Monday, November 15, 2010

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT…

And I feel fine, mostly because I’m stinking drunk. That’s right it’s 11:30pm here on the east coast on election night and the Republicans have taken control of the House. My, my, well at least the good people of Delaware were able to break the spell of anti-masturbationist Christine O'Donnell but that didn’t stop the rubes in Kentucky from electing Tea Party golden boy and self certified optometrist Rand Paul to the Senate. The loss of Feingold in Wisconsin was particularly painful and the Defeat of Prop 19 in California crushed any last hope that we were moving into a new age of progressivism. The dream is dead, the whole thing’s been turned back over to the wolves and to make matters worse I’m out of bourbon. Fuck this I’m going t0 bed

It’s exactly 24 hours later and the world hasn’t exploded but my head felt like it this morning. Been watching the news today and all the talking heads want to know what it means and all my friends want to move to Canada. As appealing as all that Canadian bacon sounds, though I think they just call it bacon there, I think we all need to calm down. Sure, I felt pretty grim last night but this is just how things go, the system is doing its thing. Two years ago the country took a hard swing to the left, now we’re swinging back to the right because Obama and the Dems haven’t been able to fix things fast enough for our wily and schizophrenic electorate.

So what does it mean? It means the Republicans are going to actually have to do something besides say, “no” and Obama is going to have to take the gloves off. The biggest mistake the GOP can make is to make good on their threats to repeal healthcare. Obama still has a veto pen and the Republicans aren’t going to have the votes to override him. If they go down this road or even worse use their newly gained subpoena power, nothing is going to get done in the next two years and the independents are going to swing back to left in the next election cycle. The Government is designed to work with differing opinions and some would even argue it works better that way. But you know what? All this ranting and raving about who controls what is beside the point. It really doesn’t matter who holds the reigns in Washington, the Democrats or the Republicans, because they don’t really represent us. They represent the likes of Goldman Sachs and BP. It’s high time that this country wakes up and realizes that we’re not living in a Democracy but a Plutocracy. So don’t get too caught up in searching for the significance of this midterm. It’s very simple. It means nothing. Nothing is going to change. The rich will simply continue to rule while the rest of us live off their scraps. That is unless we can get past all the partisan bickering and I’m not talking about Washington. I’m talking about us. Me, you, your neighbors, co-workers, friends, frenemies, and family. I’m just as guilty as anyone, probably more so but it’s time to stop attacking each other and start holding our so called leaders accountable for selling the American Dream to the Corporate Oligarchy.