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.

Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For Texas To Turn Blue

By Manifesto Joe

Amid Democratic/progressive/liberal euphoria, most understandable after the past eight years, there's been talk that even states like my home sweet home Texas could possibly be flipped for the Dems, and soon.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Texans to turn blue. You'll literally turn blue long before. We've got another generation to go here before the demographics of this very distinctive but chauvinistic state will change that much.

The percentage breakdown (all figures courtesy CNN Politics) was 55% McCain, 44% Obama, 1% all others. That was promising, surprisingly good at 44% for a mixed-race liberal Democrat in a state that still has so many Dixiecrats.

The urban areas are where you can see the changes that are eventually coming. In Dallas County, Obama kicked McCain's ass shockingly, 57-42%. Travis County (home of dear old liberal college town Austin) it was 64-35% Obama!!!

Obama pulled out Harris County (Houston, America's 4th-largest city), 50-49%. There, the African-American vote, 95% for Obama, was the clear difference. He won Bexar County (San Antonio) by a decent margin, 52-47%, and that's in a place with a big military vote. The dominance of Obama in Hispanic Texas was most obvious in El Paso County, 66-33% -- and there's a big military vote there, too. He also took most of deep South Texas, my old stomping grounds.

Even in Tarrant County, which has become Texas' answer to California's right-wing Orange County, there was good news for Democrats. Fort Worth delivered for Republicans much as it has in recent years, making the county breakdown the very same as the state's, 55-44% for Big Mac. There's a lot of old oil and gas money there that more than offsets the minority voting blocs. But the Dallas-FortWorth midcity of Arlington, home of centrally located amusement parks and sports stadiums, split 50-50%. The demographics there are definitely changing.

But there was plenty of discouraging news. Nueces County (Corpus Christi) is largely Hispanic, but went 52-47% for McCain. There must still be lots of priest-ridden Catholics down there. And when you track the vote out into the boondocks -- East Texas, outlying central areas of the Hill Country, the South Plains, the Panhandle, the rest of the west ... well, McCain just cleaned up.

Candidly, the story is just this simple. McCain and the other Republicans held on to the redneck vote.

It's discouraging, in that the Democratic Party actually fielded a fine candidate for U.S. Senate, state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston. Noriega polled just about evenly with Obama in a race against one of the most vapid (but well-funded) members of the Senate, Bush cheerleader John Cornyn.

What is clear from the results is that there is still a deeply ingrained "rube" vote in this state, the kind of people who would never, ever have given Obama any decent hearing, let alone serious consideration. I will refrain from using any stronger language about them.

Significantly, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently reported that many voters in Wise County, some of them Democrats, voted the straight GOP ticket because they wouldn't vote for any Democrats on a ticket headed by Obama. In so doing, they elected a guy to the office of constable who is affiliated with the Minuteman vigilante organization, devoted to chasing real or supposed illegal immigrants around the state.

Change can eventually come to places like my home state. But sadly, it is often glacial in pace. I got used to being in the beleaguered minority many years ago, so I can live with it for now. I hope, along with the optimists among progressives, to see it change before I die.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.