Here comes the Goya-esque moment where the giants bludgeoning each other, stuck knee deep in sludge, begin to spatter the tiny people at their feet with blood, bile and bilge. While it's never a shock that as the tighter presidential candidates are squeezed the more their froth-flecked teeth are bared, one of the more outstanding phenomena of this historic election is the public's awakening from their tacit enslavement to the cycle of empty promises, button-pushing and Rovian dirty trickery that has come to define as "normal" the political process.
The feeling that the population has just come to after having ingested a roofie-laced order of Freedom Fries has gone viral, penetrating even the most traditionally impregnable strongholds. So obvious is it, that even those most adept at hurling invective-laced loogies are doing so with bewilderingly less commitment and a significant decrease in phlegm. It just ain't in 'em.
The blossoming list of lobbed charges from both sides are so lame and their blatantly partisan sources so easily discernible that it's almost as if the Old Guard has collected its booty in a stained pillow case and simply gone AWOL. The miasma has started to dissipate, replaced by an air of inevitability. When emails went out purporting to expose Obama's supposed anti-Semitic sentiments, even the most gullible balked at picking up their cue. A couple of Google clicks later and the source is easily traced to an ugly, little, far-right wanketorium masquerading as a conservative journal. Not a lot is finding purchase in the formerly fertile fields of fetid fibbery.
In the case of Obama's spreading appeal, the Spinderellas are at orange alert, taking beads on the candidate like the good soldiers they are. But every volley of vitriol seems to slow in midair and fall to the ground with a tinny clatter. BO seems to embody and espouse values that echo the feelings of what looks to be a vast majority of citizens who spy a light at the end of the Halliburton-constructed tunnel. Is he less experienced than Hillary? He certainly has demonstrated his ability to deal with a full steam Clinton machine, which has itself withstood repeated raging Repuglican onslaughts and is legendary for its deceptively drawling ferocity.
You can hear the whispered but nonetheless hate-filled rhetoric from the right's most vicious pander-pundits, scared half to death of color, creed and credibility. And the members of the Good Ol' Boys of The United States of America finally have to face the reality they've been dodging for years, face what comes to everyone and everything, both powerful and meek: The End.
You can see the fear (or is it humanity?) in Hillary's eyes as she and Bill grapple with the increasing possibility of defeat. She must know, brilliant and capable person that she is, that a neutron bomb of change is about to detonate, leaving only the hopeful, the daring and the forward-reaching standing.
Scary. But kinda thrilling, isn't it?
"I don't know with what weapons the third world war will be fought, but the fourth will be fought with clubs and stones."
"One of Clinton's laws of politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you, and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes; you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope," - Bill Clinton 2004
Who is the candidate that keeps referencing hope and ideas in this campaign? Who is the candidate who ran an ad about attempting to invoke fear with a phone ringing in the middle of the night?
Amazing that Bill Clinton endorses Obama isn't it?
Yup, the way the first female leader of the House, a Democrat with a Democrat majority, was kinda thrilling.
For a little while.
A very little while.
YES.
To bad, so sad, so many will continue to suffer and die because of lack of decent health care, just so others can make a profit from those that can pay.
I am sure I will get flamed for this statement. So many think he's for universal health care because he uses that phrase in public, but he has as an adviser the guy that helped to kill it the last time we got it started. Where do you think the revised Harry and Louise ads came from?
It is said, insanity is the perfection of your most compelling desires, stripped, through desperation, of the clothing of moderation. Who said that? Well, me. And I should know, from a time before I took on these too obvious airs of respectability.
But I digress.
True that some fangs are sharper and whiter. True that some claws are more crusted with the blood of previous victims.
True that Ali beat Liston. Liston, a heavyweight fighter so feared that contenders would not accept a title shot. It was said he could break a man’s back with a punch to the stomach. I’d be afraid. Ali accepted a title fight with Liston and scored a TKO at the start of the seventh round when Liston remained in his corner. Ali won in ways, techniques and moves, so convincingly different that it changed the nature of boxing. Ali would, henceforth, always be the champ.
This is what Hillary faces. She is Liston to Obama’s Ali. Obama makes it look easy. The great ones do.
Clinton has three choices. And they are not easy.
One, she comes out for the seventh round and gets knocked out. Two, she stays in the corner and concedes, a TKO. Three, she attempts to change scoring system.
Whichever she chooses, the people will always know who the champ is.
Of course she would not be the nation’s first illegitimate President, but then the specter of Obama would haunt like a Pale Horse.
Mahalo,
HST
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Indeed it is, Steven.
I'm sure the Clintonistas will discount this as just so much "cultism" (The desperation is palpable), but I remember when JFK was running and in office.
My grandmother took my brother and I down to State Street to watch as his motorcade passed by, convertible limo and all.
I looked up at her at one point, and this calloused-handed, working woman from the semi-rural manufacturing town (back then) of Racine, Wisconsin, was grinning from ear to ear, and crying.
I haven't seen quite that reaction to Obama, but what I do see thrills me to no end.
I see people inspired to go to the polls for the first time in their lives. I see young people, notoriously apathetic when it comes to election day, coming out in numbers not seen since the late 60s and early 70s when I first came of voting age.
Clinton backers can dismiss and demean it all they wish. They see something special happening, it's happening to their candidate, and they hate it.
First: Her Iraq Vote and refusal to admit she was wrong.
Second: Her mocking Obama supporters/voters as
being silly and unintelligent.
She has only days to leave with some dignity and that
still can only happen IF she apologizes for
her Republican style behavior & tactics
What an excellent way of describing the "normal" that has become the political process than "tacit enslavement. " Bravo. The hell with "bitch being the new black." It's the darkness of what politics has become that has rendered us sterile, cynical, demoralized and thus tacitly enslaved. Excellent.
No doubt, Spinderellas are at orange alert, and Karl Rove is Spinderella's ugly stepsister, forcing the "glass slipper" of hope and future to fit into his ugly "Fear mongering" "virtriolic" feet. They're "hope is fear" and their fear IS "hope."
I see a centrist' DLC making what are obviously behind-closed-door, across the isle deals, like the ex-post-facto telecom immunity for helping government criminals violating the Constitution. I have little doubt many will continue cross the isle to help republicants stop voter desired changes after the election, as they have for the last year. The one-party, lobbyists bought, republicrats(or demicans) have been running this SCAM on OUR country for a VERY long time, and they might even take a scorched earth approach when dealing with their defeat. It will probably NOT be fun, I can even see powers-that-be TRYING to wreck OUR economy, just in an attempt to prove how they were right all along, and how the voters seeking change and wanting OUR Constitution back, are misguided and actually causing the problem to begin with.
I view this as MORE REASON than ever to vote change NOW. Every election where this movement is postponed, is one step closer to a mindless lemming oblivion, where ONLY corporations write OUR laws, and supposed FREE citizens no longer have ANY Rights. And likely, with yet another WAR declared on 'We the People' ...for complaining about it.
Or, as in the case of an Alabama Governor, possibly FABRICATED wrongs to deal with ANYONE not of the 'proper' political persuasion.
Pleasant thought...
Lifelong Dem here, won't vote for the hope-uh-dope! Yes, Hillary is the brilliant & capable one and probably all too aware that she is being thrown under the bus for the benefit of a clown.