Waaaagh!

Obama's Speech



Well, it wasn't bad. If I weren't approaching his candidacy with an air of cynicism it might have been inspiring... but from my vantage a great deal of it was crap i've heard from him before, crap that i dont believe he'll deliver on, and silly platitudes (like equal pay for equal work) that have been around longer than i've been voting. Al Gore gave a better speech - and it wasn't until the end when he started to hit the echo of MLK that he REALLY hit his stride (but somehow his cadence lost the crowd - it took them 30 seconds to rev up to him and by then he was done).

A week of democrats in denver... a week of the Clintons sitting regally in their box looking down disdainfully on all the little people who'd come not to praise them but to annoint another (i watched camera footage of them exclusively during Biden's speech)...

You see... we have come to a time when the strongest nation on earth – a nation of unbelievable military might, of never before achieved economic prosperity, of freedom and privilege so pronounced the very name of the nation was synonymous… we have come to a time when that nation lives in fear from a tiny minority of religious zealots who live in caves and third world hardscrabble mountain villages. It could have been different. If George Bush had stood upon the wreckage, had come on the television after the felling of the two towers and said ‘we are a strong nation – strong enough that we will not live in fear of what some bigoted and backwards barbarian might thrust upon us… we are, by and large, a Christian nation and today we mourn not just those 5000 dead in the attack, but that there are those in this world who would commit such a horrible act against people working in an office building, with families and hopes and dreams, people of every race and every faith… we mourn the deaths of everyone in that tragic act - even of the terrorists as well. We will seek justice. We will find those that perpetrated this act – and we may well serve justice upon them – but in my faith as a Christian man I know that vengeance is best left to the creator.’ IF he had been strong – strong enough to TAKE it and not lash out – not see it as an opportunity to do evil things under the cover of fear – then he would have been the greatest president we’d ever elected.

But he wasn’t.

He was a self-centered weakling… the wimpy son of a wimp… snippy and short tempered his actions did more harm to this country than any thousand kamikaze 767s could have hoped to accomplish. Since that day I've hoped we'd find someone who'd stand up and take on the fearmongers... someone who'd say 'America - sleep soundly at night - there are no goblins under your beds' - because, we, as a nation, seem incapable of discerning this fact for ourselves. But Wednesday night Joe Biden went off on how there were terrorists lurking in Afghanistan - rebuilding - aiming to strike at us... and 3 months ago Barack Obama stood tall and voted for cloture on a filibuster of a bill indemnifying those who illegally monitor and listen in on our correspondences. These are not the droids i am looking for...

John McCain is worse - by far. I'll not argue that in the least... but I am sick and fucking tired of voting for 'less bad' candidates. A Democratic sweep of the halls of government will not result in a panacea of good government. More likely - it would result in the same corporatist masters simply changing the 'to' field in their check disbursements. So no, I'm not buying Obama's 'I'm different' bullshit. And though unlike Mrs Clinton I will not be happier with a McCain victory in November, I do not go into this election season with hope. Instead, I'll be participating in my own distraction while the rest of you busy yourselves with choosing which asshole will captain the ship of state on it's now inevitable decline down the toilet.