Vote In Hate, Repent At Leisure!

Today is indeed the day in which these United States picks its next President. We have had a remarkably calm eight years and I will miss the cool and collected Obama who despite unprecedented buffets from his political foes has managed to keep the nation relatively safe and as war free as possible. The unemployment rate is lower than it has been since those halcyon Regan days I always have to hear about and more people have healthcare today than a decade ago. Prices have gone up certainly, but they were doing that already.  There have been many instances when hotter heads would've wantonly injected U.S. troops here and there all over the globe to quell this or that uprising. Could we have done more in Syria? Perhaps. Should the United Nations have done more? Certainly. 

That this nation can spend its time worrying over a pipsqueak threat like ISIS lets me know that things are pretty quiet out there. The sturm und drang over Russia these days makes it all too clear that the pols want a new enemy they can wrap their rhetoric around, someone they can stand up to without (per usual) having to actually do much if anything at all. Russia and ISIS are real threats to Europe and to that extent indirect threats to the homeland, but existential threats they are not. Unless you count nuclear war and no one really considers that much anymore, though I hear it mentioned now and again.

Anyway, today we pick a new person to enter the White House. It will either be Hillary Clinton, an experienced politician with evident ethical challenges if not corruption in her past, or Donald Trump, a patent buffoon with neither experience nor a lick of competence in his resume. It's no small choice, and with Clinton we can look forward to years of endless haggling over this and that as the Congress once again reneges on its vital responsibilities and instead spend countless TV minutes and hours grandstanding over relatively small matters while the empire burns. With Trump we get to something unprecedented, a confessed sexual predator, proven racist, and evident con man who will do nothing of consequence in office (if we're lucky) but hand off his duties to Republicans to follow through on promises they really would rather not have to.

Part of me, a tiny mischievous part, wants the Republicans to get the reins just so finally we can see that the posturing we've endured for damn near a decade (or longer) is just that and we can see that they have no answers for healthcare, foreign policy (aside from starting new wars), infrastructure redevelopment, or immigration. With Trump we will see the weasels worm their way out of building a wall, pass the free trade legislation they really really want, and once again turn their backs on the very people who naively put them into office yet again.

I'm mystified why people constantly vote against their own economic best interest, gulled by illusions of liberties they have not lost which only serve to leverage more money from their bank accounts to the benefit of those who have already rented out the political class in this country. There is real legitimate outrage at the political class which fuels Trump, but once again those who squall about Washington seem all too content to send almost everyone back up there to continue business as usual. If incumbents really get the boot, then we might be onto something and Trump might signal the beginning of something different, a unqualified as he his himself. Would it be better with Hillary in charge. Certainly is the answer, but she too is damn near a Republican for all the clatter these past many months. Berni was a Socialist and as such had not real shot at the office, but at least his grouchy old ass was mostly honest. We are not left with much in that area now.

One thing I do know that will change for me is that I'm going to leave the mindless and endless chatter of what passes for news behind. I admit that I'm entertained by political chatter, but rather like the glut of superhero movies we've had for nearly two decades now, it was once cool and rare and fun but now I get so much that I rather find I'm weary of a lot of it. What has really been astounding is the ceaselessness of the talk as hour after  hour, minute after minute a handful of nabobs talk and spin and yammer repeating talking points and shouting out polling data of the moment and drawing sweeping conclusions in endless and contradictory succession.

But we'll know tomorrow what it will be. Wish us luck.

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