Swimming With Sharks: The 2004 Elections

[bemildred]

SO IT'S OVER, THE culmination of two years of profligate spending, mimicked sympathy and frenzied lies. In four or five hours, the Old Confederacy avenged its ancestors against the Old Union for the presidency of the United States. There's a lot of bitter commentary circulating out there, so let me say that I'm not rubbing it in anyone's nose that the Blue and the Grey has become the Blue and the Red. Lyndon Johnson said when he signed the civil rights amendment that the Democrats had just signed away the South for the next 50 years, and he was right.

Since 1992, I've seen elections in a lot of different places: in Yugoslavia under Milosevic, Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Haiti under the habitual chaos and passions that mobilize that beautiful country for civil war by the ballot. And while it's possible to get caught up in that tremendous whirlwind of emotions when you're fighting the Embodiment of Evil and his inexplicable supporters, ultimately, this election ranks with the worst I've observed, both from the parties as well as their supporters.

For Europeans aghast that a rotting slab of dead earth like Ohio could decide an election for the most powerful office in the world - hey, I'm with you. A lot of people expect Sobaka to be anti-Bush, given our focus on the parts of the world getting mown down into mulch in the War on Terror. We probably are, though I doubt we could be accused of being Leftist marionettes, particularly after our heretical coverage of the miserable end of the Aristide regime in Haiti.

My own political views probably permeate Sobaka regardless of how closely I guard against it. You can boil down the politics of my friend Misha Pozhininsky, I've said, to his hatred of police. Mine are just as primitive. I consider myself a libertarian, more or less, in that my ideal government is one that I have as little to do with as possible.

Sobaka

[alexisfree]

1. true hurts

[bemildred]

2. Kick. (Just one.) nt