In an election result that was called a political earthquake, the residents of Massachusetts collectively marched over to Ted Kennedy’s grave and dropped a huge steaming turd on his headstone by electing a dully handsome Republican douchebag named Scott Brown for Teddy’s old, whiskey-soaked, Senate seat.
Like so many earthquakes, this political plate-buckling was followed by a tsunami. In this instance the tsunami consisted of a gigantic, liquid wall of bloviation from political “thinkers” of every description.
For these thinkers, the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts was not about the voters of Massachusetts preferring a moderately attractive person who really, really, really wanted the job over a dried-up boring old prig who couldn’t bother to remove the stick from her ass and campaign for it.
No, to these pundits, the election was a Message.
That Message, funnily enough, seemed to echo whatever the political thinker had been thinking, and saying, all along. To Fox News, the Message was that Massachusetts voters were rallying against Obama’a Liberal Marxist Totalitarian Crusade to reform health care. To the centrists in the Democratic party, as personified by Rahm Emmanuel, the Message was that Obama needed to hew ever more closely to the center. To the Liberals of the blogosphere, the Message was that Obama had not been liberal or activist enough, and had depressed the progressive and independent support that had put him into office in the first place.
To the fbomber, the Message was simpler: We are fucked.
By we, the fbomber refers not only to his own demographic of late-30-something, perennially-underemployed, quasi-homeless, pseudo-intellectuals who aspire to careers in show business despite a lack of talent or effort. The fbomber refers to the entire United States of Fucking America.
We are all fucked, because we’re all in the same boat, that boat is sinking, the sharks are circling, and the passengers are putting the same crew of dimwits that ran us into the shit-berg right back into the wheelhouse.
Remember, fbombers, you read it here first. Unless the Republicans do something extraordinarily --- no, make that Palin-ically stupid ---- like run a retarded one-half-term governor for President, or the Democrats do something extraordinarily brave* --- like actually enact real health care, financial, trade, tax, military and entitlement reform --- we will be back to one-party, Republican rule by 2012 at the latest.
The fbomber doesn’t base this prediction on any polls or surveys or findings whatsoever. He bases it on the simple observation that the Mean people are back in the game. And the Mean people tend to win, except under extraordinary circumstances.
In an earlier post, the fbomber posited a theory of politics that divides people into quadrants based on where they fall on the two axes of Intelligence and Empathy. For a refresher, visit this posting.
As of early 2010, Obama and the Democrats have simultaneously managed to inflame to Mean people, especially the Stupid ones, into action and to depress the Nice people into a disappointed torpor.
The 2008 election was extraordinary because the Mean people, both Smart and Stupid, sat on their hands. The chronic and flagrant bungling of the Republicans from 2000-2008 in every area from controlling spending, to starting and waging wars was so obvious that even the most vicious and idiotic of America’s great Moronic Masses could not sign up for another four years of the same.
However, as the 1985 Emilio Estevez teen-punk-greaser film states: That Was Then… This Is Now. Now, the Mean --- Smart and Stupid --- are back.
And why not?
After all, it has been a full year since the Republicans skipped town after bankrupting the country, dismantling the government, shredding the constitution, breaking the military, flaunting international law, embarrassing our nation and committing us to ongoing, multi-year and multi-trillion dollar debacles on Wall Street, Iraq and Afghanistan.
A year is a long, long time to expect someone to remember something that they never wanted to know in the first place. So the mouth-breathers of America have completely forgotten who has inflicted all this pain on us. Now, according to conventional wisdom --- aka what people who don’t think about things think about things --- Obama owns all those problems himself.
And the mouth-breathers are pissed off at him for them. Hence the Tea Party movement, a group which appears to be --- more than anything else ---- motivated by a simple hatred of paying taxes. And, by extension, everything those taxes pay for, except for the things that explode and kill poor brown people. **
At the same time time, Obama, his inner circle of advisors and Democrats in general have managed to depress and disgust the Smart and Nice and Stupid and Nice people. These people wanted something different from the eight years of incompetence, deficits, wars and governance transparently dictated by rich corporations. And Team Obama simply did not deliver.
On the most pressing issues --- the crashing economy, health care reform and reining in the out-of-control financial industry --- Obama delegated both vision and substance to an obviously lobbyist-owned Congress. On the one issue that Obama did take responsibility for --- the war in Afghanistan --- he chose a George W. Bush-esque escalation, complete with a speech about Evil and the world and the need to defeat it with unarmed predator drone strikes.
The worst that you can say about his is that he never intended to bring change or fulfill hope in the first place. That he is a fake liar bullshit artist who tricked Progressives into electing him, in order to sell them out to the corporate and militarist power elite. That’s the worst.
The best isn’t much better. At best, he is either a) incompetent. b) competent but constrained by the realities of a dismantled apparatus of governance, an unforgivingly tight budget, a compromised Democratic party and vindictively obstructionist Republican minority.
Neither one of those things is the kind of slogan that will get Democrats’ hearts racing again. “Come on, support our guy! He’s just either clueless or trapped!” doesn’t even rhyme.
So exactly why will the voters reject the Democratic Party’s style of slow-motion, reluctant slide into disaster and choose the the Republican’s reckless gleeful drunken plunge into the shit?
Quadrant by Quadrant:
Smart & Nice. This is the heart of the Democratic party. Without this group passionately excited, activated and engaged, nothing happens for the Democrats. This group needs to be shown that Obama can and will deliver the things he promised on the campaign trail. Like at least ONE from the following list:
1) Real Health Care Reform, not some Senate-Clusterfuck-Corporate-Compromise bullshit. This means some sort of Public Option, period.
2) Tough, fair, strict, strategic financial regulatory reform. Smart & Nice people are motivated by a desire for fairness above all. Having one already rich and powerful industry get more riches, breaks, bailouts and exemptions from the rules of both Law and Economics isn’t acceptable. The financial industry needs to be made to serve the economy as a whole, not the industry itself.
3) Investments in Jobs Now That Create Smart Growth Later. America needs jobs now and a Green Economy Infrastructure for later. A national electrical grid. A network of plug-in hybrid charging stations.
4) Fairer Trade. American workers are among the most productive and efficient in the world. Yet we compete on price with nations who do not offer protections to their workers or environment. And who manipulate their nations’ currency to create a pricing advantage. Surely we could quantify the artificial, unfair advantages that these nations offer and create a tariff that removes that unfair edge. To reduce that tariff to zero, the nations would simply need to stop their unfair practices.
5) Energy Independence.
Unfortunately, the chances of Obama and the Democrats accomplishing any of these things considering A) A unified Republican opposition in a Senate which can be paralyzed by 41 nay-sayers B) Democrat’s own stomach-turning spinelessness, cowardice, greed, corruption, and treachery C) The raging torrent of corporate money directed at maintaining the status quo --- is just about zilch.
Nice & Dumb.
If the Smart & Nice crowd could be sufficiently energized, the Nice & Dumb crowd would follow. So forget that.
Mean & Smart.
Democrats cannot ever convert the Mean people. All they can hope is to neutralize. In 2008, Obama did this by allowing his campaign to be financed by the financial industry, and surrounding himself with people who would ensure that the financial industry would be taken care of.
IF the economic pie were still growing --- no matter how fake and toxic its filling --- Obama could continue to let the plutocracy gorge their ever larger slices, while the lower 98% of America enjoyed the crumbs and napkin-stains.
But now Obama has a dilemma. He needs to reform the financial industry to prevent another economic collapse, not to mention establish some sort of credibility as a President who actually does his job.
So he is going to lose the plutocrat’s bought-off neutrality. In fact, he already is.
Mean & Dumb.
These are the foot soldiers for the regression of the American experiment into some sort of corn-pone fascist banana republic. These hateful morons sat out the election in 2008, but --- as evidenced in Massachusetts, are agitated and gaining the political equivalent of retard strength by simply offering hurting, pissed off stupid people a chance to lash out at everyone but the people who caused their pain.
Their anger, combined with the Smart & Mean money seals the deal for the Republicans in 2010 and 2012, unless one specific thing happens: They manage to do something so stupid that they fuck it all up for themselves to do that for you. Luckily, they do that pretty consistently. Like vote for Ross Perot in 1992. Like take over the Republican primary put someone far too unelectable up for office, like they did in upstate New York with that ridiculous carpetbagger Hoffman guy.
Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. As someone who isn’t interested in reliving 2000-2008, but with even less money and international prestige, I can only hope that the Palin juggernaut continues to gain steam, that her supporters overwhelm the Republican primary and that she runs for President in 2012. Whatever Obama’s failings, the very thought of the babblings of that half-wit harridan coming from the Oval Office would instantly convert every quadrant but Mean and Stupid into banner-waving Democrats in about half-a-second.
* If the current crop Democrats ever did anything extraordinarily brave then all our problems would be solved anyway. Because if that happened enough winged pigs would fly out of enough asses that we could harness their collective flapping power to replace fossil fuels forever.
** The fbomber does not like paying taxes himself. And does not expect anyone to. But he has traveled abroad, and notes that the countries that spend money on themselves tend to be nicer than the countries that don’t. And the fbomber wants to live in a nice country.
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