Election Meh

    I am proud to claim that I have voted in 8 Presidential elections...and oddly enough, am proud to say I voted for the loser in more than half of those. Even at the young age of 19, I had some sense of principle and wanted to have the right man in. In that first election during 1992, I voted for H. Ross Perot. It was at that time maybe an odd move for me because I had been a Republican in youth, not so much for belief but because I was a follower in the vain hope I would be accepted into the "crowd"...so glad the hell of identity search in high school is long over!

   However, in 1992 I could not bring myself to vote for George H.W.X.Y.Z. Bush. Despite the fun times his presidency brought to Saturday Night Live for 4 years, and the quick action he brought against Saddam Hussein in 1990-91, I didn't see a bright future there. I didn't have anything against Bill Clinton, either, other than he was a Democrat (a big hurdle for me then). Perot, on the other hand, represented something new. Even after he dropped out and came back in at the last minute, I figured what the hell. I lost.

   In 1996, I did vote for Clinton because the nation appeared to be going in a good direction. My politics had also changed quite a bit after being in northern California for a while, and Bob Dole just didn't ring a a good bell...in the back of my mind I was wondering about a sales tax hike on pineapples with a name like that!

   In 2000 I voted for Al Gore, loser move #2. Quite frankly I was not enamored with either  parties' main ticket, and Gore just seemed the lesser of 2 evils. To be honest, I think either was a bad move for our country and I was getting the idea that the U.S. Presidency was losing its steam. Four years later, I voted for John Kerry, loser move #3. Bush was scaring me and the nation was heading down a dangerous direction in terms of never-ending war. That said, I was not all that sure about Kerry, either.

   Then came 2008. I voted for Mitt Romney. His words made a certain amount of sense and he seemed to have a good vision. Same in 2012. Once again, I had nothing against Barack Obama. In fact I really liked his eloquence and intelligence.. to me he seemed what Bryant Gumbel could have been if he'd gone into Ivy League instead of sportscasting!

   And then came 2016. After 24 years I'd come to understand a LOT about the swing of the nation, and the pendulum in that swing was not nearly as low and rhythmic as I had once imagined it to be. Here was how I saw it:

1996-2001- fairly liberal, but with enough checks and balances that Clinton was often able to work WITH an opposing party Congress to get things done.

2001-2009- more Right-leaning and a lot of war-profiting going on at taxpayers' expense despite no end in sight. 9/11 had become more a political tool than national tragedy. A shame nobody of use got it into Bush's head our economy was in trouble.

2009-2017- As perhaps a negative reaction to that right-sided war-profiting and resulting economic plummet, the nation turned to the left quite quickly. Well, not ALL of the nation. While our economy had a slow climb out of a dark hole these 8 years, our government was also developing a new social policy that demanded tolerance of anybody and everybody in terms of self-identity. It also created a health care reform that raised costs on the middle class while low income paid little to none and the high income folks paid whatever (they also didn't care about how much they paid to fill up their cars). In short, that left a LOT of folks unhappy who were used to life being a certain way, and one part of that way was having a white guy as President at all times! That's just being honest. So while the nation was being led by a well-spoken and well-educated African American gentleman, a lot of folks in very conservative parts of the nation didn't take to him or his 'voodoo' ways at all. 

   It's important to understand that so that one may comprehend what has been happening since 2015, when Donald John Trump threw his hat into the Presidential ring as one of his many publicity stunts. Many people thought the idea was funny, for really he was a funny man with a mildly amusing 'reality' show. Yet, the idea took hold and before anyone knew it, he won the 2016 primaries after doing a verbal hatchet job on his Republican contenders...and if you really look at it closely, the whole GOP contest was a show for our benefit. There was no way Cruz or Jeb Clampett Bush or any of those also-rans were true contenders...just like the Dem debates of 2019!

   So in November 2016, my wife and I voted for the also-ran named Johnson. Many said it was a wasted vote that helped Trump. Whatever! I never took Trump seriously even when he was all over the media in the 1980s, and certainly not when he was firing 'apprentices' on TV. Hillary Clinton had bothered me for a long time, and it wasn't for being a woman. Her involvement in foreign affairs over time took a nasty tone and, personally, I thought we as a nation had gone too left. The pendulum had swung way too high. 

   I felt good about my 2016 vote. Still do.

   2017-21- It is frighteningly amazing what can happen when a lot of ducks are in a row party-wise, even when midterms strike a blow to the agenda. It wasn't so much what happened as opposed to what was said. The touted wall was a failure, but the tax cut wasn't. I guess neither really affected me with the exception of gradually declining tax refund amounts. Eh, whatever. In reality, the Trump era really didn't affect me or my family personally. But we come back to the words...words spoken in press conferences and rallies. The people attending those rallies and just reacting to whatever bullshit came out of his mouth were the truly frightening ones...and still are. 

   My mind drifts to Caddyshack where Rodney Dangerfield's character Al Cervik is the center of attention wherever he goes. Most just laugh at him and don't take him seriously at all, he just likes being the big voice in whatever space he occupies, and he knows at heart he is just a big if big RICH blowhard. Donald Trump is  Al Cervik times ten. And he has a following of dangerous people who act on his words. These people are dangerous because they felt betrayed and left behind during Obama's time, their values were ignored. 

   Now, in the old days before social media, it wouldn't have been so bad. Some newspaper and magazine articles and interviews, along with some televised speeches and press conferences and that would have been it. Some violent debates at the local bar followed by a night in the tank, and the next morning a bad hangover or loose jaw. Social media, however, has created an eerie number of shadow groups who bond online and share hatreds and plans to act on them. Of course, social media also has fan pages for old soaps, so there's something for everyone! Fox News has also fed the fish with a lot on non-news and opinion (to be fair, Fox isn't alone in the TV department on opinion) When you have a pretty large group (or rather GROUPS) of disenfranchised people, many in the South and Midwest who are armed without legal license, and they decide to bond over their common goals and dreams, find some online space,and you have a man spouting rhetoric in elementary school vocabulary and logic all over the place, some bad shit will happen. And it did, on January 6. 

   Now we are 6 months past Joe Biden's inauguration. I am no longer part of Facebook partially because of a bad hack job on my account but also because the hatred and bad-mouthing of anyone with a certain view was just getting worse all the time. The memes were getting pretty bad as well. I get some news from a site called Raw Story. Not as raw as they'd like it to be, there is still lots of opinion in those articles. That said, it looks like a scary time ahead. Right now the only ones who can stop Trump from running (and winning) in 2024 is the New York state prosecutors. January 6th is being downplayed a lot, and that invites further violence in my mind.

   However, in closing I must repeat that his four years were meh for me, didn't hurt or help me one bit.  If he is in again, all I ask is that he gets new face makeup and a new hairpiece. If he isn't in ever again (my preference), so much the better. The only thing that will make America 'great' again is moderate political debate in D.C., a removal of owned politicians, and roads without potholes.