Author's Note: The triumphant return of the Late Night Chronicles! Pried loose from Facebook and moved here where they're going to stay.
I feel like this election should be called the Tosh.0 election. It's October, the Presidential Debates are finally here and the race has boiled down to a competition over which side can come up with more footage and supposed gaffes on the other guy before election day. At this point in the cycle, it's just exhausting and really, really, really makes me want to vote for Peta Lindsey or (more plausibly, knowing me) Gary Johnson. I mean, if this is what the election is going to be about then yes, voting for either the President or Mittens will be a massive waste of my time.
I don't care about Mittens' dog. I don't care about his whole 47% schpeel which is being treated almost as if he beat little puppies to death on Live with Kelly and Michael by the media. (BTW: He wasn't totally wrong on that- we've got a billion dollar industry dedicated to helping Americans avoid paying anything in taxes. Makes it a little hard to fund education or health care or anything much for that matter if we're all getting refunds... just sayin') I didn't care about then Candidate Obama's remark about people getting bitter and clinging to their guns and religion either. (BTW: he wasn't totally wrong about that either.)
Yes, it's become a battle of what damning sound-byte can be leaked to the media first. It's become a war of grainy YouTube videos as each side tries to find that one inglorious video which will forever tar the other side with it's content. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if videos of Mittens attempting the Cinnamon Challenge start warring with videos of the President wiping out after a really funky trick on a skateboard. It wouldn't shock me if Daniel Tosh ends up moderating the final Presidential debate. This shit is getting that stupid.
To be honest with you, kids, we don't have time for this. If America was a video, let's just say we're at the point where the motorcycle is in midair or the skateboarder is about to sail out into the middle of a street they think is empty. You know the window for a happy ending to things is closing rapidly and in fact, the probability that things are going to end messily is growing by the millisecond.
I for one, would like to avoid ending up mangled and bruised in a heap on the ground with the nation's femur poking out for all too see. But to do that we need leaders that are willing to get the big things done. Before you start- yes, I suppose health care was big. But entitlement and tax reform should have been bigger- those are the straws that will break the fiscal back of our governmental camel and it's getting to a point where radical, distasteful, painful decisions are going to be the only ones we've got left. We're a nation of 19th Century institutions with a post-war welfare state staggering forward into an increasingly fast-moving 21st Century. Our institutions can't keep up- and that's the problem that nobody is talking about.
Instead, Drudge is giving boners to every political journalist in the country right now (yes, right this instant) teasing a speech that President Obama gave years ago.* Yes, that's what's important right now, kids- a speech he gave in 2007. Sigh. I'm finding it harder and harder to summon up the will to give a shit anymore. I'd vote tomorrow if I thought it'd get these damn political ads off my television and my computer screen but it won't. And despite how refreshing it is to have a Presidential candidate (well, and a President for that matter) speak to my generation and the issues we care about directly, I no longer believe that four years of Mittens or four more years of the President is going to make the blindest bit of difference either way.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can all find me in 2016 and rub my face in it. Maybe you'll be able to tell me that marriage equality has been achieved for all Americans, that marijuana has been decriminalized and legalized in some places, that the Federal Government has a surplus again and our tax code has been reformed top to bottom. Maybe you'll tell me that a free and democratic Syria has taken its place next to a free and democratic Libya. Maybe we'll be able to tell our children that the world is a safer place than it was four years ago and the economy is chugging away again and maybe there will be a little hope out there.
But I doubt it. If you're fighting graviy, I'd bet on gravity because right now, the motorcycle that is America is in mid-air and if we're going to stick this landing we need Evel Knieval to pull it off otherwise, it'll be blood, guts and bone fragments everywhere and someone, somewhere will just look at us and laugh.
*Behold, the shocking video. If I could type myself blowing a raspberry in the general direction of this foolishness, I would.
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