I made a Facebook note about the whole thing, and I thought I might share it with y'all.
I have written a distinct paucity of politically-oriented statuses over this election cycle, for several reasons. Firstly, I find that too loudly tooting one's own political horn has a tendency to make more enemies than it makes friends, on either side (and I try not to encourage spectacular flamewars, at least not with close acquaintances); most points that need to be made, someone else will make; and my political views are occasionally a little bit off-kilter (my distaste for democracy is well-known to some of you).
Still, on the eve of a day where many of those of you who can vote will be gritting your teeth while doing it, I thought I might share a few thoughts.
No matter who wins tomorrow evening, I think we'll be looking back on this year's election for decades afterwards in a way we won't be looking back at, say, '96 or '04; I don't claim to know whether we'll be asking ourselves what went wrong or how on earth we ever saved our skins and pulled it off.
Firstly, if the current election is historic, the next few will be even more so. 2008 represented the first real inklings of the demographic transition that the United States is currently going through; it won't be complete for decades, and while it happens there will be political division on a scale we probably won't have seen since the '60s. In 2008 we made the decision to put a black man in the White House; we're now going to decide whether we're going to stick to him, or declare that we're not ready for what he stands for. Politically, we're suddenly looking at a landscape where LGBT rights are an issue in a way they weren't even four years ago, where the Southern Strategy is clearly on its way out (and doing its best to scorch the earth behind it), and where money is greasing the works in a way it hasn't been since the Gilded Age. To make things worse, we're being asked to make decisions on these issues when a good portion of the country can't be blamed for not worrying about much beyond next month's paycheck.
It would be naïve to think that we're not going to be revisiting all this in '16, '20 or '24. It would also be naïve to think that biding our time until things work themselves out will work. Like most big turning points in the public sphere, things will have to get worse on some level before they get better. True, the Republican Party is being childish, obstructionist and denialist in the extreme; however, as with all official oppositions in democracies, they also must play- however poor their own costumes- the sacred part of pointing out when the Emperor has no clothes. Loathe as I am to admit it, they may not finish digging their own graves- either to obscurity or to a radical restructuring like the Democrats underwent in the '60s- unless, for a time, they are handed a few more shovels and have only themselves to blame when they screw something up.
That is not to say that we should all vote for the Rs tomorrow; nothing could be further from my intentions. Nor should we give up on Obama; disillusioned as many of us are with the man, Romney will resolve few of his flaws and introduce many worse ones. I am simply stating the facts- this is how things have been before, and it is likely how they will have to be again. The good fight is still there to be fought.
Go vote!
If there's anything to add to that, I'd just like to note that there seems to be this conviction among many of my acquaintances that Romney is some sort of semi-Antichrist. He isn't. He is an out-of-touch, smarmy, spineless, reckless pawn of the corporate community and his own party- there is no denying that. But he lacks true malice. This, I think, has been the saving grace of American democracy. As much as I like to complain about it, a truly evil man has never actually sat in the Oval Office. To be sure, the White House has held bigots, bribetakers, cowards and Presidents who simply weren't equipped to deal with crises they couldn't have foreseen; it's been home to Fillmore, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Harding, Hoover and Nixon. But it has also held Washington, Jefferson, Polk, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Wilson and Lyndon Johnson.
And one of these days, I think- Obama is not that man, though we all thought he would be in '08- someone will pop out of the woodwork with the courage, foresight, conviction, and fortitude to get the system fixed. But it may take a crisis before they appear.
It could happen as early as this December, if Congress bails on the debt ceiling and Romney is elected.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 772421 times)