The Sudden Calm
Posted: November 9th, 2006, 4:51 pm
So now where do we find ourselves, today, after the election? The baseball season is over. I was wrong about the Cardinals. I was very wrong about the Bills. I had hope for them this season, and they have crumbled like Cheez-its under the shoe of talented, prepared and well-coached teams. Football players are stepping on each other's heads, kicking one another in the balls, trying to break ankles and falling asleep on the job.
My biggest fear is that I will be unable to remain a sportswriter in the midst of this ever-changing political climate. A friend told me this morning that he cant figure out what to write these days simply because things are changing so quickly. Current events are slimy. They are deceptive and wriggly and trying to grab them, even for a few moments, to analyze, dissect and understand, is often a futile game.
And so here we are, a few days after judgment day, the world still spinning, nothing's on fire, and we're in sort of an afterhaze, still a little drunk, washing the Santorum off our legs, ready to get down to business.
I voted, though. We can start there. I'm not going to continue to repeat my mantra that all citizen Bush supporters are, by definition, morons, but I will tell a story:
The line was about 20 minutes long to vote. Not bad. Lancaster County had to extend the voting hours to offset the damage it did by working with malfunctioning voting machines in the morning. We had plenty of time to stand in the rain and reconsider our votes or even simply the trip to the polling place itself. Bars were open. The television at home was working, as far as I knew. But I had a national duty to express my opinion about these candidates, and they dont write rain checks for elections, as far as I knew.
There was a referendum in Lancaster County about whether or not to fund a research group to determine if the county was using the best governmental structure for its size. And there was also a list of candidates from which we could choose up to 11 people to sit on the potential research group's board. I didnt fill any of them out, because I didnt recognize any of the names. But I did vote to fund the group. Why not?
We had the choice to fill out a paper ballot or an electronic ballot. As tech-savvy as I am, I chose to fill out a paper ballot, knowing that evil people were lying in wait to hack all available and necessary electronic results. You have to stay one step ahead of evil if you intend to live in freedom, or at least my leaders tell me so. So, paper ballot it was.
Once I filled in my squares from behind the makeshift fort built by the volunteers to hide each person's decisions, I lined up to pass my ballot through the scanner. I got behind someone who was flailing his paper ballot around like a flyswatter, showing everyone his choices, while the volunteer standing beside the ballot scanner tried to figure out why the scanner wasnt accepting the ballot. They kept putting it in the scanner, and the scanner kept spitting it out, at which point the voter, a chubby man in his 30s with a goatee, dressed in business casual, began waving his ballot around like a fool. He voted for Santorum, Swann - Republican all the way. Everyone could see.
And, finally, they figured out: The reason the scanner wasnt accepting his ballot was because he had voted for 13 people instead of the maximum of 11. He insisted, at first, that he had selected only 11, as per the instructions. Then the 90-year-old volunteer counted the selections: 13.
And these are the idiots who voted for Bush in 2004 and who tried to insist that we needed to stay the course in this country.
I'm trying to make a connection between those idiots and the kind of people who kick each other in the balls on the football field. All I can come up with is that these people may not be stupid but are rather so frightened by the life-and-death reality of our world that they are willing to rely on angry reflexes in their decision making.
It's too early to tell if we are going to become a more thoughtful nation than before the election. But thats difficult to imagine. Bush created one of the most polarized societies in American history, even though he had the expressed support of the elected officials in Congress. An environment of more overt conflict is bound to be different, but only time will define the actual difference.
It's easy to spin the CEO's reaction to the election, but whether Bush comes out more humble or more angered by the election, although it remains to be seen, depends more on his personality than on the influence of spin. Because no spin could have come up with the ignorant and emotional statements Bush has made over the past five and half years. There is something lower — dumber and more blind — within our CEO which defines his actions. And I suspect that his true colors will show over time.
In the meantime, I'm going to focus on being as good a sportswriter as I can be. We are halfway through the football season and the predictions of the experts have changed course more than an hysterical book club of chickenhawk donkeys. NCAA basketball is about to start, and the hockey season is sorting itself out. We have important things to deal with in the world of sports, and finally we can focus on them for a bit before we sink deeper into the dictatorship that the neo-cons are unlikely to abandon after one hectic defeat in a midterm election.
These are the days of calm. Enjoy them. Stock up on controlled substances, state-of-the-art weaponry and excuses, because you're going to need them before long. That is an expert prediction which is bound to come true.
-firsty
Also posted on Newsvine
Also posted at Remnants