And We All Went Nuts Together
Long time, no rant, and after this they'll be sparse. Roughly put, I betrayed one of the key tenets of MidnightRanter, which is some level of objectivity or at least semblance of sane judgment. I avoided the pronoun I since, as I was told many years ago, no one cares what I think, only what I can show. Part of that process means taking a good chunk of myself out of all that and all the political analysis. It meant taking emotional judgment out of political decision making, and that hasn't been true of the past few months. And the odd thing is that it isn't just MidnightRanter having this problem. Even many of the professional pundits have been showing preferences even when they hadn't before. Professional pundit Chris Matthews had some missteps regarding Hillary. And, the hits kept coming. He's a professional, he worked in a White House, he knows better, but he let his emotions get pretty far away from him and he just kept going. He went off pretty good about a racist ad aimed at Harold Ford. There is an even better clip of him on air when the results coming losing it and going off on the Republican party because of that ad. But, this campaign lasted longer and was more bitter than almost any in the past 50 years. And in a year when all Americans seem to want some kind of change for lots of the country. We all sense a fight coming in 2008 and want the best candidate for it, and in so doing some of us, myself not least among them, got far beyond caught up in the fight. And it has made us all mad. No, not angry. Crazy.
First of all, I seem to have lost a fan who friended me, so if I did anything to personally offend, I'm sorry ladyvivien. On the other hand, she might just have decided not to read me anymore because of lack of quality posts, and can't blame her for that. But, in the face of one of the most bitter primary fights since 1980, we all believed fervently in the candidate we believed in. Not only did we start believing in them, we started hating all those who opposed them. And I say we because it was not just me, it was almost every supporter who started talking about their opponents in atrocious terms. Or condescending terms. Or in borderline bigoted terms. From all sides. We had Geraldine Ferraro's comments, as well as those from Fr. Michael Pfleger's comments. Rev. Wright and Bill Clinton also went pretty far off the reservation. We've had accusations of racism and sexism flying every which way. There are few quiet supporters of either Democratic contender. There are few who, at this point, say "either one is just fine, I don't care which." Time will heal this rift, but it will take time. We had debates not on issues, but on what those who were near each candidate believed and how fast the candidate would get rid of that person. Rumors spread about people's loyalty, ethnic backgrounds, connections to foreign countries and other pointless minutia. We all fell for the bullshit because it's fun to watch, at least to the political junkie. We haven't been, at all times, lifted by the higher vision of an America under new leadership, we were dragged down into the mudfight. Who slandered whom. How dirty can we make the other person look. How can we attach someone's peripheral fuck up to the candidate.
We may have all honestly believed in one candidate being greater than the other, and honestly believed they could do great things for America, but so many pundits have not reflected that honest view. We all looked for the bloodiest, nastiest point scoring we could. How could we make the other person look worse so they will lose this set of voters or that set of voters? In the name of unity of party cohesion, we divided up the American people into so many voting blocs. The black vote. The Latino vote. The under 50,000 a year vote. The Catholic vote. The women's vote. The white, working class vote. The Appalachian vote. We sought to divide, slice and cut the votes so much we lost track of the humanity that underlies all the voting and the American spirit that is present in all those people. We tried to play up as divisive comments as possible because we all thought it was the right thing. We wanted partisans, not voters. We painted opponents as enemies and all followers as wanting to destroy the party, destroy the country or destroy something dear to someone. But, all the supporters became partisans and all the followers became fanatics. Hillary's supporters are crying for "Denver! Denver!", in reference to making a floor fight for her getting the nomination, despite, as of tonight Obama secured the nomination for the Democratic party. She has publicly said she wants to wait a few days, but many of her followers want her to fight on. No doubt, were the positions reversed, his people would be calling for him to go to Denver. No clear Agincourt moment for either side.
So, the fight went longer than anyone had thought, it got nastier than anyone had thought and it made us all crazier than we thought. We had record turnouts and bloody battles. We had all the old rules thrown out but all the old tactics stayed in. We smeared them, because there was an "us" and a "them". We see issues with Florida, Iraq, Michigan and just about anywhere else on the news. We see it even if we're not there and we feel something. It becomes part of who we are and drives to do what is necessary to "fix it", no matter what it is. And anyone who stood in the way, or rather stood for the other person, was part of the problem, no matter the problem was. We started to worry so much about fighting the fight that we all forgot about analyzing the problem for what it is. We all forgot about the professional training or years of schooling and just got caught up in the frenzy of all these people competing for the highest office in the land. We all got caught up in "The History" of it all. We all thought we were all part of history and thus had the right to act like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Rules no longer mattered, history was at stake. Civility no longer matter, history was in our hands.
But, in the end, all we did was get crazy at each other.
On that note, I'm on vacation until I can regain my sanity, stability and something resembling objectivity. I'll support whom I support, I just need to regain my composure before talking about politics. I made the horrid discovery the other day there are NO political issues I can't get worked up about. So, until I get that back, I'm gonna hang back on these. Hope to see you all soon.
So it is written, so do I see it.
First of all, I seem to have lost a fan who friended me, so if I did anything to personally offend, I'm sorry ladyvivien. On the other hand, she might just have decided not to read me anymore because of lack of quality posts, and can't blame her for that. But, in the face of one of the most bitter primary fights since 1980, we all believed fervently in the candidate we believed in. Not only did we start believing in them, we started hating all those who opposed them. And I say we because it was not just me, it was almost every supporter who started talking about their opponents in atrocious terms. Or condescending terms. Or in borderline bigoted terms. From all sides. We had Geraldine Ferraro's comments, as well as those from Fr. Michael Pfleger's comments. Rev. Wright and Bill Clinton also went pretty far off the reservation. We've had accusations of racism and sexism flying every which way. There are few quiet supporters of either Democratic contender. There are few who, at this point, say "either one is just fine, I don't care which." Time will heal this rift, but it will take time. We had debates not on issues, but on what those who were near each candidate believed and how fast the candidate would get rid of that person. Rumors spread about people's loyalty, ethnic backgrounds, connections to foreign countries and other pointless minutia. We all fell for the bullshit because it's fun to watch, at least to the political junkie. We haven't been, at all times, lifted by the higher vision of an America under new leadership, we were dragged down into the mudfight. Who slandered whom. How dirty can we make the other person look. How can we attach someone's peripheral fuck up to the candidate.
We may have all honestly believed in one candidate being greater than the other, and honestly believed they could do great things for America, but so many pundits have not reflected that honest view. We all looked for the bloodiest, nastiest point scoring we could. How could we make the other person look worse so they will lose this set of voters or that set of voters? In the name of unity of party cohesion, we divided up the American people into so many voting blocs. The black vote. The Latino vote. The under 50,000 a year vote. The Catholic vote. The women's vote. The white, working class vote. The Appalachian vote. We sought to divide, slice and cut the votes so much we lost track of the humanity that underlies all the voting and the American spirit that is present in all those people. We tried to play up as divisive comments as possible because we all thought it was the right thing. We wanted partisans, not voters. We painted opponents as enemies and all followers as wanting to destroy the party, destroy the country or destroy something dear to someone. But, all the supporters became partisans and all the followers became fanatics. Hillary's supporters are crying for "Denver! Denver!", in reference to making a floor fight for her getting the nomination, despite, as of tonight Obama secured the nomination for the Democratic party. She has publicly said she wants to wait a few days, but many of her followers want her to fight on. No doubt, were the positions reversed, his people would be calling for him to go to Denver. No clear Agincourt moment for either side.
So, the fight went longer than anyone had thought, it got nastier than anyone had thought and it made us all crazier than we thought. We had record turnouts and bloody battles. We had all the old rules thrown out but all the old tactics stayed in. We smeared them, because there was an "us" and a "them". We see issues with Florida, Iraq, Michigan and just about anywhere else on the news. We see it even if we're not there and we feel something. It becomes part of who we are and drives to do what is necessary to "fix it", no matter what it is. And anyone who stood in the way, or rather stood for the other person, was part of the problem, no matter the problem was. We started to worry so much about fighting the fight that we all forgot about analyzing the problem for what it is. We all forgot about the professional training or years of schooling and just got caught up in the frenzy of all these people competing for the highest office in the land. We all got caught up in "The History" of it all. We all thought we were all part of history and thus had the right to act like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Rules no longer mattered, history was at stake. Civility no longer matter, history was in our hands.
But, in the end, all we did was get crazy at each other.
On that note, I'm on vacation until I can regain my sanity, stability and something resembling objectivity. I'll support whom I support, I just need to regain my composure before talking about politics. I made the horrid discovery the other day there are NO political issues I can't get worked up about. So, until I get that back, I'm gonna hang back on these. Hope to see you all soon.
So it is written, so do I see it.