mushinnoshin

Well I think the quote of the night goes to Mark Warner —

… this election is not about liberal versus conservative. It’s not about left versus right. It’s about the future versus the past.

…with a close second place (and a win for best snark) being:

Just think about this. In four months, in just four months, we will have an administration that actually believes in science.

Which I mention because I think there’s some relation.

But before I get there — yes, he’s right on, this is not about liberal or conservative but about the future verses the past. That’s why you’ve got so many independents for Obama, Libertarians for Obama, and even Obamacons.

Which speaks partly to my favorite snark — you can’t seriously expect to speak for the future if your perceptions of physics and metaphysics are both hopelessly mired in two thousand year old mythology — but more so, it points I think to why the dead-enders have become so desperate.

I mean, as I’ve watched the propaganda pushed out by the goopers, whether it be the unsanctioned race baiting of Hobbs and the TNGOP, or the almost worse “vote for McCain because Obama’s a celebrity and might be The Antichrist*” message from national — what I’ve seen is fear.

Not just a mere fear that the Republicans are going to lose, but a real and disturbing fear that the world is changing.

And really, what is conservatism — in all but the fiscal libertarian senses at least — but fear? Fear of change, fear of people who are different, fear of anything that might challenge one to see the world as it is rather than how we might have been told it should be?

It’s something that resonated with me as I watched Michelle Obama (about whom I must rightly credit my friend Jason for coining her the first “FLILF”) deliver her fantastic speech across YouTube. The world is changing. WASPS are no longer the American majority. Whites in general won’t be much longer. Blaming all the world’s problems on gays and Mexicans is no longer flying — and even the believers are starting to smell the bullshit.

When intolerance was merely offensive it could survive. Not once it became gauche.

Yes, the world is changing — permanently, and the petty, small minded slimebags who fear a world they don’t understand don’t like it.

But what can you tell them, except — pull yourselves up from your bootstraps and don’t expect anyone to help you adjust. That is what they expect from others when things change, right?

A few side bullets –

• Fantastic speech by Clinton. I know the goopers are already saying, “But.. but.. she didn’t say Barack was “ready to lead”!!!!”. Well, look, I know you folks need people to speak slowly and forgo anything that might require you to think — but clearly she wouldn’t call for him to be elected if he wasn’t. At least it’s clear to anyone with an IQ anywhere above the freezing point of water. And besides, if Republicans are looking to Hillary Clinton as their champion? Fear.
• Brian Schweitzer I think inadvertently — by simply discussing that which actually mattered — nailed what no one has explicitly articulated — this election is not about Foreign Policy, nor is it about The Economy. Rather, it’s about that thing which brings those two to intersect — Energy. Every other single policy aside, this election rightfully goes to the better plan on this one issue which touches every other. Of course that takes us back to believing in science…

* Or were they trying to suggest Obama is that Jet Li character who traveled across dimensions killing his other selves in order to absorb their power?