The Great White Wave: The Savage and the Stupid

So we're cruising down Main Street, on our way to Whole Foods, a cliche redeemed in part by my dangerous new beard, when a pick-up pulls even on our right, and its driver begins shouting shit about Obama at us. "Obama, boo!", was apparently the first thing the silver-tongued bastard said, undoubtedly responding to the sticker adhering to the bumper of our car (purely from laziness, I assure you). Paula Jane flipped him off--good girl--and momentarily we lost him, when several cars in front of his slowed to turn. I could see him, in the rear view mirror, straining to catch up--catching up is always a very large deal to big brains like this one--and as we prepared to turn left into Whole Foods, Paula Jane was insistently telling me not to react, when he did. As he passed us, though, his fatass white moon face beamed the kind of self-righteous satisfaction particular to moon-faced fatass white men--bred from generations of self-hating mothers, and animated by the certainty that they've fucked the world over for generations now and will continue to fuck it over for many, many more. "Obama sucks!" was his clever riposte, his twisted wet lips mouthing the words with witless lunatic glee Glenn Beck would've envied. Zooming past, he reinforced the sentiment by repeating it on a P.A. system (a must for the contemporary racist zealot).

Paula Jane thought the incident was kind of funny. If it wasn't so illustrative of a madness that is roiling through our consciousness, I would probably agree. There are millions of crazy people out there, certain not only that Obama's presidency is illegal, but also that he is a socialist muslim intent on establishing a military dictatorship that will enforce his real agenda of banning guns, requiring abortions for white people, and establishing Islam as the national faith. They are being abetted in their insanity by the usual suspects, with the same aim as always, gaining power and wealth by any means necessary. And the wave of crack-brained crackers will probably lead the republicans back to power in a few months, and that won't be funny at all.

I blame Obama for some of this. His timidity, and his misplaced efforts at concensus building, cost valuable time, and momentum. Perhaps he's not the student of history that I thought, or maybe he believed he was too exceptional to require instruction from the past. Either way, he's made a number of mistakes, for which he deserves blame. However, progressives are the aggrieved party here--though tea party posturing will enable an over-reaction, a right-wing wrecking ball to smash what's left of the New Deal, and to accelerate America's drift into a Corporatist (Fascist) state.

Disappointing as Obama has been, though, he is better than Bush was, and immeasureably better than what would take his place. And as weak and vascillating as the Democrats have been, at least we're still in the game. If the corporatists regain their majorities, it will be a cold, cold day for almost everyone.