1 Boring Old Man

I’ve heard a lot of speeches in the last few of days. I heard Barak Obama yesterday. It made me cry. My political self came into being during the Civil Rights days, and to hear a Presidential candidate of any race address both sides of the race issue candidly pulled at every string I had that needed pulling. Then, this morning, I was in a Physical Therapy gym with my wife who is recovering from a knee replacement. We live in a part of North Georgia that was Republican even during the Civil War, and with the exception of Jimmy Carter, has voted Republican ever since. The requisite Fox News T.V. was blaring and President Bush was droning on about what a swell idea it was to throw ourselves into his precious Iraq War. After a time, I escaped to the bathroom. I felt funny being a 66 year old man hiding in a bathroom, but necessity is the mother of invention.

Because of all the surgery doings, we haven’t seen the John Adams series on Television until this afternoon. So, it’s my third speech – actors on T.V. reenacting the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and the tears were rolling down my cheeks again. I don’t think it was the show itself. It’s absolutely wonderful, but that’s not what my tears felt like they were about. It felt like something of a relief from the tension I’ve felt for the last 5 or 6 years, living in a country that feels to me like it’s under the control of aliens.

It’s not the Conservativism. I don’t think it’s the Republicanism. To be candid, I think it’s the Bullshit [I apologize for my choice of words, but some words really don’t have synonyms]. Bush is reading that malarkey they write for him to read for the jillionth time. Cheney’s in Iraq cutting oil deals and trying to lock us into continuing his oil-quest in the Middle East after he’s gone. And none of it has anything to do with this country, or John Adams, or the Declaration of Independence, or the Civil Rights Movements, or the American experiment in general. I’m not naive. I expect that those guys in Independence Hall had 13 plus agendas – many of them not so savory. They made one of the biggest mistakes possible – compromising on Slavery. They probably should’ve waited until "All of us are created equal" was unanimously accepted and acted on. But the net result of what they did was a good start. The net result of our five year war in Iraq is a bad thing. It was not a mistake, not even a compromise. It was an active deceit. It won’t be solved by "winning" in Iraq or a Civil War here. Like Slavery, it will haunt us long past my tenure on this planet, maybe forever. It is an indelible mark, that calls for a real rethinking of our whole way of being.

By the way, I’m now for Barak Obama. If he wins, he will either be a great President in a time we really need a great President, or he will let us down. I’m ready to bet on the former. There is no possibility that McCain will be a great President. None at all. He might be worse than Bush. I like Hillary Clinton; I’m not against her; and I will vote for her in a heartbeat if she’s the nominee. But I don’t think she will be a great President. I do think she’d make a very good President. I don’t think I’m picking black man over white woman, but who can ever really know such things. I know I wouldn’t want that to be true. What I think is that Barak Obama may be a rhetoric king with a good voice, but I think something else that over-rides all of that. I don’t think he’s even capable of the kind of  Bullshit  we’ve listened to for the last 10% of my life. And right now, that’s what really matters to me…