Consumingly interesting American Politics
It’s annoying really. Over the last eight years we’ve been pointing and laughing at the United States, and now we look over and see that maybe, just maybe, they’ve sorted their leadership out. Of course, the news today that the ‘what is there to debate about’ public option, or healthcare to you and I, may now have been crushed by Republicans and turncoat Democrats gives us at least one more thing to be stand in awe of. To quote one prominent G20 leader, who Obama spoke of but refused to identify, who said ‘We don’t understand it. You’re trying to make sure everybody has health care and they’re putting a Hitler mustache on you. That doesn’t make sense to me.’ It doesn’t make sense to me either, nor to most people fortunate enough to have an IQ higher than 90.
As ridiculous as American politics gets, it’s consumingly fascinating. The mind is baffled at the endless complexities at play, the way in which movers and shakers are overtly working for private interests, or in the pocket of a corporation. The delusion, the lies, the performances, the protesters, the talking heads, the teabaggers.
The teabaggers. I mean… honestly? How did we get to a point where the religious right in the US are getting themselves in a tizz over their Presidents plan to provide them with healthcare whilst at the same time naming their movement after a gratuitous sex act. It’s the kind of thing you just couldn’t write, and yet America churns this hilarity out time and time again. I suppose it would be funnier if the whole situation wasn’t so tense with one side having egotistical maniacs with foresight other than to further their career fanning the flames of hatred.
Of course the teabaggers have rebranded themselves as of late, they’re now a Glenn Beck creation by the name of the 9/12 project. Apparently he wants to replicate that feeling people felt the day after 9/11, on the 12th of September 2001, a day when everyone on the planet seriously asked the question, “is this the beginning of ultimate chaos?” I guess that feeling of impending madness and chaos is a feeling Beck is trying to raise from the dead? This is a man that cried himself into a stupor live on television. This is the man who joked about his collegue’s wife having a miscarriage. This is the man who assured us Barack Obama had a “deep seated hatred of white culture”. This is the man who boasted that he was once a compulsive liar a-moral alcoholic, but we’re to trust he doesn’t lie now.
It’s chaos. Mother trippin chaos. At any moment it feels the US could descend into riots between people who have a clue, and people who don’t. Here in the UK our politics is about as interesting as TV Wall Brackets. Where is our 9-12 project? If only for a laugh…