Did Florida redeem itself last night? It depends. Yes, there were enough Homo Sapiens to put Obama over the top, but the Neanderthals won far too many local contests. The miserable bastards of Martin County Florida voted heavily Republican and no Democrat, includingBarak Obama came anywhere close to winning. I'm at a loss to explain it.
This is a small county, much of which is rural and much of it is state and federal park land. It's a county that prides itself as conservation minded and it shows, A recent poll showed than nearly 90% of us favor slow and limited growth and many favor no growth at all, but it's a county that regularly -- invariable votes for councilmen owned and operated by rapacious developers. That is to say they vote Republican.
I've regularly been chastised for hinting that Sarah Palin isn't qualified. People bristle at any criticism of Bush, at any suggestion that there is any option for the voter than to go straight Republican. Wealthy people, upper middle class people; you can almost see the reptiliannictitating membrane blink over their eyes at the suggestion that there is no official state religion, that the Constitution does not mandate that people pledge allegiance to (the Christian) God and that we stamp our mandatory faith on our coinage.
Yes a slight majority of Floridians voted for Obama. Counties containing Universities, counties with a high African American population, even Miami-Dade with it's very large Cuban population voted for Obama, but not Martin County with it's relatively large population of billionaires and multi-multi millionaires and a very large number of retired military personnel . This county votes in lock step with the people of central Florida: the people in the rusted out trailers and tar paper shacks and dead cars in the yard.
These fine folks also passed a constitutional amendment banning any kind of same-sex domestic or civil contracts, even though Florida law already prohibits same-sex marriage. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that a State with such a diverse population would have such an affinity for small minded, authoritarian and puritanical politics, but I am and I'm disgusted.
Yes, Florida voted for Obama, but. . .
We won some and lost some. I share your outrage over Amendment Proposition #2 (and expect a constitutional challenge in Federal court). Michelle Bachmann survived just barely to harass again. And the second verdict on Stevens is still out. Nonetheless, all abortion amendments got “NO” votes, so there has been some progress. Overall, I see extremistfunlessmentalist influence waning.
ReplyDeleteMatt Osborne has an interesting post this morning:
Tonight is America's late answer to that 9/11 (2001) with our own 9/11 (1989).
At first, I was a bit puzzled because the Berlin wall fell on November 9, 1989, but then I remembered the European date convention that puts the day first followed by the month. So, yes, 9/11 (American) is equivalent to 9/11 (European).
Despite everything, we have been wandering in the desert for so long, I’ll take this victory and all the symbolism that goes with it.
Nicht wahr!
Oh, one more remark. "YES WE DID" but we had to pay a terrible price in terms of death, destruction, and human suffering. Stupid thing about humanoids: They refuse to change until they are experiencing excruciating pain.
ReplyDeleteFogg, living in a traditionally red state, I share your frustration and pain. Even now NC is the only state on the map still in gray because Obama has won by only 12,000 votes - I expect their counting furiously trying to make the count go the other way.
ReplyDeleteChange comes slowly; look how long it has taken us to get from Rosa Park's seat on the bus to this day.
We shall overcome (the Morlocks) but it will take time.
Right now, we should celebrate this historic occasion, but be ready to keep a close eye on our new administration. Personally, if I see them going in a direction that is not in my country's best interest, I intend to be first in line shouting my protest.
You know, much will be made about us seating our first black president and it is quite an acheivement for this country, but I voted for Obama not because of his color but for his calm intelligent approach to the problems we are facing. I am not in total agreement with everything on his agenda, but I do believe he is our one best hope to climb out of the mess we are in.
He's got a lot on his plate - the foreclosures are still happening, we are still losing jobs and the debt of individuals and our nation keeps climbing. It will get worse before it gets better.
This morning we are, once again, Americans, all of us, left and right and in the middle, so let's not forget to greet our fellow citizens with compassion and respect-- it's time to get to work, folks...
Alabama went 60-40 for McCain, which was no surprise. I meant to get a paper today and see my county results. It was probably 75-25 McCain, but I am just curious because the polls were packed.
ReplyDeleteWorking on a post about the election and where the GOP should go in the next four years. It will be a few hours.
I listened to Obama's acceptance speech, and am envious of his rhetorical abilities. His persona is impressive. I thought McCain's concession speech was well done and gracious.
Robert, I too was impressed not only with McCain's concession, but his offer to help Obama be successful. Had that been the John McCain we saw from the beginning, this election might have turned out differently. Although I must tell you, as an Independent moderate, I could never vote a ticket that included Palin. Some of her views are a little scary and she really was not prepared for the national scene.
ReplyDeleteI used to have quite a bit of respect for McCain and if he had been the one to run against Gore, I would have had a bit of trouble choosing. Of course after his love affairs with the Religious right and his reversals of opinion and his tolerance for one of the dirtiest campaigns in the last hundred years, I no longer know who the real John is. I suspect however he's one of those "ends justify the means" people and that's intolerable. Neither does he have anywhere near the leadership ability, even with his own party and that he, like Bush is heavily dependent upon the skills and intelligence of others without the ability to choose good people to depend on, is now very apparent. Palin was a horrible choice, but worse than the impulsive choice was the suspicion that it wasn't even his choice but one made for him buy people he owes his soul to.
ReplyDeleteYes, he did show grace in defeat and there may be a decent man hidden in there, but the fatal mistakes he's made in his campaign are the kind of fatal mistakes I would expect him to make as president.
Palin? I think she's the most dangerous woman in America.
please pardon all the typos - I'm using a strange computer with an unfamiliar keyboard.
ReplyDeleteCapt. Fogg, I’m happy for Obama but there were some down sides from my perspective, too. Looks like Prop. 8 will win here in California. Some subset of people evidently voted for Barack Obama but are certain that traditional marriage will crumble to dust if a few evidently godforsaken same-sexers tie the knot. The same people also tend to believe, I suspect, that when a small and frowned-upon group ask to be treated as equitably as the accepted majority, they’re asking for special privileges, and that the purpose of civil society is to force others to accept and live by their beliefs or suffer the consequences. If these people couldn’t conjure up some group of hellbound evildoers to combat, they wouldn’t be able to get themselves through a single day.
ReplyDeleteTo be sure, major Democratic candidates are sheepish about such explosive issues—Obama’s own position is evasive. Whenever people start eliding a “should be” with an “is” (as in “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman”: well, DUH! it usually is), we know we’re dealing with weapons-grade highly enriched bullshittium (one of the heavy elements, I believe). That these propositions are even at the “margin of error” level of support indicates progress.
Californians heart Barack, but not gays and lesbians, it would seem. And they don’t much care for prison reform, either. As the great Mo Udall would say, “The American people have spoken—the bastards!”
Despite McCain’s show of grace in defeat, I find myself less generous in my post-mortem comments.
ReplyDeleteThere has always been a self-defeating aspect to the man, some unrelenting pattern of character-disordered behavior that dogged him throughout life. Strip away the POW chapter and what is left? The arrogant hotshot, the joker, the prankster, the wise guy. He was undisciplined at the academy, almost flunked out of flight school, crashed planes, and almost got bounced from the Navy, but there was always his admiral daddy to bail him out of trouble. If he had expertise in anything, it was learning how to scrape by and cover his tracks. Not meaning to be cruel in my comments, all McCain accomplished in life was an ability to trade on his POW experience while accomplishing nada. In other words, a phony wearing a hero's mask.
While visiting Iraq three years ago, he tormented his protocol officers. He dawdled and wasted their time: “Sir, we have leave, RIGHT NOW.” He put soldiers and protocol officers at risk. A perpetual spoiled child who never quite grew up, he didn’t even flush his own toilet, according his handlers.
Bereft of principle except a burning desire to win an election at all costs, he sold his soul to his campaign managers. But did he ever have a soul?
Let there be no doubt: The better man won.
If there's any doubt, it doesn't reside with me. A much better man won.
ReplyDeleteI'm amused at how soon the country has forgotten that interracial marriages were illegal in at least a dozen states as late as 1967 and for the the same godforsaken Biblical reasons that gay marriage is now illegal and slavery was legal.
Poverty and ill health are far bigger threats to the stability of families than anything else - yet the same people also oppose health care, welfare, minimum wages or anything else that interferes with their dog eat dog savagery.
The Bible is no better than the people who misread it and it's most frequent use has been as a pedestal for bigotry, malice, superstition, cowardice and tyranny.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteAs for the 'oly Bible, the key word is "misread." What the narrow-minded have done for centuries, nay for millennia, is trade meanly on the moral eloquence and inscrutable majesty to be found in the best parts of it. Instead of focusing on, say, Job as a meditation on the mysterious and transcendent God who commands Leviathan and speaks from a whirlwind, whose eye is one with the eagle or the lion as it takes its prey—the Ineffable who shows us that the human and divine understanding and order are incommensurate—the narrower, less literate sort of people (and those who shepherd them) treat God as nothing but the low natterings of their own tiny spirits. So they emphasize the parts of the texts that they can interpret as enjoining bigotry, violence and cowering superstition. No doubt "the Bible" in this sense has long been an engine of destruction wielded by humanity against itself. But the same book is also a repository of some of the best thoughts ever on suffering, death, the privilege of the spirit over material considerations, and the hope that we belong to something greater than ourselves. So I would say that this dimension of the texts, the one that calls us out of ourselves, is always better than what the misguided and misreaderly make of it, just as the Gita is always there as a string of wise "signifiers," or as Homer's Odyssey remains a testament to its people no matter how many students reduce it to grist for a grade on their final exams. It is always a well of potential for self-transcendence, though I think it shares that distinction with other things—nature itself, generously understood, might deserve the same interpretation. In saying that last thing, no doubt, I've probably just made some chief priest somewhere in the world rend his garments and say, "He hath spoken blasphemy!" Oh well, now he'll have to go buy some new garments—glad to do my part "to get this economy moving again."