Debunking the myth of “The Real America”

Disclaimer: If McCain pulls out a squeaker tomorrow, I’m right back to believing America contains more Tiny Brains than there are the rest of us… but today, I still have hope.

After 8 blissfully-almost-over years of George the Lying, Short-Sighted Cretin, I think the GOP will lose this election as much on account of the ugly tenor of their campaign as for the country’s desire to repudiate the stain left on our national honor by the bumbling, malicious mediocrity that characterized W’s tenure.

The way McCain/Palin have run this campaign in these closing days, with nothing left but a bag of punchlines and baseless accusations — a brown bag of flaming poo they leave on America’s doorstep at every rally and with every speech — makes me wonder if they wouldn’t govern the same way if they were to be elected. And I think that will have a lot to do with their loss, too, because if it’s occurred to me (a Medium Brain at best), it will have occurred to lots of other people, too.

“The Real America” my ass. If I believed what they’re peddling was the real America, I’d hang my head in shame.

All the Grand Old Party’s intellectuals, George Will, Chris Buckley, etc., are either distancing themselves from “The Real America,” or decrying it altogether to the press, seeking public absolution for their party affiliation. The only ones who are lapping up the specious allegations of socialism and Other-ism McCain/Palin are selling are the racists and the rubes in the hinterlands. The Tiny Brains. By turning their backs on McCain/Palin, the intellectual, old-school Conservative with a capital “C” wing are trying to stand up for the Republican party that existed in their minds before W came along and made it impossible to pretend anymore.

I just watched a half hour of Fox and Friends with The Boy now (he likes to identify alphabet letters in the text at the bottom of the screen) and it was nausea inducing. All this pumped-up outrage about the silliest, most trivial, overworked talking points from earlier in the election. It’s like on the day before the election, two anchors and some pretty Asian girl at a remote location (with not one, but two websites) were working a “Best-Of” package from their campaign coverage this year and presenting it as BREAKING NEWS. The ethical disparity between the words and actions of the thinkers of the GOP and the talking heads on Fox morning TV and the McCain/Palin campaign are so out of step with each other, they seem to be coming from two completely opposing orthodoxies.

Look at the caliber of the people McCain/Palin are focusing on as their standardbearers – people long-since exposed as being “all hat and no cattle” like they say down in Tejas — like Joe The Alleged Plumber. Sarah Palin. The official promoting and sanctioning of these mean-spirited (let’s be honest) twits are not playing to the better angels of human nature. But that’s okay, because that’s not who their audience is. Not George The Pulitzer Prize Winner, but Joe The Alleged Plumber.

Here’s a quick sitrep on what we know about JTAP: He’s not a licensed plumber; he has no discernable plans to buy his boss’s business which only makes $100,000 per annum anyhow; Joe only made $40,000 in 2006 himself so is eligable for Obama’s proposed tax break; and is the son of a major Republican donor. My read: Joe was looking for his 15 minutes of fame with a quick ambush question for Obama and John McCain has given him a telethon. Seriously. And they’ve stuck with him as all his prevarications have been revealed precisely because the people they’re preaching to – The Tiny Brains — don’t read or watch any of that journalism or internet shit, anyhow (except for porn and bombmaking tips). McCain/Palin have done everything but talk cabinet post for this dope, and the day is far from over.

But their audience, if you believe the poll numbers and I do because hope feels so much better than dread, seems to be dwindling. In order to remain stupid enough to get psyched up about the McCain “message” these days, you’d have to work at it, and Americans just don’t want to have to do that much work where it comes to politics.

Future generations will watch the footage of John McCain sharing the stage at rallies with this pair of inarticulate, disingenuous, meretricious buffoons and wonder what the fuck went wrong with the Republican party in 2008. I already know and I’m happy to tell you: Former military man John McCain, who ought to know better, is waging this campaign using the tactics that won the last campaign, and if there’s one piece of military strategy that even the lowliest plebe knows, it’s that you don’t fight the current war with the last war’s tactics unless you want to lose. The irony of ironies, of course, is that McCain hired the same people to help him lose as Bush hired eight years ago to help McCain lose.

In a couple more days, McCain/Palin will exit the stage, leaving the Republican party a smoking ruin, a scorched-earth landscape littered with angry legislators with formerly promising careers (Fox won’t be able to afford to hire them all); more importantly, though, it will leave serious a power vacuumin the GOP, a political anything-can-happen place like Baghdad after the fall of Saddam and potentially as dangerous. We’ll need to keep a wary eye on what emerges, especially if it walks, talks and quacks anything at all like Sarah Palin.

In a couple more days, the McCain/Palin campaign’s imaginary “Real America” of hillbillies and racist rednecks will be nothing but a memory… except in the parts of the country where it isn’t. And that dichotomy lies at the heart of the success of the actual real America.

But that is another post and I’m about to be late to work.