If I read the conservative commentariat correctly with regard to tomorrow’s US elections, the following will happen:
Obama wins: As the fifth rider of the apocalypse, Obama will bring the end of days, armageddon, leading to the imposition of a debt-ridden, welfare-spending LBGT atheistic Islamofascist Zionist-Stalinist-Orwelian state in which children and the elderly are eaten after being vivisected and animals and dirt will have more rights than natural gas. The walls of the shining White house on the hill will crumble. Locusts will plague and fire will belch from the skies in non-industrial areas as the ground turns to dust and the rivers run dry. The seas will retreat and the icecaps will melt, but not due to man-made climate change. Female sports will become dominant.
Romney wins: Milk, honey, money and expensive Eau de Cologne will rain down upon the chosen debt producing and debt reducing Christian people and hedge fund managers, sunshine will spring eternal, a million flowers will bloom, all dole-bludging, illegal alien LBGT atheist Islamofascist Zionist-Stalinists will be rendered asunder by lightning strikes from the heavenly Father and world peace and prosperity will obtain in our time. White folk will become cool again. Soccer will be purged from the global landscape because it is un-American and does not involve teams with American Indian names, padding, helmets or blunt instruments and has a penchant for shorts that is second only to League in terms of questionability. White shirts and somber ties will once again be suitable apparel. Shoes will be tied. The help will know their place.
I have to disagree with you on the important question of which sport features the dodgiest shorts. Aussie Rules has no close competitors in this area.
Although rugby League and road cycling come close… And the sight of a beaded weirdie and an American import on Karekare beach in speedo’s mode is also highly disturbing.
Dave: That last comment was a good one. I’ll tell that bearded weirdo to keep things covered from now on.
Reality? Little will change either way, though I’d sure as hell rather have Obama in office if there was a ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ type event.
Gotta admit the obama option sounds pretty darn exciting, make a good movie.
Bring back Hunter Thompson to make some sense of all this. US men that still have hair, they like big hair, styled like some long gone do wop ensemble rippling through to the 21st century.
Get with it yankee devils, it is time for 99%ers round II, Euro socialists and anarchists from 4 countries are on the cusp of a good old shown down there. Kiwis will get their turn too, Mana and GI ethnic cleansing are a possible flashpoint as is Christchurch.
I was sent this by a friend. It is funny in a ghoulish sort of way, but also speaks volumes about who supports/is the GOP:
http://whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com/
I’ll have to agree with Psycho Milt. As a non-Aussie person, the first time I saw Aussie Rules I thought it was some male version of Lingerie Football League
There may be a correlation between one’s penchant for short shorts in sport and political inclination, but dang if I can find it.
Wow, just wow!
http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2012/11/the-end-of-liberty-in-america-only.html
:-O
Ok one last comment from me on it…..
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/222426_486183288088272_885088776_n.jpg
Dave W @20:10: That libertarian nut job sounds like he wants to be Davy Crockett, except he will make his final stand by de-friending Democrats on FB rather than hold off the invading hordes at gun point. Gives a whole new dimension to the term rightwing tosser.
Well I’m glad Obama won and my favourite sport will avoid being purged. (I can just picture it now… ‘the incoming Republican administration have ordered a series of drone strikes against the San Siro, in a pre-emptive attack against saa-ker hooligans and their dangerous anti-American-sport ideology…’)
I am struck by the seemingly-excessive hyperbole emanating from Republican Party supporters these days. I mean, do they really think Obama is some kind of foreign-born Islamo-fascist socialist hell-bent on destroying their great country from the inside? Will we really see a mass exodus of the good and the righteous to Canada/Australia/some other supposed hyper-capitalist paradise with a ‘Christian President who supports what he says’?
Basically what I’m wondering is, and this is a genuine question as I’m too young to know, are they always such bloody sore losers when they don’t win an election? Or do they have an unusually strong dislike (in historic terms) for this particular President (& why that might be)?
Milos:
The turn to the worse began with Vietnam, which was the first modern war that did not have the full support of the citizenry because many felt that it did not involve core national interests (the “domino theory” did not convince them). In the eyes of the WW2 and Korea generations, the treasonous behavior committed by the hippy generation was an insult to their sacrifice. After Watergate and the withdrawal from Vietnam, Carter rode the back of the post-Vietnam hippies and other moderate people. In 1980, aided by a number of factors extrinsic as well as intrinsic to the Carter presidency, Reagan played to the dark side–religious, racist, classist and national supremacist–and turned it into electoral victory.
Reagan darkened the prospects by playing to the margins, a strategy inspired by the nasty piece of work that schooled Karl Rove in the dark arts: Lee Attwater. The master died of brain cancer, but Rove is dying a slow death because the the “base” that Reagan successfully appealed to were conservative white Christians.
That was a third of the electorate then and sometimes has been in the ensuing seven national elections. But if playing to the margins is what wins elections, then Barack’s team kicked ass and then some. I will not recite the numbers but will start with the lowest figure: 55 percent of wimin voters did so for Obama. From then the percentages for gays, blacks, hispanics, asians and single wimin rose to stratospheric numbers. The white male vote favored Romney, but the counter-balance was insignificant.
Conservative white (generally middle aged) males are a dying demographic of voters (still majority while diminishing), but that is what Rove and other GOP stalwarts advised in favor of targeted appeals. Once their media puppets began to believe the narrative, they added flavor and idiocy to the campaign. At that point the GOP electoral delusion got institutionalized.
Sore losing is a modern and mixed invention. The 2000 vote demonstrated the problems with the Electoral College, which previously was seen to be a relatively impartial balance between the popular will and elite desire. From then on voter cynicism, and yet hope, has increased. Cynicism has grown amongst white Christians and hope–or at least defense of hope–has galvanized the combine of other “marginal” groups.
In an electoral contest between small and big collectivities defined by what they are against and what they are for, the latter rather than the former will win.
In the 2012 US presidential elections they did.
@Pablo: I think the Korean war was actually quite controversial at the time. It featured heavily in the 1952 election campaign.
What are you up to these days pablo? Was just talking to a friend about how cool a lecturer you were! Hope youre still rabble rousing and running the triathalons.
Jane :-)
Hi Jane: Thanks for the note. Not doing much rabble rousing or triathlons these days, but managing to largely stay out of trouble. I am back in NZ and out of academia.