A Democrat in Texas
This morning I woke up to see that my state had inexplicably selected Hillary Clinton as their choice for the democratic nominee. As the sun went down i was pushing my bike up a 700ft tall hill due to another round of flat tires. Some nice symmetry there.
The bike i can deal with, the politics, I dunno.
I’m not sure whether to be pissed, sad or just completely disheartened by the whole debacle. The only solace I can take from the whole thing is that, barring a national emergency like the inevitable impending zombie war, there’s at least a 75% chance that George Bush will not be president next year. I guess that’s something.
Here’s the thing – I’m a mildly progressive Democrat in a largely republican state. And make no mistake, I love this state. On the whole, I respect the opinions of the Republicans I know even if i do disagree with them. Maybe some times I call them fascist bastards, and maybe sometimes they call me a liberal hippy, but its all in the spirit of spirited debate. That’s what I thought this contest started as, a debate. An intellectual discourse on the very trying issues that face this country. That is until one candidate lost 11 primaries in a row. Then it was the attack ads, the planted media stories about diplomatic incompetence and rumors of being sworn into congress on the Koran (by the way anyone who gives a flying crap about that please see the Bill of Rights, bullet one). This from the woman who still won’t release her tax returns (come on internets, why have we dug that up yet..?). The salient point is, it’s stopped being a debate and started being an American-style election again. How sad.
The sad part, the really horrifyingly depressing part, is to see 50% of the voting populace of my state buy it. I feel like as a whole, as a state, we’re smarter than this, that we should know to see through the bullshit (We’re Texans we invented the stuff). We’ve had a Bush or a Clinton in charge for the last twenty years, or rather, two-thirds of my short life–have things really got better? Has your corporate-sponsored-federal government done anything for you lately besides murder and maim a lot of promising young men in far-off land for no good reason? Has the media (who despite her claims to the contrary is giving one candidate a pretty easy time of it) done anything for other than spoon-feed you hype to feed a 24-hours news cycle ? No. Corporate media (now with touch-screen-on-demand-graph goodness!) keeps us happy by reporting on Britney and keeping any eye who’s going to pull the best ratings six months down the line (imagine the hype when they catch slick-willy pulling another Moncia…moreover imagine the advertising revenues). And the meta-corporate-hegemony that runs the country will always back the known quantity, especially if its good for the bottom line. While we fret over Brit, they’ll be working to swing the election on asinine issues like abortion and gay-marriage, while the middle and lower classes are hemorrhaging from $3 gas, 80% increases in food costs and an uncertain future of failing banks and oil wars.
We buy it, again and again. Even the great people in this state I’m normally so proud of.
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