House of Eratosthenes

Or writers-inners. Or the ham-radio-on-election-nighters. Really, I don’t know what you call us. I know the anti-liberals who disagree with us, should probably be called nose-pluggers — those who insist “this election is so important” and look at Candidate McCain as a half-a-loaf offering of Reagan-style conservatism, at least on some of the issues. And I know this is a heady, divisive issue…and oh so important.

What you call people like me, who are on the other side of the divide, whom Hawkins just joined (H/T: Karol), I don’t know. I’ll think on it.

But I can tell he’s put a lot of thought into this, his arguments are sound, and I know they make a lot of sense because they’re the ideas I already had. Simply put, McCain’s value as a candidate would be that he can talk to people who have my priorities, reassure them that he’s going to do things a certain way, and then go off and talk to people with different priorities — and we’d have some genuine confidence that he’d stick to his guns. Even if those people with different priorities had a quid pro quo for McCain that he desperately wanted.

And McCain is extraordinarily weak in that department. I haven’t seen anyone showing this kind of character defect to such a problematic extent since Bill Clinton. It’s like McCain has been studying his playbook. I’ve never understood people who supported Clinton — I’ve always thought as much as I resented his natural talent for acquiring more and more authority and power, I would resent it so much more if Clinton took some more positions I found acceptable. I mean, that would put me in such a spot. Clinton says what I like, I say “okay that sounds good, you’ve got my vote” and then Clinton has lunch with this guy or drinks with that guy or a meeting with that other guy…then what?

That’s the problem I’m having with McCain. Sure he says what I want to hear sometimes. He says it because it’s what I, and millions of others, want to hear. But that doesn’t mean very much, I’m afraid. It just tells me when he does one thing, he finds it easy to talk in the opposite direction later. And that isn’t giving me the reassurance for which I’m looking.

GOP 2.0 I’m sidebar-ing that GOP 2.0 thing because it’s an idea whose time has come. How much evidence do we have, that the great mass of this nation’s ideological consensus is far, far, far away from what is represented this year by our presidential candidates. To borrow a phrase from our global warming and evolution-as-fact-in-school afficionados…the evidence is simply overwhelming. Except on this issue — it really is.

I have a special handicap in the science-or-skill of figuring out what “everyone” is thinking. But I can look around and see things for myself. And I see…

The idea that a typical war protester is motivated to “support the troops by bringing them home NOW!” is a thoroughly worn-out cliche that labors under far more skepticism than faith.

Radical feminism, the kind that mixes genuine hatred of men with only skin-deep egalitarian desires of “equal pay for equal worth” is still failing to achieve widespread support — which it desperately wants.

President Bush’s approval ratings were moderately high, and are now extremely low; what tends to go unmentioned, is that he governed conservatively when his ratings were high and he governs as a liberal now when his approval ratings are low.

Said presidential approval ratings, which now by all accounts show a persistent weight that keeps them anchored at bargain-basement levels…are stratospherically high compared to our hardcore liberal, left-wing, Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid “Marc Foley congress.”

Gas prices are going through the roof but, although you know there are some left-wing power brokers who’d piss rusty nickels if they thought they could get it to stick, you don’t hear a lot of “buzz” out there trying to blame it on “Bush and his oil buddies” like you did six or seven years ago in the wake of the Enron scandal.

I’m not hearing an awful lot about our “illegal and unjust war” anymore either.

Every six months or so, Hollywood trots out another movie that bashes America. It flops.

In my lifetime, in fact in a tiny piece of my lifetime, I have seen the gun control debate swivel away from a hotly debated issue with passionate opinions on both sides, to a Done Deal. You don’t do gun control now. You keep it if you’ve already got it…maybe…if you’re an exceptionally frenzied and partisan left-winger, living in an exceptionally frenzied and partisan left-wing territory. Otherwise no. That wasn’t true twenty years ago but it is definitely true now.

Let us not forget the above-referenced global warming movement. Wherever it presents itself as an effort to save the planet, it doesn’t do so for very long; I infer that is because people wouldn’t labor onward for too long accepting it in that form. Public service announcements use “save the env-eye-row-ment” for all of two or three seconds as an attention-grab, which is all it is…and the other 27 seconds dissolve into a gooey puddle of “oh and besides, our service/widget/plan will save you MONEY!” Money. The propaganda is that we’re all trembling in fear that our planet will burn out and become uninhabitable in a decade, and a third grader should be able to tell you in that scenario money isn’t going to hold a lot of interest for people. Our politicians believe in the Global Warming Boogeyman; I don’t think “real people” do. At all.

Skimpy Outfit, With Gun. Yummy. Lastly, there’s the stuff a blogger just plain knows. I write up hundreds of posts a year, and I get back traffic response on each and every one. You know what people really like? Pictures of girls in skimpy outfits…and then, after that, a whole bunch of other right wing stuff. Guns. Tasty dead animals dripping with barbeque sauce. Wounded warriors.

That’s significant, because this blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, is not ideologically-neutral when we say nice things about wounded (and as-yet thankfully whole) warriors. We show them genuine respect — respect for the choices they have made, as well as for the service they have provided. In other words, when we speak of the military here, we speak of it as if our nation has a genuine requirement to have one. Not to provide free or discounted educational benefits to people who are willing to go to boot camp and put on a uniform, or to deliver food and medicine to poor folks under the banner of the United Nations, but to do military stuff. Kill people and break things. Provide our country with the vigorous and deadly defense, when it’s necessary, that our country deserves.

So…welcome to our side of the wall, Mister Hawkins. That wall which divides the nose-pluggers and the vote-wasters. Speaking for myself, the possibility exists that I might jump the other way and become a nose-plugger before November — you can’t pressure someone to “do things my way” while you’re simultaneously guaranteeing “that’s it, you dun made me mad, now I’ll never, ever, ever vote for you.” But we’ve certainly been consistent in our position in these parts, that the candidate who truly represents America, has not yet been offered (or, rather, is no longer in the race). So on our ballot, we’re going to vote for whoever manages to drum up genuine confidence that he’ll represent our interests and values faithfully. If that’s a name we have to write in, then that’s a name we have to write in.

As far as picking a guy, and holding out hope that “our guy” is going to “get in there”…that ship sailed a long time ago. I don’t like saying it at all, but there it is.

“Or writers-inners. Or the ham-radio-on-election-nighters. Really, I don’t know what you call us.”

I’m tending towards “voters in crotchless pantyhose.” Not for the day of the election, but for after. After all, why risk raising a rash?
- vanderleun | 05/25/2008 @ 21:18

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Hawkins Joins the Vote WastersSunday, May 25th, 2008

Hawkins Joins the Vote Wasters
Sunday, May 25th, 2008