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Sitting Out the Election
By Mary Pitt
01/02/08 "ICH" -- -- It looks as if the 2008 Presidential
campaign may be over at my house. I am considering what other
things I can find to do in order to be busy on election day. The
choices have been winnowed down until I can find no reason for
hope with any of the remaining candidates. I realize that there
is much fodder for the talking heads on television as the pseudo
rivalry continues but I have now lost interest.
So Rudy bowed out in favor of John McCain. Big deal. Rudy wasn't
going anyplace anyway and he would have been a disaster in the
White House. The great loss was John Edwards. With the
withdrawal of Dennis Kucinich, he was the last best hope for any
chance for the common man to receive any real consideration in
the future policies of our government.
It is reminiscent of the summer months in television
entertainment. All that we have to anticipate is a choice among
reruns. On the Republican side, we are left with a Southern
Baptist preacher who would prefer that we return to the dark
ages, with witch-burning and stocks in the public square. Then
there is John McCain who has nothing more to offer than the old
men on Memorial Day, stuffed into their uniforms and trying to
look as if they are ready to take the next hill. In addition, of
course, there is the son of "what's good for General Motors is
good for the country". We can choose our reruns between the
forties, the fifties or of the Puritans at the Salem witchcraft
trials.
It is little better on the Democratic side. Now that Obama has
been favored by the Kennedy family, we can look forward to
living again in the sixties, to being inspired by eloquent
speeches of hope and progress only to be faced with another war
for another "good reason". In order to be just a bit more
current, we could boost Hillary Clinton and get more rhetoric
about lifting up of the poor which will not happen because of
the same knuckling under to the opposition that disappointed us
in her husband and that she, herself, has so ably demonstrated
during her time in the Senate.
Of course, there is still time for a third party to take shape
and get sufficient footing to provide a choice in November,
ideally Edwards and Kucinich at the head of a Progressive Party,
but it is not likely since the establishment candidates have
already sucked up all the money available for their campaigns.
We are faced once again with the spectacle of our White House
once more being up for auction. As President Bush again tries to
prop up a dying economy by donating more borrowed money to the
taxpayers while ignoring the plight of the truly needy and the
Fed cuts interest rates so we can borrow even more, as the
Middle East, the Orient, and Europe devalue and debase the
dollar and we owe ever more of them to those same entities, we
find ourselves facing the same fate as out parents and
grandparents suffered at the end of the Hoover administration.
Nothing short of a total overhaul of the government in the
manner of Franklin Delano Roosevelt is going to correct the mess
that George W. Bush has made of our government and none of the
remaining candidates appear to have the intelligence and the
drive to do what must be done to save the nation from it.
Senator Clinton can't seem to make up her mind whether we should
withdraw our troops from Iraq immediately or whether we should
leave a large contingecy there to "protect our embassy", that
sprawling, fortified monstrosity that contractors built at great
expense for no conceivable reason. Barrack Obama says that he
wants to bring the troops home "as soon as possible" but hasn't
voiced any plans for what might happen next. Of course, the
election of any of the Republicans means eternal war in the hope
that the fiscal mess will not catch up with us.
It's time to plow up the back yard for a vegetable garden and
order tomato plants to put in the flower beds in the spring.
It's going to be a long time before stability is restored to
this benighted land. I cast my first Presidential vote in 1952
for Eisenhower and have voted dutifully in every election since,
even if I had to hold my nose while voting for the lesser of two
evils. But now I am old and I am tired. Why should I get in a
snit because the rest of the country is more interested in the
squabbling children playing at debate? If the youth of today are
willing to choose those who will be in charge of their future by
a remake of "An American Idol", is it not their right?
My generation had ambitions to leave to our children a free
nation with honorable leaders in a government of the people, by
the people, and for the people, living peacefully with equality.
It is saddening to find that this ambition is not to be and,
unless someone is elected who is able to restore the rights and
freedoms which we have lost. I will spend election day sitting
at home with a tall cold drink!
The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring
a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has
lost touch with its humanity in the search for societal
"perfection."
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