It is the weekend, and today is the day that we moved the clocks up one hour for daylight saving's. Already, I heard some people complaining about it. Now, I get why people do not like it, and why many want to get rid of it. But you know what always seems far worse than daylight saving's? Hearing people complain about it. Starting to get far more tired of that than what it is they are complaining about. Please stop whining incessantly about it already. It stopped being funny a long time ago. Now, it's not only beating a dead horse, it's digging up the grave and beating that horse again. We get it, you don't like it. But get over it, and move onto other subjects.
And if you don't know of anything else to focus your critical mind on, if the world seems just to bright and cheery for you to find something to try and work to improve, how about politics? This is a topic that many people do not like to engage in, but it is very important, because it actually has an impact on people's lives.
Now, this is not going to be an overly serious analysis on my end. Admittedly, I have grown so sick and tired of politics - particularly American politics - that I find myself just cringing and not wanting to discuss it nearly as often these days as I used to. For years, it felt almost like a joke. Then, Donald Trump came along, and it literally seemed to turn into a joke, with the country and it's frankly stupid political climate being the butt of the joke the world over. As people kept saying after he was elected, "Elect a clown, expect a circus."
Of course, he was only the most extreme example of just how ridiculous American politics tends to be. I felt that way, admittedly, about Bill Clinton during the Democratic Primary season in 1992, the first election that I was going to be old enough to participate in. He was not my first choice, because that was Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Clinton was not my second choice, because that was Paul Tsongas. Clinton was not even my third choice, admittedly, because that would be Jerry Brown. There was just something about "Slick Willy" that I simply did not like or trust. But then, he started leading in the polls, and he gave that acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, and I started getting excited. This guy could actually win! Like many, I allowed myself to get carried away, and thought that maybe I had underestimated him, that maybe he was a modern day JFK. But I grew disillusioned after four years, until I heard his acceptance speech from Chicago at the '96 Democratic Convention, and thought that I had not realized how much better things had gotten. Except that they hadn't. By the time that Clinton left office, I was absolutely disgusted with him, to the point that I no longer identified as a Democrat.
Then came "W," who was a glorified frat brat with a false sense of entitlement. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and unfortunately, Colin Powell all helped to lead the charge to a war fought under false pretenses. To me, there is no beating around the Bush: they are/were war criminals. That, plus a number of economic scandals that could have - and probably should have - gotten him into far more serious trouble. Then, right at the end of that administration, they nearly ran not just the American economy into the ground, but seriously hurt the economy all around the world. Yet years later, his approval ratings among Americans steadily rose, and people started actually suggesting, with a straight face, that they missed him.
Yikes.
After that came Obama. He rode a wave of hype, and pretty quickly proved that the audacity of hype, as Jello Biafra called it, was all that he really amounted to. His first term was considered almost like George W. Bush's third term. He was a little better during the second term, but deserves to be remembered for sobering realities, such as his getting rid of habeas corpus - a constitutionally protected right - and illegally killing people with drone strikes, not to mention illegally spying on even allied nations. Yet, many Americans will suggest with a straight face, that Obama ranks among the greatest presidents in American history.
I already mentioned who followed Obama, and do not wish to waste any more time discussing that pathetic excuse for a so-called "leader" here again. So let us get to Joe Biden, who once opposed efforts to desegregate schools, and approved Mr. Bush's illegal and immoral war on Iraq. Biden has long been one of those corporatist Democrats, the so-called mainstream. Against my own wishes never to vote for any major party candidate again for the highest office, I did vote for Biden, since it felt like democracy itself was on the line in 2020. But my expectations were not especially high, and Biden has hardly exceeded those expectations.
And all of that is just focusing on the presidential aspect of American politics. There was no extensive mentioning or critique of ridiculous nonsense like the Electoral College, Citizens United and big, monied interests influencing our elections, lobbyists in Washington disguising what amounts to blatant corruption in plain sight, efforts to disenfranchise voters and effectively get rid of people's right to vote, and of course, gerrymandering. In my lifetime, we have seen two presidential elections where the guy who got substantially fewer votes was nevertheless officially declared the winner. Then there is low voter turnout, although given all that I mentioned, and the tendency of it coming down to the "evil of two lessers," as Michael Moore once put it, you can almost understand why people do not want anything to do with our politics. All of that, and no serious mention of the frankly staggering levels of ignorance and almost militant stupidity (or is it stupid militancy?) on the part of a huge chunk of the American voting populace, in vast numbers that are, frankly, simply too huge to ignore.
In short, American politics has it's share of problems. So when I saw this episode of Family Guy last night, I burst out laughing. Instantly, it was something that felt like it needed to be shared here. Despite this morning being far sunny and less dreary than yesterday morning, it still seemed like a good idea to start off with a little bit of humor here again.
So here is a short clip from Family Guy, where I feel that they absolutely got American politics right.
Enjoy!
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