Greetings from the (no-longer-so) frozen land of Canada!
I've been lurking here for about a year. I watched the Republican primaries somewhat sporadically, then the main campaign with increasing attentiveness, until lately - in the two months leading up to the election - I'd been going to Daily Kos, well, daily (and often more) to see the latest news.
Some of you might wonder why a Canadian would take such an interest in an election in a foreign country. But US politics have always had huge consequences for Canada - where America goes, we tend to drift after them. Currently, the Prime Minister's office up here is occupied by a guy named Stephen Harper who has been busy ramming through an agenda of building more prisons, slashing environmental protections and selling out our resources to foreign interests (China) despite less than 40% of Canadians having voted for him and his party (which is another story). He's one of the most extreme right-wing politicians we've ever had in office, and with him still in power and Romney in the White House, I shudder to think what would happen. The deadly combination might just be the final nail in the coffin for our Earth's climate, for starters. Hence my elation and relief on Tuesday night.
Despite my interest in the election, though, I didn't actually write a single diary. I think I recommended a few, maybe commented once or twice. I simply felt it wasn't my place to take an active role, regardless of how good my motives are - it wasn't, after all, my country. So I sat back, and watched, and shared relevant articles with my American friends on Facebook and Twitter, and just let it all play out. But now that it's over, I want to say to you all:
CONGRATULATIONS! The other night, you guys made history.
The other night wasn't just as good as 2008…the other night was better than 2008.
Yes, 2008 was iconic and history in the making, and all that great stuff. But by these same characteristics, it was always a little…too good to last. Obama rode to victory on a mighty surge of euphoric popular support, and by the time the election rolled around he had acquired an almost cult-like status. Maybe one not entirely undeserved…but it was always bound to lead to disillusionment.
Obama will single-handedly stop the oceans from rising! With a snap of his mighty fingers universal health care will be passed! Iran's nuclear reactors shall crumble into dust under the gleaming rays of his charisma! Obama is the second coming of Christ! (Well, unless you're a Tea Party Republican - then he's the Anti-Christ). It was this sort of misplaced, severely over-hyped fervor that led to Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - despite his single qualifying accomplishment being, to that date, having gotten elected under highly inspirational circumstances.
Don't get me wrong - I admire a LOT of what Obama has done in the past four years. But he's only human, and a politician at that, and given the severe problems he faced when taking office, a lot of people were bound to be disappointed once the glamour had worn off and reality began to hit and hit hard.
Which brings us to the other night, and the ridiculous, reality-bending Republican campaign that had proceeded it.
It's this sort of nauseating, insidious, manipulative evil - there's no other word for it - that Dante, the supreme systemizer of evilology, placed down in the very bottom circles (eighth and ninth) of his Hell. The willingness to sell out your own people for power and profit, to publicly say one thing and privately do the exact opposite, to flatter and scheme and cheat and above all to lie, lie, lie your way into getting what you want.
It's the sort of reasoning that the cynical and powerful, dictators and oligarchs, have employed throughout the ages. Give the mob bread and circuses, and tell them what they want to hear, and they'll shut up and go away. Don't tell them the truth. They can't handle it, and if they really understood they'd be pounding at the palace gates in a flash.
Toss them a scapegoat to blame, if and when they start to realize that something is rotten in the State of…wherever. The Jews. The Christians. The Muslims. The liberals. The communists. Women. People with dark skin. People who dress or speak differently. People who moved here from another country and don't totally fit in yet. And, of course, that Kenyan socialist Muslim atheist guy that never really got elected.
Give them simple answers, with just enough truth (read: truthiness) sprinkled in to be vaguely convincing. Don't confuse them with realism. They don't expect life to be realistic. Tell them easy, pleasant things.
Tell them the Earth isn't getting warmer, that our planet isn't in the biggest mess we've ever seen, with only a few years left to prevent it from going into a massive meltdown. Tell them that the slow economic recovery was Obama's fault, not the fault of the huge banks and corporate interests that knowingly almost pushed our world into a second Great Depression. Tell them that massive tax cuts for the wealthy plus increased defence spending equals massive savings. They'll believe you. They want to believe you.
They're not buying it? Okay, go bury them in advertising, and lots of it. Lots and lots of carefully crafted, endlessly repeated, pure psychological manipulation to convince them that your version of reality is the real one, because it is oh so appealing. It doesn't require personal responsibility on their part. It doesn't require altruism. It doesn't require complex thinking. (Heck, it doesn't require thinking at all!) Enough advertising, and they'll keep the televisions on and not bother with reality.
It's a strategy designed to appeal to the very worst in human nature: hate, prejudice, greed, selfishness, apathy, and willful blindness to reality.
Guess what? It failed. Big time.
It failed because a nation finally stood up and said it had had ENOUGH. Enough with the bullshit and self-contradiction. Enough with Romney's fake "studies" of his non-existent plan. Enough with the math that said one plus one was five. Enough with the campaign that, for all of America to hear, loudly announced that it wasn't going to be dictated to by fact-checkers.
A nation that was sick of the denial of EVERYTHING…from math to evolution to global warming to employment statistics to geography to basic reproductive biology…not to mention what the candidates themselves had said just the other night or just the other minute. And finally, it was massively, viscerally sick, of ALL. THE. LYING.
(Come to think of it, when you're that sick and you finally give up and go puke it all out, you feel a lot better afterwards, don't you? I think America had a MASSIVE vomiting session the other night.)
Anyway, it wasn't just Obama or the Democratic Party that won big the other night. Or progressives in general. Or women. Or minorities. Or youth. Or social programs, or Obamacare, or the DREAM Act. Or gay marriage and marijuana legalization.
Or even compassion or altruism or just plain human decency. Oh, don't get me wrong - ALL these things won.
But the real, hands-down winner the other night, was…TRUTH.
You guys TOTALLY whopped the Big Lie the other night. Not only that, you gave it a severe and thorough thrashing and handed its ass to it on a silver platter.
Way to go guys - you rock!!!!
Congratulations - and thank you.
Sincerely,
An Admiring Canadian