Post Fact

Soooo… I have been laying low since the election.  

What I discovered in the election is that...

MY SILO WALLS ARE VERY THICK AND HIGH AND I THINK MY SILO SITS OUT BY ITSELF IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE.  

To say I was confused by the result is a dramatic understatement.  I pride myself on being well read, well informed and kind of an information junky.  I proudly discussed the fact that I sought out all of the input I could on a day to day basis from what I thought was the “spectrum” of opinion.  This generally included:

1. The Wall Street Journal (Subscribe)

2. The Post Dispatch (Subscribe)

3. NPR (Send them money and listen as default in car)

4. Patriot Radio (Because my brother is Tea Party Conservative and listens to them

I mean that is pretty diverse.  And I listen and read a lot.  I read things on line.  I know the difference between Fake News and a journalistic piece.  I assumed any 6th grader knows that but once again I discovered that I was wrong.

The Drive By Truckers, a southern rock band (being totally unfair to them) came out with a song this year called “What It Means” regarding the current status of the “Black Lives Matter”, “Blue Lives Matter” racial divide that we are all living in post Ferguson.  It is a great song and here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY0qOCUy27Q

But one of the many great lines summarizing our morass is this:

"And we're standing on the precipice
Of prejudice and fear
We trust science just as long
As it tells us what we want to hear
We want our truths all fair and balanced
As long as our notions lie within it
There's no sunlight in our ass'
And our heads are stuck up in it”-DBT

So we are are all just hearing things that confirm our own innate world view and we don't hear anything that disagrees with that. And we all come to the table loaded with opinion. The Internet that was supposed to bring us all together and level the playing field instead is dividing us more than ever in ways we never imagined.

There was nothing in any of my information sources (and I don't want to label them “media” because that has become a prejudicial term) but there was nothing in any of these sources, liberal or conservative that prepared me for the fact that we could elect a man like Donald Trump to be President of the greatest country on earth and perhaps the greatest power in history on that earth. It felt like and it still feels like we gave the car keys to a drunken kid.

I get that the country rejected Hilary (although she won the popular vote she lost the election under the same rules that she thought had gamed the system for her. She was and is, difficult to like, a career politician, weighing every word and evaluating every opportunity to see how it “played”. Nothing got said that was not field tested to make sure it fit one of the demographics needed to cobble together the votes she needed...and she blew it. And she deserved to lose. Don't ever let me be mistaken for a Hilary lover but she was the kind of politician I knew and frankly the kind of politician that our country has historically rewarded. She played the game. I was happy she lost. Just not to this man. What the election said is that there are 48% of voting Americans who reject that and demanded change and it was change at any cost.

I am amazed at how wrong the polls were. Even Five Thirty Eight, my favorite and the other numbers stats guys had it wrong and evidently they had it wrong because no one would admit to a pollster that they were voting for The Donald. How does it feel that we elected a guy that people were embarrassed to acknowledge that they would consider voting for? Not too good.

But ultimately we get the leadership that we deserve. My hope and prayer is that I am wrong and this man who I loathe everything about (and when people ask me what I am basing that on I am basing it on everything he has ever said or done and his entire predatory, self aggrandizing, proud bullying career). I do believe he will bring change. So we pray that God blesses our country and blesses or leaders and for me, I have to expose myself to more and different people. Outside my silo, outside of my work, outside of my church. The fact is that I know more urban African Americans that I do white, rural working poor. Shame on me.

So I am looking for a source for news and for facts. Facts are something we should all be able to agree upon. If you are aware of a source where I might glean these common accepted facts, please advise. If not then I think we all have right to be scared because if there is not place to get facts that we can all agree on then I believe we are all well and truly #$%&*%$$!
Help me out.
Please.

Obama...gets stomped in West Virginia

It is strangely unsatisfying. Around Wednesday or Thursday the pundits and America’s Democrats began leaving Hillary for dead. Nothing happened in the previous 24 hours but the settling of North Carolina and Indiana, which fell out as expected Those two contests confirmed what the previous 40 or so primaries and caucuses had already confirmed. Barack can raise money, rouse people and say “change” 2-3000 time in each speech. Hillary brings a square jawed, long suffering intelligence with a confidence in her own abilities along with sour, old school politics. Barack wins many contests by huge margins, Hillary wins key States by much small margins. But the bottom line is that Barack wins. It has been that way since Super Tuesday where the math could not work out any other way. But now, she is dead. Super Delegates are peeling off a few each week and there is now a palpable sense of inevitability.

They were willing to let her hang around till June 3 and the last primary until she was quoted in The USA Today as saying:
“"Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me . . . There's a pattern emerging here."

Now the party strategists who were divided about whether this long term campaign dragging on is bad for the party, are divided no more. So Hillary is left for dead but like all good zombies she is walking around like she does not know it. there is a hubris among the Clinton’s which will not allow acknowledgment of defeat. Their spin meisters will begin discussing how she beat all odds to get as far as she did, fighting against the media and the establishment. To be fair she has beaten all of the odds to get so far but it has more to do with being a women and all the institutional challenges she overcame. She has transformed the discussion on that count and has made a great contribution to the national dialogue. I just wish that when she spoke i did not always feel like I was being scolded. I believe that and the nationwide exhaustion with the Clinton Bush years made someone like Obama a foregone conclusion. That this powerful man who can speak so brilliantly burst on the scene as she was moving forward has to be tremendously galling but her life in the public eye, like her life with Bill has never been a walk in the park. She will grit her teeth and move on, and no doubt, prepare for 2012.

Now it comes to Obama/Mc cain. I like John Mc cain. I have liked him almost his whole career, without always agreeing with him. he is, or was kind of like Bill Clinton for me in that regard. But in order to unite his party and rally the old politics he has, since Romney dropped out of the race, sold his soul. I know that with a guy like Mc Cain he is likely doing and saying what he thinks he needs to do and say to get elected and i have every confidence that he will break with Bush’s failed economic policies and that he will appoint common sense Judges who will apply the law with the spirit of our great constitution honored as opposed to interpretations of it’s literal meaning. Both those things are important to me. Unfortunately he is dug in to our failed policies in Iraq and that along with his age makes it an easy choice.

The problems with Barack are many fold but me like many others will say, so what? it is the fact that he has no record of long term political “accomplishments” gained from Washington deal making that give me the hope that he will bring something different, that he will be something different, that he will transcend our current political nightmare of the 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent “mandate” that allows the winners to take all and carry their own agenda, no matter what the cost for the rest of the country. I am scared of Obama, more then a little because he is so charismatic and such a great speaker that there is chance for him to become a demagogue and a dictator if it all goes to hell. But, it will be exciting. My brother has been calling for a benevolent dictator for some time. Perhaps now he get his way.