So if Gore is right, and I believe he is, whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that year after year, decade after decade, Americans vote not for the candidate that can best lead the country, but the guy they want to have a beer with, the guy they think is a "good, Christian man", the guy who talks tough even though he never served, the guy who presents himself as a man of the people even though he doesn't know what a grocery scanner is. They decide that the pledge of allegiance is the most important issue. They think that because an actor plays tough guys on TV that means he'd make a good president because he's tough. They vote for the cowboy hat and the red meat. They vote for the guy who's just like them instead of the guy who can lead.
As he did so often, Steve Gilliard nailed it the week after the 2004 election, in a post titled, appropriately, "They voted for this mess."
We have this idealized image of our fellow humans: that human nature is perfectible, that people go for what's best for them, that given the opportunity, people want to be happy and free. We're liberals. We believe that, given equal access to information and resources, people will work toward happiness. That they will act for the best for themselves, their family, their community, their country and eventually, the world.
We're wrong.
And Elsie? She's just a willfully ignorant asshole. Who votes. And there's millions just like her. They want to take what we give them and then go to the polls and vote so that those things are gone forever. For everyone. I say, "hey, dumbass, you don't see your Medicare, your social security, your safe food and medicine, your right to vote and own property, all these rights and safeties liberals fought and died for. You hate liberalism because Sean Hannity told you to? Fine--give it all up--lose all your rights, your safety and comfort. Great. But don't drag us down with you." Why should I lose my rights because all the Elsies in the world go vote their hatred and delusion at their pastor Karl Rove's bidding?
We can read Mark Ames' The Spite Vote , we can read Franks' What's the Matter With Kansas? We can think and discuss and argue and get angry with each other for various sins of political incorrectness all day long. And in the end, we're left facing the fact that more people than we thought possible are just plain assholes. They're mean. They're weak. They're cowardly.
They're hateful. And they're fucking stupid.
They just voted in their president. And they're marching us toward a fascist state .
(And it doesn't matter if the election was Diebolded and robocalled and thwarted at the polls, either: it should never have been close enough to steal.)
These people never vote for good government; they don't even believe in government. They're spoiled little toddlers who freak out when they're expected to share. They don't think they have to pay for anything that they take. And they're right--they don't.
Every time I hear a candidate say, "The American people are too smart to believe...." or one of its variants, I cringe. Because this notion is what makes John Kerry keep silent when political operatives smear his war record under the assumption that people won't believe the lies. They do. For better or worse, Americans still believe what talking heads on television tell them. So when Chris Matthews has an orgasm on the air about George W. Bush's codpiece, it means Bush really IS a tough guy. When MSNBC reports on John Edwards' haircuts, and reports, and reports, and reports, Americans decide that the fact that John Edwards is wealthy and hasn't become an "I got mine and fuck you" Republican" is a serious character flaw. The callow and stupid Tucker Carlson declares Barack Obama's church to be not Christian, and that by definition makes it so. Bill O'Reilly blames "secular progressives" for everything, and never once mentions Mark Foley. Fox News puts a (D) next to the names of Republican legislators who commit crimes and that makes them Democrats in the eyes of the stupid and the incurious.
Some of the problem is the fallout from the collective nervous breakdown this country had in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks -- attacks which the Tough Guy-in-Chief and his counterpart in New York City did nothing to prevent, despite the many warnings that something was about to accur, attacks which they both managed horribly once they happened. But the American suspicion of intelligent leadership predates 9/11 by at least a generation. Adlai Stevenson, another thoughtful intellectual, was ridiculed as an egghead. Ronald Reagan had a nice smile and did a great job reading the speeches that Peggy Noonan wrote for him, but he was hardly an intellectual giant. The only time we get smart presidents is when they are also blessed with personal charisma, the way John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton were. In the absence of charm, the candidate who plays to our worst instincts is usually the one who wins.
And this, my friends, is why Al Gore isn't running -- and despite the hopes of many progressives who are less-than-thrilled with the candidates we've got; especially the one that the media and the Washington consultants are eager to anoint as the nominee BECAUSE she simply cannot win -- Al Gore is not going to run. An Al Gore reclaiming what is rightfully his may make a better movie, but sometimes a great pitch lands in a circular file while the money men decide another Pirates of the Caribbean movie is what the doctor ordered.
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