Soooo… the election. 8 years ago this space was rife with politics. The ascent of Barack Hussein Obama was stunning. We were tired of Bush. It was clear our country had made a mistake by going into Iraq and had indeed made the world less safe. People like me pinned their hopes and dreams on this man. This broken man. Different than the rest of us but really no different and idiots like me thought he could transcend the system. Pull our country together...Hopey Changey type stuff. Oh well.
He was not transcendent. Even worse he galvanized the people who disagreed with him. They were dispersed and weak and dispirited from the Bush Presidency. But when faced with a liberal black man with a super majority they came together… an angry 20% to block vote for change and whipping up enough fear the Republicans swept that democratic majority out in 2010 and more importantly took over ⅔ of the state house just in time for the census and reapportionment cementing the divide through Gerrymandering that would make Elbridge Gerry very, very proud.
The Tea Party Rose.
The Republican Party began to be commandeered by its base. The leadership of the party went along with the whipped up frenzy assuming they could control it and… it turned on them. Classic Republican leaders dropped like flies because they were not conservative enough. RINOs. Republicans in name only.
But Obama got re-elected.
Half the country was scared by the strident right which had been whipped into a frenzy by their leaders to fear the liberal, progressive, community organizer, Kenyan, Muslim President and his ilk.
Two sides who hate and fear one another and above all despise and distrust our political system. Blow it up and tear it down!
The Base of the Democrats rallied around Bernie Sanders pulling the Democrats further to the right. The base of the Republicans never rallied around anyone sporting 15 or 16 candidates and it looked to be a free for all but it was never even close. The base argued about who was purest and the entertainer, megalomaniac who understood the media hijacked the entire process with a solid base of 30% in each state who were feeling angry, disenfranchised and they wanted the guy who looked like the biggest asshole to be their bully for change. And they got him. In Spades.
So now we are left with a bad choice. Hillary Clinton is an old, self dealing pol. She and her husband were low level dealers who have maintained a legacy of self enrichment post Presidency which is unparalleled in American History. She is not likeable but she is smart and motivated and is a product of our system. She would be the most disliked and mistrusted candidate in history but for her competitor. Her competitor is a self aggrandizing, narcissistic sociopath who has never done anything for another human being that he did expect to get a personal or business advantage from. I don't know why he ran but at this point he is behaving like the proverbial dog that caught the car.
It is going to be a Hobbesian choice of epic proportions.
We will end up as divided as we started. I wonder how our grandchildren will judge us for the “leadership” we have raised up. I do believe our country and our constitution will survive as it always has but we all need to think again about when we are going to stop villainizing our leaders, defunding our government and making sure that they cannot do the job we elected them to. We will need to have courage to find a consensus and a way to move forward as more than a divided nation and find some new leadership that will not manipulate a minority within their own party to disenfranchise the good old american middle. The disenfranchised middle is the group of people who should be railing about taking our country back. We will see.
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