"OBAMA, BABY!!" shouted the young black man selling T-shirts, walking by my car last night as it slowly drifted into one of Northern Virginia's merciless traffic jams.
The air wasn't just filled with excitement.
It crackled. Thunderously.
Drivers were pulling their cars over in all directions along the stretch of Prince William Parkway and quickly hopping out to join the masses of people moving towards the county fairgrounds less than a mile away. It turned out that the last official "Change We Need Rally" was now in motion and the next president of the United States was there to join the Virginians in sealing the deal.
I managed to get to a quiet neighborhood nearby, parked my car, and started walking towards some townhouses in the direction of the fairgrounds.Climbed over one large wooden fence and then found myself battling through thick brush, big thorny vines, and tall grass--all in the darkness--but trying to appreciate the adventure (and sacrifice to my office clothes) of blazing my own trail to get to Barack's Big Party. I finally made it through to the street and joined the masses as they flowed onward to the fairground gates.
Inside was a rainbow of inspiration. Americans of all ages, colors, and classes, perfectly integrated, illuminated by the same voltage line of faith. If you have been to an Obama rally, you'll know the sensation I'm talking about. When he finally appeared, the crowd of nearly 100,000 erupted as if he had whipped out a Fender Stratocaster and unleashed a barrage of lightening fast riffs.....
Now just suppose for a moment that Barack Obama was something of a rocker. Can you imagine how much energy his rapidly disintegrating bridge-to-nowhere opponents would work up in trying to manufacture that into a smear?? I have faith, though, that enough voters across the nation--and those devastating poll results bear this out--are fed up with John "I Voted 90 percent of the time with Bush!" McCain & his Alaska Sarah, the amazing barbie doll bimbo.
Sad but true, folks. These really are two desperate, unscrupulous candidates with nothing to offer but more of the same heaping helpings of Bush poison. Which explains why they take to character assassination with the verve of delirious helocopter hunters in a canned ice hunt.
As Americans go the polls today to put the finishing touches on one of the most unique and memorable presidential campaigns in history, maybe the lesson will finally be learned on how to catch the telltale stench of contemptible Republicans using the Karl Rove "Moral Bankruptcy Playbook."
Monika Robinson, where ever she is, probably gave us the best summation of the capacity of the GOP Sleaze Machine to coat election issues with the most dazzling Orwellian colors. Late in the campaign she wrote:
"I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight......
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids 'Willow', 'Trig', and 'Track', you're a 'maverick.'
* Graduate from Harvard Law School -- you are unstable.
* Attend five different small colleges before graduating -- you are well-grounded.
* If you spend three years as a brilliant community organizer, becme the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,00 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend eight years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the State Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, spend four years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs Committees -- you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, four years on a city council and six years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, twenty months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people -- then you're qualified to becme the nation's second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for nineteen years, while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches -- you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month -- you're a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control -- you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly adovocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant -- you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard Graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family -- your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA -- your family is extremely admirable.
.....Okay, then.....much clearer NOW."
Yep, it sure is.
CELEBRATE!
2 comments:
Maybe Jared Diamond was right. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel). Maybe the disparity in the races of man derives from the resources and environment around them.
Perhaps the Africans were wild and untamed and disorganized and barely literate and tribal because of where they were. If you could have gone back a hundred thirty centuries and traded places - put the African peoples in Britain, and the British people in the Congo, then it would have turned out the other way around.
Black-skinned people would have had manifest destiny and slaves, and white people would be raped like blow up dolls (that birth real, saleable offspring) and used like farm equipment.
Anyway, some farmers marched to Concord and Lexington and they stood up to the bullies and made the bullies back down.
Then some wise men invented the United States of America, and they wrote a Constitution.
And then a string of very brave, very honorable men became the president, and all of them, to a man, acted very honorably, and made every effort to behave exactly as God would behave if God were in that position.
And that phenomenon peaked with a President named Lincoln.
Then the standards began to unravel, dissolve and grow thread bare.
That trend culminated with Nixon/Clinton/Bush.
I hope now, I deeply pray it - that we are moving back to Presidents who act like God like Lincoln did.
Provocative views on the evolution of civilizations, Dave. I did manage to see that superb PBS series, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" a few years back and the author/narrator made some very valid points, regarding how a region's climate could make such a huge impact on just which particular areas would fall victim to the resulting industrialized nations.
"Manifest Destiny," worldwide, is made ever so simple if the aggressor tribes (e.g., British, French, Dutch) have armor, cannon, and enough muskets to subjugate the targeted "heathen" nations, so their natural resources can be plundered at will. Or, just simply forcing a conquered nation to grow export crops, like coffee, tea, and opium, making jolly good profits for the mother country, while the starving local inhabitants are "domesticated." Today, the process is far more sophisticated--they call it "globalization."
I would think again, however, before labling Africans of long ago as "wild and untamed and disorganized and barely literate and tribal," Dave.
Some five hundred years ago, the Sahel Kingdoms in North and West Africa hardly fit this narrow description. The Songhai Empire, for instance, in 1500 stretched all the way from Cameroon to the Maghreb, the largest state in African history.
True enough, such African empires did eventually fall victim to the industrialized tribes' hand cannons. That, however, doesn't translate to their victims being "wild, untamed, and disorganized," does it?
Post a Comment