The cynic
"The cynic wants to believe. But far too much has happened, and inspiration is no longer enough. The cynic will need to be convinced... Someone will have to measure the wreckage. Someone will have to walk through the ruins. Someone will have to count the cost." - The Cynic and Senator Obama, by Charles P. Pierce
It's a four month old article at this point, but it remains one of my favorite pieces about the election so far this year. I remember when I read it originally, I was still planning on voting for McCain and I thought to myself, "If McCain turns into what everyone is calling him, this is pretty much an essay about why I still won't vote for Obama." Let's make no mistake about it, people - McCain has changed. It's been a swift one (in the relative sense of politics), the sort of change that tells you that a person has made up his mind long before but is just now getting around to swallowing his own bile at what he's about to do. Let the Republican Fake Scandal Machine off the chain and sic em on Obama. Make grandiose political gestures that look like bucking the system (not new) but then never follow through with the actual measure once the camera is gone (new). Make a Harriet Myers-like nomination in a shallow bid to get some superficial voters.
What can I say? My boy's been busy getting his MacBeth on.
We are not friends anymore, the McCain campaign and I. I remember meeting with an old friend from high school a year or so before I left for Austin, and the casual friendliness was immediately replaced with a sort've weird tension. We bullshitted over some drinks but the entire time we were thinking to each other, "What the fuck happened to you, man?" Some of my friends have already been thinking it, I'm sure. We're no longer so worried about making America better but rather making sure those fucking liberals don't get their dirty hands on the big chair and fuck it up for everyone. So what if we get a little blood on our sleeves in the process, right? Isn't that worth keeping the wrong people outside the gates, where they belong? Isn't it? What the fuck happened to you, man?
But no, I'm not voting for Obama. I can stand the self-righteous anger of these people about as little as I can the other. Obama doesn't tell me he's bringing me hope and change, he tells me that he's telling me he's bringing me hope and change, and then leaves his followers to devour the disbelievers in his wake. Why can't you get on the bus, they ask me? Do you not love your country enough to kick the villains out of the White House? "Why do you hate America" sounds the same no matter how you say it, folks. The article says it better -
Obama says that cynics believe they are smarter than everyone else. The cynic thinks he’s wrong. The cynic doesn’t think he’s wiser or more clever or more politically attuned than anyone else. It’s just that he fears that, every morning, he’ll discover that his country has done something to deface itself further, that something else he thought solid will tremble and quake and fall to ruin, that his fellow citizens will sell more of their birthright for some silver that they can forge into shackles. He has come to believe that the worst thing a citizen of the United States of America can believe is that his country will not do something simply because it’s wrong. It would be a mistake for anyone -- but especially for a presidential candidate -- to believe that the cynic thinks himself wise or safe or liberated. In 2008, the cynic is more modest. He considers himself merely adequate to the times.
Don't condescend to me. Don't tell me that if I want a better America, I need to get in line behind you and tick off the right button so that someone else can sit in the chair. Fuck you. Do you really think that that's the solution? Do you think you're going to go into that voting booth, elect a new Moral King and then step back so that he can make it all better? Were you not here for 2006, when the Democrats 'cleaned house'? Maybe you were here for 2007 when they kept writing blank checks to the President because the best bit of anger they could muster was discussing the possibility of forming a committee to analyze the possibility for convening a delegation to vote on bringing a ballot around to consider the notion of denouncing the President.
And these people tell me that if I don't say D in November instead of R, I'm part of the problem. Roll up your own goddamned sleeves and make this country better. Come with me to a prison some day and help me try to teach the inmates how to work a checkbook and how to decipher a fucking credit report so they don't feel like the world of legit money is shut off to them. Spend your weekends writing material to show people how to get into a home without getting caught up in the problems that have crushed the lives of so many people... problems that we steered headlong into while the people who are telling us today "It's time for new leadership!" were already navigating the water that capsized us all.
You all keep fighting the war. I'll be counting the cost.