The Good, The Bad and the Undecided Surrounding Cosmetic Change

Due to a combination of being fed up, disgruntled and entirely disenfranchised with our fake democracy and feeling no obligation or desire to share my thoughts with the equally dysfunctional public it governs, it's been some time since I've visited this blog. However, I've decided to temporarily emerge from my misanthropic slumber and express a few things after Tuesday's puppet show. I hope you enjoy.

I should begin by stating that I did not vote for Barack Obama. Knowing that John McCain's chance of winning my current home state of California was virtually nil, I did not have to vote for whom I considered (and still consider three long days later) a consolation prize. Therefore, I voted the way I have in 66.6% of the elections for which I have been eligible to vote. I voted Green. Humorously, I can see someone challenging me years from now asking, "You had the chance to vote for the first African American male president in American history and you didn't?". I'll crinkle my face into a position expressing something between dissembled concern and feigned shame and utter to my interlocutor, "Well, I guess I was fairly conservative back then. Instead, I voted for an African American woman...whose running mate was also an African American woman". Then we'll both chuckle and, with great alacrity, resume our near idyllic post-mass human extinction tribal lives.

Anyway, the election. So, did you think we would ever have a black American president? Well, if not, you've not yet been proven wrong. However, did you think we would ever have a half black (Halfrican American, perhaps) American president? Well, we do. For civil and human rights this is both an excellent sign and a deceiving non achievement. Politically, it's a potential seed for subtle (perhaps even trivial) progress; no more, no less.

First, what does this mean for human and civil rights? On one hand, a country only 44 years removed from the Civil Rights Act and a mere century and a half removed from the Emancipation Proclamation has prevented a man's Halfrican (now that I've coined the term, it really is the best choice here) heritage to exclude him from the presidency. On the other hand, the significance of this landmark is largely limited to an historical context. Does racism still exist? Yes, despite race (if we focus strictly on pigment and steer away from racial culture) being a secondary physical attribute on par with eye color, hair color and height. Homophobia? Oh, yes. Ironically, during the same election that gave America its first non 100% white president, many states, including "liberal" California, passed bans on same-sex marriage. Discrimination against short people? Absolutely. Standard basketball hoops continue to be 10' high. Come on, America. But in all seriousness, this is still a bigoted, fearful, hateful country. In the middle of the nineteenth century, William Lloyd Garrison (publisher of the Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper beginning in 1832) proclaimed that discrimination against women and discrimination against blacks were the exact same animal. It's now 2008 and how far have we really come? Selective tolerance is not tolerance. In reality, not much more has changed than the promise of an asterisk in future history books. Please, America. Stop applauding and start progressing.

Politically, Barack Obama is a Democrat. What is a Democrat other than a member of the Democratic Party? Well, in 2008, it's a lot like a Republican, but represented by a blue donkey as opposed to a red elephant. In other words, there's not much of a difference. Living in the Land of the "Republicrat", we really have one political party with two sub parties varying only in extreme. The ideals, values and policies of this political party are dictated not by the people (whose voices are marginal at best) or the republic (which doesn't exist), but by international banking entities and the corporations to which they are married.

Why don't most people understand this? Well, in my opinion, it all begins with language. If anything is going to change, so must our political language. The imprecision and hollow ambiguity of our ethereal and often downright counter-intuitive political lexicon has equivocated the ambitions, values, and ultimate agendas of our political authority. With this vague vernacular, it stands to reason that our proletarian sensibilities have been deceived and exhausted into evaluating that authority on faith alone.

The most misleading of these words are the names of our analogous parties themselves, Republican and Democrat. First, what is a Republican? A Republican is a member or advocate of a republic. Sounds great, right? That's a big reason people continue to vote Republican. However, upon further examination, something is very, very wrong here. We don't have a republic. We live in an empire whose policies are solely aimed at achieving global American imperialism. So, in reality, those we refer to as 'Republican' are 'Imperialist'. The difference? One of brobdingnagian proportions. Ask 1st Century Rome. These words are, in fact, nearly opposite. Ouch! What about a Democrat? A Democrat is a member or advocate of, you guessed it, a democracy, the political system exercised by a republic. See above. Contemporary Democrats and true 'Democrats' are, therefore, nearly ideologically antithetical to one another. Double Ouch!

Ultimately, the election of Barack "even my friends from Harvard shudder at how conservative I am" Obama isn't a radical change. Don't be deceived.

Either way, however, I understand that we all need something to root for, no matter how arbitrary. That, my friends, is why I'm a sports fan.