This being campaign season (isn't it funny that campaign season and hurricane season coincide?), there's all sorts of political angst being displayed around campus. So today, for the second day in a row, I walk past this guy screaming anti-Bush stuff in the middle of the sidewalk. I sort of laughed as I walked by. Frankly, I'm voting for Kerry (that's a whole nother post). But, at the same time, the level of political obnoxiousness in this country has reached a critical level.
For example, take this article from my fair school's newspaper:
Discussion of real issues is missing
You would think with a title like that, it would be a fair piece about just how obnoxious things really are...Nooooooo...Take a look at it...That's got to be one of the most hillariously vitriolic things I've ever read.
Why am I getting so fired up by some goddamned "guest editorial" in a college newspaper? I think that's best answered by this quote from Christopher Hitchens:
What will it take to convince these people that this is not a year, or a time, to be dicking around?Within the last month, we've had Dick Cheney tell the American people that if they vote for Kerry, they'll get another serious terror attack and shortly after we've had John Kerry claim that voting for Bush will bring back the draft. This isn't the traditional mudslinging of campaigns of yore. This is serious. This is a nation waking up to the fact that shit has hit the fan. Politicians spew things like that only when they know that people will believe them (like the author of that trash editorial linked above).
I feel as if I am not contemplating a political landscape here, but a Dali painting.
3 comments:
Hey, Anthro mentioned my blog. Sweet.
Back to the topic at hand, I also see the political landscape changing. Our issues aren't really more important in 2004, but they are hitting home with people, moreso than in 2000 (and years past). Associate it with 9-11, or even how things are affecting us because of how it was screwed up by a president. It just seems to be the only news happening now as well (by news, I mean controversy that media would cover).
What I want to get to, eventually, is talking about Thomas P. M. Barnett's writings. I saw him on C-SPAN over Labor Day weekend it it was...Epiphany-like. All the sudden, things made a ton more sense. The reasons for the Iraq War made sense, the reason we're getting our ass kicked in Iraq made sense. Hope for the future made sense. The problem is that explaining his ideas is rather difficult...He usually does it with a 52 slide Powerpoint.
I shall look him up.
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