The Basics of American Electoral Process

I used to think a tea party involved a little girl sitting around a table with dolls and stuffed animals engaging in a fantasy ritual which involved tiny plastic teapots and a childlike suspension of rational understanding in favor of the excitement of the impossible. Turns out I was right all along. Recent primary election results in several of the fine states of this wonderful Union have confirmed that when Mommy and Daddy fight, or a family member is very ill, or a big dog frightens you, a retreat into comfortable fantasy is the most psychologically convenient course of action for people who don’t understand the world and feel weak and helpless in the face of its powerful and mysterious forces.

Fear is one of the most potent of human motivators, competing for primacy with hope, love and the possibility of gain. In 2008, the majority of citizens who bothered to vote were principally motivated by hope, the hope that there could really be a change in the slow decline of America’s economic and moral significance and change to the selfishly poisonous political processes which make addressing the nation’s real problems impossible. We took a chance on a charismatic but completely untested young fellow from Illinois and gave him majorities in both Houses of Congress with which to implement the desired change. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama turned out to be a much more charismatic and decisive campaigner than chief executive and his allies in congress consistently played one of the main roles from “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”, and it wasn’t “The Ghost”. The net result is that, despite some significant positive legislative accomplishments, the changes that American Progressives (i.e. Liberals, hippies and Buddhists) were hoping for, have not materialized and are, in fact, not even on the horizon.

I’m not going to take the time to go down the extensive list of the things I thought President Obama was going to try to do which he hasn’t. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and not call them promises, but nonetheless we are still at war, still spying on our own citizens, still denying all those unfathomably gay people out there an equal right to participate as full citizens of this great nation, still not focusing on investments in education and research, and we still haven’t freed the Federal Government from the stranglehold of corporate lobbyists and the corrosive impact of corporate cash in the electoral process. I suppose Mr. Obama can’t really resolve all these issues by himself, but I don’t hear him even talking about them anymore. He seems to have lost the fire. I’m still mad as hell, and he isn’t.

So back to the fear thing. The question we are currently faced with is how to conduct a comprehensive search for a hero while we are busy circling the drain. I have come to understand the anger and frustration that a lot of Americans are feeling, and displaying, including our fine Tea Party affiliated citizens. I suppose many people who support “Tea Party” candidates are decent, honest and hardworking Americans who have simply lost faith in the standard political choices, although I remain unfortunately convinced that the majority are just born again racists or failed artists, but there can be no doubt that there is a genuine sense of fear among most Americans about what the future holds, and rightly so. We are facing a list of ills that rival the Great Unpleasantness of 1861 or the Nippon Nastiness of 1941, but we now have the additional bonus of the least competent national leadership of any stripe in 10 generations and the whiniest and most self-absorbed populace of any nation since France became a country.

I like Mr. Obama’s analogy of the Republicans being the ones who drove the car into the ditch. Indeed they drove it through the ditch, out the other side and into the forest striking several trees and ejecting all the passengers before plunging into the abandoned quarry and sinking 186 feet into the murky, chartreuse water. No way I want those freaks driving again, but the Democrats are like the group of strapping, able-bodied eco-tourists who witnessed the whole thing and are just standing around plaintively whining “please, won’t someone please do something!?” Obama, being the leader, just paces back and forth mumbling to himself and you can only catch snatches of “hope”, “change”, “new paradigm” and “shit” as he meanders around. The Tea Partiers, my favorite analogy villains, are the inbred country cousins who are slowly shambling out of the woods to sodomize and eat the corpses. Lacking a fully developed forebrain, they claim to be Republicans, but they actually eat flesh instead of just sucking blood. This ain’t no way to run a superpower.

So here comes Election 2010, the year of fear. Christine O’Donnell is courting the anti-masturbation vote, which I would never previously have considered to be much of a strategy, but maybe there is something about Delaware that I don’t know. In Nevada, Sharon Angle has done everything but put out a contract on Harry Reid’s life, worthless toad though he may be, and across the nation money flows into the Republican coffers in anticipation of a return to Lady Liberty getting molested and the rich getting richer. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and probably again until I can come up with a new idea; we are so very fucked.

If there were 535 Democrats in the Congress, they couldn’t pass gas. The only glue that holds the Democrats together is their fear of the Republicans. Democrats have the organizational skills of a rabid howler monkey and the foresight of a horny teenager. Democrats cannot save themselves, let alone the country. The good news is that we have the Republicans. The Republicans are a foul cesspool of self-serving hypocrisy, messianic delusion and good, old fashioned Southern dumbassedness. You might as well drop your children off at a halfway house for convicted pedophiles as to put the Republicans in charge of anything. There is the so called “Tea Party”, I guess, which is really just the armed militia of the Republican Party, but they have the added advantage of humorously sanctimonious “Constitutionalism” and no sense of shame. I’m pretty sure Ben Franklin would eat his wig before he would debate topiary with Sarah Palin, but Ben had an eye for the ladies and would probably have stove-piped her ass until she spoke Latin. I love this country. I can’t wait for November.