. I ended a "friendship" with a righty back in November 2004 because, after Kerry's surprising defeat by Il Doofus, this drooling idiot thought it was a good idea to send all his liberal/progressive "friends" some parroted shit from Rush Lardbaugh about sending liberals to re-education camps, etc. I sent this guy a response asking essentially, "Have you, at long last, no class at all?" effectively ending our "friendship."

I sincerely have little understanding of what makes a person in contemporary America a right-winger, unless they are so rich that they benefit from the tax bonanzas. I suspect that there's a great deal of brainwashing involved. And it's especially frustrating to hear such people moronically referring to Obama as a "Marxist" when his economic policies are perhaps more than a shade to the right of Dick Nixon's. Such sheer ignorance simply angers me.

But, I will try harder to be nice. There are many Americans who have a Reaganesque image of a mythical America, that "shining city on the hill" that is supposed to have once been. My experience has been that this was always very much a myth. Those who drank the Kool-Aid under the gazebo always did so at the hideous expense of those who were just trying to pummel off the rats that were gnawing away at their Kool-Aid packages.

But, many people live by, and for, myths. Black and white, wrong and right, good and evil. No ambiguity, just absolutes. Life would be unbearable torture without that oh-so-clear dichotomy.

Reality has come to visit these people, and much to their horror, it has dark skin and is a world-class orator. This travesty could just never have happened back in 1956, the year in which yours truly was born, and when everybody liked Ike.

Romney was never really the man who was supposed to lead them back up to the summit of that "shining hill." He's a friggin' Mormon, an elder in a "church" that many people regard as a ludicrous cult. But he was what they had, and the only alternative to that uppity n****r.

Well, Romney lost, damn it. Now we are facing hard choices, decisions that will require shared -- I repeat, shared -- sacrifice by Americans rich, poor and in between, and not just that "47 percent" that Romney infamously denounced in a moment of unintentional candor. Two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay absolutely no federal income tax. Many wealthy individuals act as though they owe absolutely nothing to this country, hiding their money in the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts.

Nobody, black or white, will be serving these people Kool-Aid under the gazebo. It's time to start acting like real Americans, like people who understand that they have some skin in this game. It was never realistic to think that we could make this into a Great Society -- but we may still have a chance to make it into a good one.

I am reminded of what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the five ringleaders who appointed the "president" in December 2000, said about the Bush v. Gore decision during an interview -- "Get over it."

Well, Obama's people didn't find it necessary to steal it, or to have the Supreme Court appoint the chief executive. Now "get over it" yourself.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

4 comments:

Mycue23 said...

MJ,
you are asking irrational people to act rationally. Probably not gonna happen. I'm not sure they are over the fact that Bill Clinton was President for 8 years.

Jack Jodell said...

Manifesto Joe,
I agree that it's time for these isolated and wholly ignorant far-right Teapublican reactionaries to "get over it", but first they have to break out of that ridiculous restrictive recationary world of make-believe called Fox "News".

Old Scout said...

Joe -
Two points of discussion:
1. Obama's right of center, but not right of Nixon
2. Shared sacrifice is too much with which saddle to working and middle classes. It's time to freeze the assets of the wealthy at home and forcibly repatriate their off-shore wealth. They are the ones who broke the banks and the backs of the middle-class.
I think you are being nice to them because you suffered at their table and you wish to not appear mean spirited over the loss of your job, retirement, insurance and peace-of-mind, so you refrain from giving them a piece-of-mind that causes our financial problems to adhere to their cold dead carcasses.
Shared sacrifice? That is sop to the republi-can'ts who got us into this mess. They don't deserve the reward of our good graces and forgiveness.

Manifesto Joe said...

1. I refer strictly to economic policy. The Nixon administration was serious about the concept of a guaranteed annual income. In fact, he introduced a plan that passed in the House of Representatives but was defeated in the Senate. Nixon called himself a Keynesian, and implemented a wage-price freeze that angered "free-market" types. He drew right-wing opposition from Rep. John Ashbrook, R-Ohio, when he ran for renomination in 1972. Nixon's economic policies were surprisingly center-left by today's standards.
2. I'd love to see some of that stuff happen, but it never, ever will. Politics is the art of the possible.