TV News LIES

I won’t vote for Barack Obama. I can’t vote for Barack Obama. And it’s not because he’s not liberal enough for me. I gave up on the idea of a progressive president before I was old enough to vote. No … the reason I won’t vote for Obama is because he’s just slightly less murderous than George W. Bush. And a man with bloody hands doesn’t have our best interests at heart.

So who will I vote for?

Who cares?

Each man is a bought and paid for tool of the Dominant Culture. Y’know … the driving force behind the destruction of our planet. The choice put before us is the rate of destruction. Fast or Really Fast. An estimated 2.5 billion dollars will be spent to persuade Americans to vote for Fast, or Really Fast. The Dominant Culture isn’t spending a nickel on Really Slow, or Not At All.

I was in a Starbuck’s a couple of months ago talking to a guy who was proposing we go into business together. We talked about all sorts of things and eventually we touched on American Politics. He claimed he was apolitical. He said he didn’t follow the news. But then he said, “I don’t want to see Obama reelected.”

He didn’t say, “I’m voting for Romney.” He didn’t say he would vote for a third party candidate. He didn’t know Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, nor did he know what the NDAA was. He didn’t know any of the reasons why I couldn’t vote for Obama. He was apolitical. He didn’t follow the news. Somehow … without reading a word about anything … he had come to the conclusion that he didn’t want to see Obama reelected.

I know he didn’t read the news, or anything else for that matter, because there wasn’t anything to read in his house. No magazines, newspapers, or books were visible anywhere. Reading material was conspicuous by its absence. Since he’s a couple of years younger than I am I asked him what he did during the Vietnam War. His answer? Smoked dope and partied. Well … after all it was the 60’s and early 70’s. Smoking dope and partying was not … um … uncommon. But it was also the time my generation was directly exposed to the darker, bloodier aspects of the American Empire. Or to put it more precisely, white kids were finding out the government didn’t mind killing them too.

I can’t remember who said it or where I read it but it went something like this:

Living in America while the Vietnam War was raging was like being at an elegant party where everybody looks like they’re having a good time … while at the same time pretending to ignore the stench wafting from the kitchen.

My prospective business partner wasn’t in danger of getting his ass drafted … so he could party on. But why didn’t he notice the bad smells coming out of the kitchen? And now decades later … why didn’t he want Obama to be reelected?

And why was I even talking to this guy?

The dumbest darlings of the American Press are the dim-bulbs trotted out every four years so lavish attention can be paid to … The Undecided Voters. According to an Associated Press-GfK poll last June, 27% of the electorate doesn’t know who they’ll support in November. Are there really that many people who can’t tell the difference between Fast and Really Fast? I guess so. And in a sense, I like those morons better than my prospective business partner.

If you don’t know anything about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, if you don’t have a clue about any of their ideas, why would you not want to see Obama get elected?

Racism.

Pure and Simple.

Stupidity and Racism or Racism and Stupidity. It doesn’t really make any difference what order you choose. The end result is the guy’s a stupid racist. Is there such a thing as a “smart” racist? Some racists are smarter than others but none of them are Quiz Kid material. So the question arises … why was I talking to him? And why did I continue talking to him after his stupid effing racist remark?

Self-delusion and greed.

I didn’t think he was that bad and I wanted the project to proceed quickly.

My first mistake was not getting up from the table at Starbuck’s and walking out. Instead I dialed down my misgivings and rationalized. Is there even a business partner out there who would pass my political test? My second mistake was not taking the time to find out.

Last week, he tried to pull a fast one with the money and I finally bailed. I’m not proud of the fact that money was the last straw.

But … there’s always a “but” isn’t there? I can’t defend Barack Obama. If somebody doesn’t want to vote for him I understand. I’m not going to vote for him either. But it has to be for the right reasons. As the nuns in arithmetic class used to say, “You have to show your work.”

You can’t vote for Obama because he’s a war criminal? I’m with you. If you don’t want to vote for him because he’s black? Get the eff outta here.

So now at the ripe old age of should have known better … I’ve relearned a lesson I first learned way back when. Forty years ago it was “Never Sell Marijuana to People You Don’t Know.” Now it’s, “Never start a business with Stupid Racist A-holes.”

Looping back to the beginning of this thing, though our vote is irrelevant … it’s still a pretty good Rorschach test. The electoral system might be broken, but whom we vote for, or against, speaks volumes.