I Am Going To Talk About Politics

Posted September 27th, 2012 by Sean Williams

This is insane. Honestly, everyone I’m close to is talking about this, and despite the wealth of information drenching us every single second, most of us can’t even begin to guess at what is really going on in the world, in our economy or in the situation room of the White House. And lord knows, I’m not the one breaking the bell curve when it comes to “smarts”.

Obviously, I lean left. But not so obviously, I have a lot of real affection for the conservative point of view. I have absolutely no interest in expanding gun-control laws, and I don’t really care if the laws on the books now are revoked. Sure, guns can kill people, but they’re tools and it feels sorta anti-intellectual to try to ban a *thing* instead of dealing with the illegality of *actions*. Also, I totally understand the anti-abortion people. Yes, you shouldn’t legislate what I’m doing with my pantsjunk, but on the other hand if you *actually believe* that it’s murder, then you really do have to fight against it. I get that – I totally *disagree*, but I get it. I’m also the only person I know who thinks we should cut the NEA. When I was a kid, it was a pathetic two dollars per American. Now? It’s about 40 cents. Dump it, give them a win, we’ll bring it back when someone has the guts to actually fund it.

When it comes to economics, I don’t have a degree and neither does almost anyone talking on television, so I don’t really listen to what anyone says.  If I pay more taxes and more cops are hired and less criminals steal less of my shit, that seems like a net win for me, but I tell you what – I’ll admit that I don’t understand the free market economy if you’ll admit the same. Then we can talk

So, “where I stand” is pretty shaky ground. But what we seem to be looking at is the fact that Mitt Romney is going to lose this election, and the general take on it is that he’s a terrible candidate. While that’s probably true, he certainly *seems* to be a terrible candidate to me, I personally don’t think that’s why he’s losing. I think he’s losing because the Republican platform is making less and less sense to people.

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1) “We need to end abortion and limit access to birth control.” Okay, this is insane. Obviously, about 60% of Americans want no change in access to abortion, so that’s not exactly a popular position… BUT BIRTH CONTROL??? Do you guys just WANT to lose? Why would you choose a position that basically NOBODY supports, except for about two hundred guys in their 70s who haven’t had sex since they banged their wives watching tapes of Nancy Reagan.

2) “We need fewer restrictions on guns.” Really? Because everyone looks around and sees people getting shot for no reason, regardless of the fact that crime is at an all-time low. Look, I’m with you guys, but this is a totally stupid position when you consider the zeitgeist.

3) “Gays and Immigrants shouldn’t have the same rights.” This is a huge one because it’s part of a larger problem. The American Way is this – no matter how you were born, you can achieve greatness. It’s the story of Jesus in the manger, of Moses in the rushes and Lincoln in the log cabin. Your platform states, “because of how and where you were born, the American Dream is not for you”. I’m not even saying the American dream is real, but it’s starting to occur to everyone that keeping our collective foot on the throats of people we’ve been trampling on for years is not particularly *good* for us.

4) “Job Creators are extremely wealthy, and we need to make it easier for them to make jobs”. But… we all know that doesn’t make any sense. This is trickle down economics. If it worked at all then the years when it was being implemented would show a healthier economy, and they don’t. We all know that people making 20 million a year aren’t creating jobs – that guy is *saving his money*. It’s the guy making 180k a year who keeps opening one more lumber store.

But that’s all economics, and we agreed we’re both morons, so let me say it’s more than that. It goes back to point three. Most of the wealthy people we see came from wealthy parents, and George W. Bush embodies that… but nowhere NEAR the level that Mitt Romney does. In an economic climate like this one, nobody resents a guy who was born on third and claims to have hit a triple more than the guy who falls asleep when his head hits the pillow and drags himself awake when his alarm goes off five hours later.

5) “Liberal Bias/Snobs/Elite College Aristocrats/Unfair Advantage to Democrats”.  There’s a saying in basketball fandom – if you’re complaining about the refs, you’ve already lost. A group of insanely wealthy people, with countless insanely wealthy people standing in the wings behind them, have the gall to say, “the entire media world, with the sole exception of Fox News, has an orchestrated effort to make us look bad.” Never mind that the best way to make Mitt Romney look bad is to play videos of things he says, and the best way to humiliate the GOP is to fact-check their statements.

John Edwards and John Kerry couldn’t claim to understand the middle class and get any traction because they are both insanely rich white people with more advantages and creature comforts than Queen Elizabeth the first. The sense that people get looking at today’s GOP is that they believe “the middle class” are people making 200k, that when you make a friendly wager, it’s for ten thousand dollars, that half the country are parasites living on the government teat. That half of the country is astonished and angered, and most of the other half know it isn’t true.

6) President Obama is a Muslim/Wasn’t Born in this Country. Most of America doesn’t know what to do with this insanity. And the fact that the GOP holds on to these ideas, subtly working them into campaign speeches, strikes most of the American electorate is distasteful.

And trying to win on a technicality? President Obama wins the election by a fair margin, and there are people who are saying “technically, he shouldn’t be President because we think he wasn’t born here!” and people start thinking, “well, wait – we voted for him, we want him to be President… if there *is* a stupid rule that invalidates the American People’s wishes, then maybe the *rule* is bad…”

7) “We Are At War With Islam”. No, we aren’t.

See, this is America, and almost everyone has Muslim friends. And while they were annoyed with the cartoons of Mohammed, they didn’t get “rage”. In fact, they probably got roughly as angry as the bloviating red-faced fumers on television talking about Muslim Rage. They did a poll, and 8% of American Muslims said that it was moral to murder an American Citizen if the action was justified by religious precepts, and while that’s certainly terrifying, it’s only half the story. Because 16% of Evangelical Christians said the same thing. Americans are simply not buying the idea that these are the end-days and a war with Islam is upon us. It’s been going on for 1400 years, it’s not gonna suddenly all come to a head in 2017.

And if it does, a Mormon might not be the best person to run the country. Not for nothing, but they think there were horses in the United States before the Spanish came. They thought black people had the mark of Cain until 1977. They believe that a farm boy found a… you know what, google it or something. I grew up with it, I could tell you stories, but that’s not what this is about.

8. “President Obama Did Nothing And That’s Why You’re Miserable.” But, he did, and we’re not.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are on record, FROM DAY ONE, saying they will defeat everything that comes in front of them from the president, that their number one priority is getting President Obama out of office. To most of America that seems… shitty. President Bush got his tax breaks because the Democrats hated him, but they didn’t want to punish *Americans* for his actions. The Republicans actually screwed America’s credit rating to make the President look bad. A comprehensive health care plan, developed by conservatives and implemented by a Republican governor has become the centerpoint of the Republican’s hatred. And yes, it doesn’t help that it was Romney’s idea, and now he has to run against it.

But also, we’re all okay. It sucks, we’re not psyched, but we’re Americans, we’re fine. It goes back to point #5, we aren’t whiners and we hate whiners.  When you say, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” almost everyone’s gonna say yes. Certainly the soldiers who aren’t in Iraq, and the other soldiers who can now love whomever they want openly. Certainly the millions and millions of people who now have health care. And everyone who had money in the stock market -that shit is worth almost DOUBLE what it was four years ago. So, that GOP talking point just isn’t sticking.

9) “We will cut taxes and reduce the deficit”. You can’t.

There’s literally nobody in the world who thinks, “If I can find a way to bring in *less* money, and then get rid of some of the stupid ways I spend money, then I’ll have more money.” I said before, I know nothing about economics, but this is what George Bush Senior called “Voodoo Economics”. And when Mitt Romney said, “If I get elected, people will feel so good and so positive that capital will rush back in without us doing anything!” the American people largely said, “Um… I’m, like, pretty fun to be around, but it doesn’t make my boss give me more money, and it doesn’t make my rent any lower.”

Mitt Romney is a very bad candidate and he’s deeply unattractive to a majority of voters. So yes, that’s one reason why he’s slipping in the polls and why he’ll lose this election. But more than that, the Republican ideas are starting to not make sense to the average American.

George W. Bush was elected and re-elected because his economic ideas weren’t all that terrifying when we have a surplus, and his foreign policy and domestic policy were intellectually consistent. His administration was *interpretive* in a way that I disagreed with vehemently, but at no point did I say, “but that’s not actually a *thing*.” He didn’t want gay rights – fine – but he poured money into treating AIDS in Africa because as a Christian that’s what you’re supposed to do. I didn’t like him and didn’t agree with him, but I thought he was living in the same world I was living in.

The GOP now, regardless of who they are running, isn’t living in the same America that I am. It doesn’t help that Romney is terrible at running for president, but no matter what – it’s actually the Republican message that isn’t working with American voters.