A couple of things before I give politics a toss for the year.
First, there was a lot of bitter, disillusioned stuff that I wrote in the past couple of entries. And there has been plenty more on my last blog and on my Web site. I do not apologize for any of it. I have never believed in my adult life in the divinity of the State, or even in the silly Canadian concept of Good Government. The State is composed of human beings. Humans are selfish, self-regarding critters from the day they pop out of the oven. Why should an entity composed of evil beings somehow become good?
Also, the American people have been taken for a ride by their leaders for the past twenty years. This is mostly because they have been deceiving themselves into thinking that everything is fine
, which is the modern version of god is in his heaven, all is right with the world
. It really is time for my fellow citizens to open their eyes, at least for a moment. I recommend reading Idols for Destruction by Herbert Schlossberg (ISBN 978-0891077381); it’s been around since the early Reagan years (I bought it at the bookstore of the Wesleyan Church HQ before it was moved to Indianapolis), but its message is still pertinent.
The one good thing that eight years of El Dubya has done is to discredit the neo-conservative movement, that mutation of statist Republicanism à la Nelson Rockefeller. Thanks, El Dubya. You may go back to your beer, your couch and your baseball. And let Obama clean the mess you and your minions made.
Second, my sister was in shock at the victory of Obama in, of all places, our own state of Indiana! She was amazed that he had won despite the decrepit useless wreck that is the Indiana Democratic Party. But when you study the results, it is not really surprising. Indianapolis and the university towns and the peripheral urban areas formed enough of a disaffected base to force the rest of the mossback, values
-besotted state to hand out their electors to Obama.
Yes, McCain’s concession speech (I heard part of it before going to sleep) was gracious. Given his political career, this is hard to interpret. It is likely he realized his one chance at the presidency has now passed, and that it was now time to wind down his political career on a graceful note.
Still, the only vote that is wasted is the one that is never cast. I did not waste mine. I have done my civic duty on Tuesday morning. And that is the end of it.
The maple tree in my back yard chose the past three days to dump all of its leaves on the ground. As it had a full crown of yellow and orange three days ago, it is now almost bare. And I could not wait until this weekend to rake it all up: This weekend promises to be cold and wet. So I raked up the whole yard of its leaf cover and lined the edge of the street with a leaf pile that extended almost half a block. The long pile is a tad too much to bag up, and I figured the town will have broken out the leaf sweeper by now.