Reply To: Political Statements
Dave Barry on the presidential election and the healing power of martinis. 🙂
In analyzing the results of Tuesday’s historic election, the question we must ask ourselves, first and foremost, is: what the heck were the results of Tuesday’s historic election?
I personally don’t know. The Miami Herald made me send in this analysis before the election was actually over, so that it could be printed in a timely manner. This is part of the newspaper industry’s crafty plan to defeat this ”Internet” thing that has the youngsters so excited.
Anyway, my election analysis, based on weeks of reading political bogs, listening to talk radio and watching campaign ads on television, is that one of the following things is true:
• Barack Obama is our next president, which is very bad because he is a naive untested wealth-spreading terrorist-befriending ultraliberal socialist communist who will suddenly reveal his secret Muslim identity by riding to his inauguration on a camel shouting ”Death to Israel!” (I mean Obama will be shouting this, not the camel) after which he will wreck the economy by sending Joe the Plumber to Guantánamo and taxing away all the income of anybody who makes over $137.50 per year and giving it to bloated government agencies that will deliberately set it on fire.
• Or, John McCain is our next president, which is very bad because he is a 287-year-old out-of-touch multiple-house-owning fascist who will rape the environment and build nuclear power plants inside elementary schools and reinstate slavery and create tax loopholes that benefit only people who own three or more personal helicopters, after which he will declare war on the entire United Nations and then keel over dead and leave us with commander-in-chief Sarah ”Flash Card” Palin.
Believe it or not, I’m working very hard on trying not to demonize the other side, while simultaneously maintaining skepticism about my own side. Though I am obviously pleased with the outcome of the presidential election, I’m still harboring some residual anger from the campaign season. I’m particularly steamed about being painted as a godless, unpatriotic enemy of the state by various Republicans. (I’m looking at you Bachmann and Dole and Palin.) I’m not trying start an argument about who ran the dirtier campaign. My point is, that is how I perceived the campaigns, and I’m feeling more than a bit wounded because of it. It’s good for me to be reminded that Obama is not a saint, and McCain is not the devil. My frontal lobe knows this, but the lizard brain is slow to come around.
One thing that this election in general, and discussion on this thread in particular, have done for me over the past year is to cause me to think about why I believe what I believe. Folks here have provided factual information and personal perspectives that have been alternately intriguing, enlightening, infuriating and entertaining, but they caused me to examine my assumptions, which is a GOOD THING. E pluribus unum.