For once, I find myself entirely in agreement with friend Shodan. His advice is cogent sound and perceptive, and after I lie down for a moment and press a cold compress to my head…
Point the first: If you cast your mind back a year (or so) ago, you will recall that the election was already over, so far as our tighty righties were concerned. Victory! Mission Accomplished! GeeDubya’s approval rating was through the skies, it was all over… Well, not exactly. His approval ratings have been dropping ever since, mostly for one reason: Iraq. But heres the thing: they’re not going back up. If it quacks like a lame duck, and hobbles like a lame duck, it doesn’t matter what the calender says.
Barring a miracle, that is, Kurds, Sunni and Shia dancing about the maypole while singing the praises of The Leader, what prospect have we of improved conditions? Zip, zero, nada. Indeed, we might well take comfort that our candidate did not inherit the impossible situation, that we are not in a position of praying for Divine Intervention. They broke it, they bought it. We tried, they didn’t listen. Now they can try to find a way to blame it all on Clinton. Jolly good luck with that.
Second verse, similar to the first: a policy of starting an expensive war while simulataneously cutting taxes has a special, highly technical term in formal economic theory: its known as “batshit crazy”. You simply can’t take all your money, pile it in the street and set it on fire, then go borrow some more. We are paying our rent with our Master Card, at 20%. Maybe we could grow our way out of this mess, but not with Count Iraqula sucking our blood until we’re bled white.
Policy changes? Why? Gay marriage was never our issue, it was an issue thrust upon us by our enemies, and it means almost nothing. Sure, they’ll pass their amendment, by way of throwing a sop to his base. And then they start the process of ratifying, which can take damn near forever. Of course, passing the amendment is all they really want, its for bragging rights. Does anyone here, thinking back a year or so ago, remember thinking about gay marriage as a big hairy ass deal? Of course not, it was a wedge issue cooked up by the Pubbies. This amendment is nothing more important than defining the word “marriage”, which properly ought to be the concern of Mr. Webster, not Mr. Bush. Arrangements can be made, liberal churches will peform ceremonies, and Americans will gradually get used to the idea that it is not a big deal. Because it isn’t.
Gun control? Forget it, it never had a chance, because the guns are already here! Nobody reading this post couldn’t leave their house with a wad of cash and fail to purchase a gun, one way or the other. We are awash with guns, and no legislation is going to change that. So Uncle Lem’s constitutional right to empty a clip at full auto into Bambi’s mom is secure. But the clincher is: even had we totally won on the gun control issue, nothing would have changed. The guns are already there, they will only be gone when they rust away.
Abortion rights? Well, that’s going to get ugly, no doubt. But the thing is this: the consequences of legal abortion are apparent, everybody can see them. But nobody is “pro-abortion”, we are pro-choice. Abortion simply isn’t nice, and that’s that.
But we won’t see the consequences of an anti-choice agenda until it actually happens. I mourn in advance for the pain and suffering, but it appears unavoidable. But when young women start bleeding to death from back alley abortions…and they will, or at least poor ones will…then we will see the consequences. We have forgotten those consequences, those of us who are too young to remember those consequences. And when that happens, there will be a pro-choice backlash that will wipe this issue out, once and for all. Bet me.
And of course, the young. Too obvious to articulate, I’ll just leave it at that.
The money is theirs, the power is theirs, but the future is ours.