Help us find Annie
Remember, Remember the fifth of November
As I am writing this, it is the morning of November 3, 2008 and the Presidential election looms ahead.
It is unlikely I will be fit to post a comment immediately following the election without restorting to this advance method. Tomorrow my day begins at 0600 ("sparrowfart," as the Aussies call it) and ends God-knows-when. I will be working as an election judge in the polling place where I usually vote. Our day will end when everyone has voted and the equipment is shut down and secured.
From this vantage point, I fear violence, either on election day or in the days following it. Emotions on both the side of Senator Obama and that of Senator McCain are running dangerously high, if you judge by what is to be seen on television and the Web. Here on my own street, it's impossible to measure things; for the two blocks this street runs, there is not a single yard sign in support of any candidate. This is unusual in the 35+ years we've lived here, and my wife suggests that people are actually afraid of retribution if they express support for one Presidential candidate or another.
Certainly the anger has been brewing for a while. Back in the spring, I found myself caught up in an argument between an irate customer and a clerk in a store where I was next to be waited on. I spoke up, not only because the clerk was powerless to solve the issue and was being unfairly abused, but because I needed to transact my business and get on with the day's work. The customer, a middle-aged black woman, shouted "Jena Six!" at me as she burst out the door. This shibboleth had nothing whatever to do with the matter at hand, and was a distinct display of hatred for whites by this person.
I have witnessed equally irrational and goofy stuff coming out the mouths of white people towards blacks, and I can't shake the feeling that we may have rolled back the clock to 1968. Interestingly, those of us who were adults in that tumultuous year--black or white--seem to harbor little anger about it. I have spent time all over the deep south in the past few years, and even in the cities where the violence had been the worst you will see middle-aged people of all ethnicities palling around together. The racial anger occurs among people who were yet to be born at that time; who have never been denied service anywhere; who never had to carefully plan ahead a get-together with friends of another race, lest some outsider start a fight; have never heard the word "miscegnation." As my friend and contemporary Brenda puts it, "They have no right to the anger they express."
So I find myself once again hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.
As for the two leading Presidential candidates, I have no use for either of the bastards.
If McCain is defeated tomorrow, we will be blessed by not having to hear the word "maverick" every goddamned ten minutes. Senator McCain may consider this a positive attribute, but in my opinion it means he is unpredictable and unreliable. He has not been called to account for his role in the Keating Five debacle of several decades ago, nor his inexplicable co-sponsorship of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, easily the worst assault on freedom-of-speech ever to have been codified in the USA.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, may well find himself in the position of not knowing what to do, once elected. A powerful speaker, he has swayed many people by oratory alone, but sooner or later he will be called to account for all the conflicting (not to mention impossible and unconstitutional) promises he has made along the way. The presence of innumerable skeletons in his personal and political closets just about guarantees that he will be about as effective a President as James Earl Carter or Gerald Ford. In the long run, this will be a good thing, if it results in a reduction of government power.
The real danger, in the medium term, is that of having one political power in control of two of the three branches of government. Unlike many, I am not worried about SCOTUS appointments; recent cases have demonstrated that those SOBs who are sitting there now are no prize, and no friends of freedom. I'm more concerned about the slow grinding away of the American spirit between the mill wheels of a Democrat president and a Democrat congress. Why Ms. Pelosi expects her party to dominate the legislative branch, given their microscopic approval rating, God only knows. But Americans are not known for using good sense at the polls, so anything could happen.
But I believe this form of government that was started here in the 18th century was meant to be noisy and argumentive; that "unity" (as both major parties express it) is a code-word for domination; and that the mission of the parties has shifted from finding common ground to one of destroying the opposing party altogether. This, I believe, can only lead to tragedy.
I am left thinking that the Britons are right when they observe that Guy Fawkes was "the only man to ever enter parliament with honest intentions."
Perhaps this election will take the USA so far down the slippery slope away from freedom that people will wake up and demand--if not forcibly create--the "change" that Obama and McCain claim to espouse. Or perhaps we will continue on the current path, described so well by C. S. Lewis: The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
One day at a time, I suppose...