Hope vs Anti-hope

Particle physics assures us that for each particle of matter there is an anti-particle.  Anti-electrons.  Anti-protons.  Anti-atoms made of anti-stuff.  Put one of these particles together with its more familiar counterpart and poof -- both vanish into a burst of radiation.

All I can say is that should they win their respective party nominations, anyone planning for debates between Barack Obama and John McCain should be careful that the two men don't associate too closely.  Based on the speeches they gave after the "Potomac Primary," any contact between the two might make the Big Bang look like a whoopee cushion.  

Obama: We know it takes more than one night – or even one election – to overcome decades of money and the influence; bitter partisanship and petty bickering that’s shut you out, let you down and told you to settle.

We know our road will not be easy.

But we also know that at this moment the cynics can no longer say our hope is false.

Ah, you might think so, but you have not reckoned with the power of the super cynic.  

McCain: They will appeal to our dreams of a better future for ourselves, our families and our country, but they would take from us more of the wealth we have earned to build those dreams and assure us that government is better able than we are to make decisions about our future for us.

Take that!  How dare Democrats threaten to build our dreams?  Wait, I'd better parse that sentence again.  Appeal to our dreams... to build those dreams... better able than we are to make decisions about the future for us. Man.  Not only is McCain negative, but his speech is loaded with enough dangling modifiers and broken phrases to disable every English major in America.

Obama: We have now won east and west, north and south, and across the heartland of this country we love. We have given young people a reason to believe, and brought folks back to the polls who want to believe again. And we are bringing together Democrats and Independents and Republicans; blacks and whites; Latinos and Asians; small states and big states; Red States and Blue States into a United States of America.

Soaring rhetoric, unifying, and idealistic.  Senator McCain?

McCain: They will promise to break with the failed politics of the past, but will campaign in ways that seek to minimize their exposure to questions from the press and challenges from voters who ask more from their candidates than an empty promise of "trust me, I know better." They will paint a picture of the world in which America’s mistakes are a greater threat to our security than the malevolent intentions of an enemy that despises us and our ideals; a world that can be made safer and more peaceful by placating our implacable foes and breaking faith with allies and the millions of people in this world for whom America, and the global progress of our ideals, has long been "the last, best hope of earth."

Here McCain demonstrates that he is indeed serious about national security  by crafting sentences as sharp and light as a train load of bowling balls.    Bowling balls coating in Valium.  This is text you could not make it through with a machete in one hand and Strunk & White held tight in the other.

Obama: John McCain is an American hero. We honor his service to our nation. But his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people, because they are bound to the failed policies of the past.

George Bush won’t be on the ballot this November, but his war and his tax cuts for the wealthy will.

Senator Obama, I think you speak too soon.  No one could deliver a speech like McCain's unless he was inspired by the Great Miscommunicator (did someone check McCain's jacket for suspicious wires?)

There will be no need for waterboarding in a McCain administration.  Anyone setting through five minutes of this would sell out their mother.  Seriously.  McCain's speech may be the most leaden, the most depressing, the most negative speech in recent memory.  And it was also, quite simply, the worst written thing I've ever seen on television -- Manimal not excepted.