As a voting public, the United States of America occasionally gets it right. We rightly crowned David Cook and Jordan Sparks as American Idols. Of course, we also elected George W. Bush to the presidency twice, though that could be disputed endlessly. Point is, we can be counted on to get the ballot-casting shit right - sometimes.
So, America, real talk, and please heed me here: fuck folksiness in politics when it masks a lack of basic competence. Fuck down-home, aw-shucks bullshit in politics when it's a smokescreen for idiocy. Fuck that. This is 2008. We're coming off of nightmarish eight years led by an imbecile president. Tick off the abominations with me: Hurricane Katrina, Iraq War, Plamegate, extraordinary renditions, violation of civil liberties, weak-sauce responses to the South Asian tsunami and any number of other international calamities, blown-off subpoenas, slashing of environmental regulations, Don Rumsfeld in general, Alberto Gonzales and U.S. attornies fired for political reasons, Swift-Boat tactics, blithely stolen elections, deficits ratcheted to alarm-bell levels, our present economic catastrope, and lots of other shit I'm forgetting right now because I'm tired and hungry and it's Friday afternoon.
Fuck folksiness. I'm sure that Sarah Palin is a good person, but she doesn't belong anywhere near the Ultimate Seat of Power; as far as I'm concerned, she's already too goddamn close. If you've been awake the last month or so and watched the vice presidential debate last night, you understand what I'm saying. John McCain's a dangerous enough potential chief executive, but were he elected in November, and were he to drop dead, we'd be in even more dire straits in Palin's hands. It shakes me to my core to realized that the possibilty - even the very hint of a possibility - exists that America might vote these lunatics in. Confidence is a trap. History backs that up. John Kerry had it locked up, we thought, in 2004; he won his debates. But the electorate bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Will the majority of registered, voting age Americans allow themselves to be conned again? Will underlying racism, "just-folks" pandering, and outright lies win the day and plunge us over the abyss? Let's head that likelihood off at the pass. Let's vote on Election Day. Let's make sure that every Democrat we know does the same. Let's donate. Let's light up the internet. Let's fight for truth, for justice, for a president who's on our side. I'm not going to turn this rant into a Barack Obama advert; that'll come in a week or two. But if you're buying the McCain/Palin maverick doctrine, and if you're buying their change rhetoric, there's no nice way to say that you're a sucker. Don't be a sucker.
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