Monday, February 20, 2006
Advice Nobody Seems to Want
You want my advice? I don’t care, I’m giving it anyway.
What we all need to do in this country is let go of all the supposed idiocies that the “other side” has committed and get on with living in the present. I was moved to offer this sagacity when I read a short article about how awful it would be if Kerry and/or Gore were in charge since 9/11. Would it be? Well, who the Hell cares, anyway? They aren’t, and they never will be. I have no idea how honorable these two are, probably more than the person who wrote the article would admit to, but it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t win. How a pedantic intellectual and horse-faced depressive could fail to win the hearts of middle America is, of course, a mystery, but there it is. There is no reason at all to mention them ever again, unless they stick a foot in it (which everyone does once in a while) but even then, why drone on about their theoretical performance in Bush’s job? It really truly honestly doesn’t matter even the least little bit. Forget it. But wait, there’s more.
My brother sent me an email that was actually pretty funny detailing a fictional response to a fictional hearing in which Ted Kennedy gets lambasted yet again. Well, sure, it’s easy, but consider this: Ted Kennedy is probably a big fat jerk. The people of Massachusetts see fit, for reasons of their own, to keep re-electing him. (I suspect he does a good job for them, bringing home the pork like a good Senator is supposed to.) Therefore, except when he puts a foot in it as I said above, it really doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do to anyone outside of Massachusetts. They like him, I never voted for him, neither did you, so ignore him like you do the people on the street corner fishing for quarters and move on. The fact is, outside of his home state, he really doesn’t matter. He isn’t Joe Kennedy, he isn’t JFK, he’s not even on the level of his brother Robert. He truly does not matter, any more than do Kerry and Gore. (Sorry, bro, but it was a funny email.)
But lest it seem I’m hitting the right side of the aisle a little hard, consider George W. Bush as President. There are those still very bitter over the fact that the Supreme Court intervened in Florida. They say that the Supreme Court elected him. Actually, the Electoral College elected him, because that’s their job. They elect all of our Presidents. Aside from the debate about whether the Electoral College is a good or a bad thing, he was duly elected in 2000, and again in 2004. I didn’t vote for him because I figured him for just the dufus he seems to be, but I didn’t like my choices much either. Heck, I’d vote for Nixon again over any of the current crop, even though unfortunately he really was a crook. However, dwelling on Nixon, or on the election of 2000, isn’t accomplishing a damned thing other than keeping people unduly upset. Just as it doesn’t matter what Kerry would have done, it doesn’t matter about that election. Who you gonna appeal to after the Supreme Court rules? Exactly. They are the final court of appeal, per the constitution. Like it or lump it. The court is the court, W. is the President. Better we should get over it and move on.
I don’t mean all this to be taken as we should just blindly support the administration because they’re the administration. What I would like to see is some constructive criticism, maybe some effective use of PR by someone who isn’t friends with Jerry Falwell. Something with meat in place of stridency would be nice from either side of the aisle.
I don’t like petty obfuscation in place of explanations, but I don’t like “we can do better” in place of an actual plan any better. We have a nation that we invaded, rightfully or not, that we owe a rebuilding to. How are we going to do that? We have a master of spin for an enemy who uses our own good-natured American goofiness and lack of strong central control against us. What shall we do about that? For that matter, should we send an army into the Hindu Kush and rout the sucker out? What about the Patriot Act and its more controversial provisions? In Denver the library no longer keeps records of what patrons check out. Is that a clever preservation of freedom or an unfair thwarting of a legitimate investigation? Those are all things that really do matter, but I never see anything about any of them, or at least not much beyond sound bites. Here’s another thing that matters: many Americans have quit reading newspapers, if they ever did, and get their news from Fox or CNN. Many more don’t even go that far, and get their news from talk radio. Is this an informed electorate? You decide.
We don’t have to like each other all the time, but we do need to remember to respect each other all the time. It is possible to work through these differences, you know if we quit dwelling on each others’ supposed shortcomings and concentrate on figuring out how to handle the real problems we face now.
Or, we can just keep screwing around while Bin Ladin laughs at us in his cave. Our choice.
What we all need to do in this country is let go of all the supposed idiocies that the “other side” has committed and get on with living in the present. I was moved to offer this sagacity when I read a short article about how awful it would be if Kerry and/or Gore were in charge since 9/11. Would it be? Well, who the Hell cares, anyway? They aren’t, and they never will be. I have no idea how honorable these two are, probably more than the person who wrote the article would admit to, but it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t win. How a pedantic intellectual and horse-faced depressive could fail to win the hearts of middle America is, of course, a mystery, but there it is. There is no reason at all to mention them ever again, unless they stick a foot in it (which everyone does once in a while) but even then, why drone on about their theoretical performance in Bush’s job? It really truly honestly doesn’t matter even the least little bit. Forget it. But wait, there’s more.
My brother sent me an email that was actually pretty funny detailing a fictional response to a fictional hearing in which Ted Kennedy gets lambasted yet again. Well, sure, it’s easy, but consider this: Ted Kennedy is probably a big fat jerk. The people of Massachusetts see fit, for reasons of their own, to keep re-electing him. (I suspect he does a good job for them, bringing home the pork like a good Senator is supposed to.) Therefore, except when he puts a foot in it as I said above, it really doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do to anyone outside of Massachusetts. They like him, I never voted for him, neither did you, so ignore him like you do the people on the street corner fishing for quarters and move on. The fact is, outside of his home state, he really doesn’t matter. He isn’t Joe Kennedy, he isn’t JFK, he’s not even on the level of his brother Robert. He truly does not matter, any more than do Kerry and Gore. (Sorry, bro, but it was a funny email.)
But lest it seem I’m hitting the right side of the aisle a little hard, consider George W. Bush as President. There are those still very bitter over the fact that the Supreme Court intervened in Florida. They say that the Supreme Court elected him. Actually, the Electoral College elected him, because that’s their job. They elect all of our Presidents. Aside from the debate about whether the Electoral College is a good or a bad thing, he was duly elected in 2000, and again in 2004. I didn’t vote for him because I figured him for just the dufus he seems to be, but I didn’t like my choices much either. Heck, I’d vote for Nixon again over any of the current crop, even though unfortunately he really was a crook. However, dwelling on Nixon, or on the election of 2000, isn’t accomplishing a damned thing other than keeping people unduly upset. Just as it doesn’t matter what Kerry would have done, it doesn’t matter about that election. Who you gonna appeal to after the Supreme Court rules? Exactly. They are the final court of appeal, per the constitution. Like it or lump it. The court is the court, W. is the President. Better we should get over it and move on.
I don’t mean all this to be taken as we should just blindly support the administration because they’re the administration. What I would like to see is some constructive criticism, maybe some effective use of PR by someone who isn’t friends with Jerry Falwell. Something with meat in place of stridency would be nice from either side of the aisle.
I don’t like petty obfuscation in place of explanations, but I don’t like “we can do better” in place of an actual plan any better. We have a nation that we invaded, rightfully or not, that we owe a rebuilding to. How are we going to do that? We have a master of spin for an enemy who uses our own good-natured American goofiness and lack of strong central control against us. What shall we do about that? For that matter, should we send an army into the Hindu Kush and rout the sucker out? What about the Patriot Act and its more controversial provisions? In Denver the library no longer keeps records of what patrons check out. Is that a clever preservation of freedom or an unfair thwarting of a legitimate investigation? Those are all things that really do matter, but I never see anything about any of them, or at least not much beyond sound bites. Here’s another thing that matters: many Americans have quit reading newspapers, if they ever did, and get their news from Fox or CNN. Many more don’t even go that far, and get their news from talk radio. Is this an informed electorate? You decide.
We don’t have to like each other all the time, but we do need to remember to respect each other all the time. It is possible to work through these differences, you know if we quit dwelling on each others’ supposed shortcomings and concentrate on figuring out how to handle the real problems we face now.
Or, we can just keep screwing around while Bin Ladin laughs at us in his cave. Our choice.
