I was sitting at home with William a few nights ago wondering about the future. Through some strange confluence of circumstances, we found ourselves in the midst of American and Canadian election campaigns at the very moment that the world economy had begun to sputter like an old jalopy. "William, my boy" I said, "I'm afraid you won't be going to college". William grinned and drooled, but I could tell he was as concerned as I was.
Experts tell us that in the next few weeks a course will be set that will either lead to economic catastrophe and worldwide upheaval, or else a near-miss that will leave us all chastened and thankful for having dodged a mortal bullet.
And the crazy thing is that here in Canada the electorate has had a real say in determining the direction we will take... after all, we all just voted right?
Normally, we would shrug and hope for the best when something like the credit crunch and stockmarket drop happened, knowing that whomever occupies 24 Sussex essentially has a free hand to chart an economic course through the tough times. But this time around, because things started going tits-up smack dab in the midst of our federal election campaign, the citizenry got their say, and gave PM Harper the nod.
For now, the individual who will chart the course of the U.S. has not yet secured command of the vessel, and each of the candidates await the judgment of the electorate as the rest of us look on. These are serious times, folks.
The seriousness of recent events has begun to cast a shadow over the trivialities of this political "silly season", which has seen the hyperpartisans in each camp, abetted by the media, attempt to score points of the other side in the most asinine ways imaginable.
Most recently, after McCain invoked the exchange his opponent had with some plumber on a ropeline to condemn Obama's philosophy (re: the government's role in "spreading the wealth around") and score points during their third and final debate, the MSM, adopting its now-default mode as the Obama campaign's propaganda arm, rushed to dutifully report the stunning revelation just handed to them by the Democratic fact-checkers: "Joe the plumber isn't really a plumber!"
As if the status of Joe's license or his personal failings negate the relevance of the debate between the advocates of neo-Keynesianism, and those who favour Hayek at a time when the instruments of world capitalism are heading for a major retrofit.
No, it is far more easy for the campaign aparatchiks to try to discredit the man instead of adressing the ideas he raises. Besides, Joe questioned the truth of the gospel. He is a heretic. Burn him. This is just lazy and cynical.
On the other hand, the simplistic labelling of Obama as "socialist" by the other side, does make the possibility of a reasonable philosophical discussion more difficult. That toxic euphemism suggests a link between the Senator from Illinois's political philosophy and the horrors of Maoist China, or Castro's Cuba. That's just silly. For starters, Obama is far too much of a pragmatist and opportunist to ever credibly be called an ideologue of any kind -- would Colin Powell endorse a socialist, I ask ya?
In actual fact, like so many other words used by the senator's opponents, it is simply shorthand, suggesting something "un-American" in Obama's ideas, which to a certain segment of McCain's rapidly-diminishing fear-based coallition of the unwilling, is just about the greatest indictment one can level at someone running for office in the U.S.A.
McCain's campaign has done little to raise the tone of the discourse, and McCain's indignation at the debates was laughable, given the kind of nonsense some of his surrogates have been putting out to stoke the flames of "fear", some of which has nearly accomplished the herculean task of diminishing McCain's character and shrinking the American hero in the eyes of his nation. Memo to McCain: When Hitchens throws his hands up in disgust, your goose is cooked.
It looks like that discussion on economic philosophy will have to wait for some other time.
***
Update
Iowahawk dispenses with the funny, and
lays it out for ya:
We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.
Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.
Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.
If it's meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it. I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.
Will the new narrative of this campaign be about the revolt of the Joes?
Perhaps, but at the same time, people need to chill. A little perspective please.
Some conservatives don't like the --gasp- leftist/Bush-Derangement-Syndrome-like panic the thought of an Obama presidency has provoked among some on the right. In other words: show some dignity, for God's sake, you are supposed to be conservatives!
Obama’s agenda is liberal boilerplate – the same crap they’ve been advocating for 30 years. It isn’t communism. It isn’t socialism (Obama is not going to guillotine the rich and throw their money to the peasants in order to “spread the wealth.”). In fact, Obama’s and the Democrats’ ideas are egalitarian in nature. They can be traced to the Utopian movements of the 19th century and early progressives of the 20th century who saw government as something that could be “perfected” scientifically..
We conservatives know the folly of believing in such nonsense. We also know what this “tinkering” means; threats to private property rights, threats to individual liberty, threats to the free market, threats to the civic values that we believe are essential in order to ensure a just and moral society.
We will fight these threats with every ounce of our strength and through whatever means we have at our disposal. But we will do it free from the fear that Obama and the Democrats want to turn the US into a Soviet style state or destroy the Bill of Rights.
Well put, sir. I commend your sang-froid.
