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.

Farewell, George

Comedian George Carlin died of heart failure Sunday night at the age of 71. Carlin will forever be remembered as a comedic legend but was far more than a comedian. He was a deeply intelligent man who never stopped reminding us that sometimes the only difference between comedy and abomination depends more upon us than it. Unlike most comedians, George's success on stage could never be measured by an audience's laughter or silence - only in the potency and perspicacity of his words.

He will be missed.

Bush v. Nature

George W. Bush, whose conscience is as polluted as the planet he intends to leave future generations, has struck again. He has asked Congress to lift a 27-year ban on drilling for oil in US coastal waters. According to BBC News, Bush called the ban (and, by extension in my opinion, overall consideration of our planet's wildlife and health) "outdated and counter-productive". This came after reiterating his interest in drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. As someone who doesn't believe the Earth exists strictly to be liquidated into capital, I'm almost offended by Darth Dub'ya's words beyond the ability to respond with the rational use of language. Therefore, I will keep this short and try to avoid saying the obvious and oft-repeated.

Along with American and corporate global hegemony, Bush appears determined to establish himself as the most anti-environmental, anti-democratic and least ethically engaged leader in American history. If Homo Sapiens evolve into a more enlightened life form, that life form will undoubtedly remember George W. Bush somewhat similarly to the way we remember the Roman Emperor, Caligula. Like Caligula, depictions and illustrations of Curious George will have to employ the use of caricature. Nothing else will sufficiently convey the dramatic degree to which he exhibits utter environmental disregard, despotic global policy and a stunning lack of integrity. To be fair to Caligula, however, his respect for the animal kingdom far surpasses President Bush's. He was rumored to have made a favorite horse of his a consul. Bush, on the other hand, will most likely mourn the loss of coastal habitats and wildlife (such as the threatened Polar Bear) the way the virtual slave owner of a Brazilian commercial soy farmer mourns the loss of the Amazon Rainforest - sleazily and greedily grinning at its edge with cash overflowing his pockets and indentured servants and corporate toadies clinging to his coattails.

Thoughts on the 2008 Presidential Race...

As the 2008 race to the White House (symbolically, a giant white structure built entirely by underfed, overworked black slaves) surges toward November, I feel more apathetic and disinterested than I've ever felt toward an upcoming Presidential Election. On the surface, this year's race promises to be among the most exciting in American history. This is primarily due to the fact that, if a democrat is elected president, the United States of America is guaranteed either to have the first non-white president or the first female president in its history. So why does this leave me somewhere between ennui and dread rather than somewhere between hope and elation?

It's really quite simple. If, in fact, the Republican party is sent packing from the "house that slaves built" to be replaced by a black man or a woman for the first time in American history, many Americans will view such a change as a significant step in a radically new direction. They will be utterly deluded by the luster of this purely cosmetic revolution, smile with satisfaction and turn their collective attention back away from the political sphere again until 2012. This inevitable ignorant expectation that a change in sexual genitalia or skin pigmentation will translate to a dramatic change in ideology or domestic and/or global policy has me downright dumbfounded. In fact, part of me would almost rather Darth Dub'ya just went ahead and declared himself Lord of the American Empire. Perhaps such a perspicuous conveyance of BushCo's true intentions would wake people up a little. Perhaps even more people would pick up a book and learn that our real political authority isn't even our Federal government (which is quickly disappearing thanks to outsourcing and privatization) but our Orwellian, Friedmanism funding puppeteers at Halliburton, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group, the IMF and the World Bank. Yeah, those guys. The ones with all the money. Aw, well. What is one to do? I guess, with all that said...

...I'll just have to cast my November vote for the man with the dark skin pigmentation now that the person with female sexual genitalia has bowed out. Unless, of course, the person with light skin pigmentation and male sexual genitalia who wrote the book and made the documentary about global warming decides to jump in and make it interesting.