More disturbing is the commentary I'm seeing on a lot of blogs from the right (and from the left, to some extent). We all know the Internet is a series of pipes - oh, wait, I think that joker's out of the picture now. We all know the Internet is full of people who can barely type, much less think, and the commentary bears that out. Lots of "the country is doomed!" and "Let's watch Obama be controlled by a bunch of handlers" (insert ironic gasp here). Not as much but quite a bit of "take that, conservative assholes!" There's also been a lot of people saying that the left made Bush's presidency miserable from the moment he took office, citing such questionable "statistics" as how the "liberal" media called him "Mr. Bush" for eight years. I've *never* heard *anyone* call him "Mr. Bush", not even Jon Stewart.
We see the problem. It's a complete absence of responsibility for the truth. While it's been very easy to point at Republicans as the problem for eight years because they've been in power, I'm just as concerned that the same could happen if the left had the sort of control the right did. Another 9/11 moment would do that. The "truth" is that while liberals weren't terribly happy about how the 2000 election was conducted (and it was demonstrably conducted in a dishonest manner), most of us were willing to put up with four years of an ineffective GW Bush. 9/11 allowed the White House to pretty much do whatever they wanted, and in fact there was a concerted effort to give the White House considerably more power than they were given by the Constitution.
Eight years later, we now understand, painfully, why we have checks and balances. George Bush, love him or hate him, leaves office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever given such a rating. Lower than Nixon. Lower than Carter. With the exception of Israel, who is unhappy that Obama would have a dialog with Iran (hint: so would McCain), pretty much everyone in the world is pretty darned happy that Obama won.
So I say to the hundreds of thousands of uneducated people who can't fact-check a dictionary and who think that the day after Obama's inauguration that he'll put on a turban (huh?) and make us all turn our prayer mats to face Mecca, I say this:
Guess what. Eight years of your guys didn't work out real well. In fact, they turned out really poorly. And I'm very far from alone in saying this. So maybe you might, at the very least, make some small attempt to think in terms of the incredible problems we as both a nation and a world face. The biggies are overpopulation, climate change, and consumption, all intertwined. If you want to destroy America, and in fact human civilization as we know it, I suggest you keep complaining and acting like babies and coming up with some of the lamest complaints and lies ever.
I don't know why we keep having this conversation. Like I said, I guess if you really want to believe that the American Civil War wasn't about slavery, you'll believe pretty much anything said during the campaign. Time to grow up and think about what's important. Because it wasn't so much who we elected as much as what that person now does with their power. And if Obama turns out to be the empty suit so many of you think he is, I'll be the first one hoping he's out of office in four years. So long as the person coming to replace him isn't Sarah Palin. That woman is *scary*.
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