Friday, November 20, 2009

America the Great

I have begun to wonder about America and our good citizenry. I realize that, in days past, we have always had competing ideas and competing interests that drive our political system. But rarely in my past experience have we had a political system in which the two parties were so far apart that the interests of the Nation now seem to disappear into the mists. One party, the Grumpy Old People seems intent on blocking anything that threatens to move through the Congress, regardless of the subject. Health Care Reform of course is highest on their blocking agenda, because they do not want another Medicare or Social Security on their hands. Those programs, wildly successful by almost any measure, are both democratic party triumphs from another age. The Grumpies won’t have it. They will apparently stop at nothing to defeat any attempt to deliver health care to the uninsured. Heaven forbid the (formerly) richest nation on earth should actually care for its citizens enough to provide them with decent health care.
And then there’s the bowing thing. Obama actually paid his respects to a foreign leader by bowing. The Grumpies regard bowing as akin to subservience, instead of simply a polite paying of respect to an older person of equal rank. See, the thing is, Dickie Bird Cheney and The Shrub never bowed to anyone (daddy-shrub, of course opted to throw up at a formal state dinner, which I guess is not quite the same thing). So, they’re all throwing a hissy-fit.
And then there’s the deficit. Heaven forfend we should run a deficit (His Royalness Ron the Magnificent never proposed, or achieved a balanced budget). The Shrub actually achieved a degree of longtime fame because of his cavalier approach to budgeting and the deficit game. But given that he achieved his level of incompetence as a Yale cheerleader (see the Peter Principle) our expectations for his performance were not exactly at an all-time high (by the by, ever notice the scary parallels between the Shrub and Sarah? Both cheerleaders, both unsuccessful governors, both amazingly ignorant about world affairs, both super machos – actually, to be fair, the Shrub probably could never field dress a dead moose).
So, I begin to wonder what we should think of all this. Have the Grumpies simply opted out of the human race and decided to become officially the party of Fascistas, opposed to everything democratic, and anything that might benefit Americans, i.e., Anti-American? Hmmm . . . what would Lincoln say?
And on another planet, Rudy Giuliani has announced that he plans to become Supreme Leader of the Universe, unless Oprah gets there ahead of him.

No comments: