Yesterday, October 28th, was the yearly anniversary of one of my favorite celebrations. It’s called “Oxi Day” (that’s a hard H cleverly linguistically disguised as an X), and it celebrates the Greek Prime Minister in 1940 telling the Italian & German Axis to go fuck themselves at the beginning of the Mediterranean invasion wing of the Great Thousand Year reign of Perfect Aryan supremacy. Hitler expected to take the country in 6 weeks. It ended up becoming one of the biggest single wrenches in the Blitzkrieg strategy. It basically resulted in what could, at best, be called a haggard and sweaty job for Hitler who had to babysit Mussolini the whole time – which eventually led to direct German operations taking over the whole thing anyway – that spread the Reich forces so thin for the rest of the fronts and was one of the biggest energy pits of the whole war for the NAZIs, second only to the 7-headed winter beast that was the abysmal Russian operations.
I always liked that story. The fact of the matter is that he didn’t even actually say, “Oxi”. He said, “Then it is war”, and in French, besides (since that was the only language that the Greeks, Italians, and Germans could meet halfway on with any kind of equal ability). But the details are never important when you’re making a myth, especially a good, True one, and this was a good one.
It also marks 376 days until the next presidential election. Tuesday, November 6th, 2012. I know on that day I’ll be voting to stop an amendment from trying to define Minnesota marriage as a “Straights Only” club. Anything beyond that, I’m not sure. If any of you have already made your minds up as to who you’re going to vote for? Congratulations. You get the special voting day of Wednesday the 7th. Be sure to wear your fancy yellow hats, and meet in the secret dark alleys for the Special Voting rooms. I’ll send the maps next week.
I know many of you will end up voting for Obama, and I can’t honestly say that no one is giving it any thought. Fine upstanding friends of mine will be voting for him when the time comes. All I’m asking is that he works for it. Remind him of The Fast & Furious gun-smuggling ring that’s been siphoning DEA & ATF guns, using straight cash, down to Mexican drug lords until one of them – somehow! – was used to kill an actual U.S. Border Patrol Agent in Mexico (1). We dusted the guns for prints and god be damned if they weren’t red-white-and-blue! Remind him of the speeches he gave before he won The Comfy Chair, decrying the incarceration system and the poison of locking up potheads (2) and wasting money we don’t have (3) to stop people from doing things that nearly half the nation isn't even against (4) (interesting story: Attorney General Eric Holder can literally say into a microphone, “Marijuana has been legally downgraded from Section I to Section II”, which would allow it for medical use nationwide, and it thusly becomes so. There’s no legislation necessary, it’s one of the abilities granted to the Attorney General. (5)(6) He just hasn’t said it yet because his boss hasn’t told him to say it yet). Remind him of the flying killer robots (7): Either the fact that he used them to kill American citizens (😎, or the fact that they’re riddled with viruses (9), or even just on the primal reptilian fact that they’re creepy as hell. Just don’t hand The Keys to the Business right back to him just because the Republican arena is full of depraved fetishists who vice-clench their tits in nipple clamp leather pocket-bibles (10) while masturbating furiously to grainy YouTube footage of unarmed women getting corralled and maced on New York City sidewalks (11).
I pick on the republicans, mostly and only because I hate everything they stand for, and are turning our country into an obese, methed-out Ouroboros snake that eats its own tail while wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat and lighting its cigars with the withered corpses of the starving children born unlucky enough to be not-white. But I also understand balance. I know well enough to know that there are people out there who wear a tie, or are over 30 years old, that I can trust and be challenged by. Who know their facts and have a cohesive argument for the things they believe in that I do not. That different angles and different views bring enlightenment if you’re willing to listen. And that any idea, even one I agree with, if unchecked, would run roughshod and eventually destroy itself in the chase of its own hubris, after having trampled on its enemies and heard the lamentations of their women. I don’t want Democrats to win, really, any more than I want Republicans to win. I want everyone in charge to be miserable and not really actually get what they want, because when everyone – on both sides – is genuinely unsatisfied, that’s pretty much the According to Hoyle definition of a successful compromise. Nobody gets everything they want, and the middle is met. Moderation is found in two equal forces meeting in the field. The cleared smoke reveals the actual progress made at the end of the day.
The problem is that the Republican stable is so chock-full of frothing rabid maniacs that anything reached in compromise still stinks like a bad decision and includes a dead body rolled up in a carpet somewhere that will haunt you for the rest of your life. Usually when a writer of my staggering caliber wants to create a list, you start with the smallest and build up: The climax is built in ascending the peak, and then the last example is the ball-buster and world ruiner. The problem is that I don’t know where the start when considering each of the Republican candidates and their separate ideas as the least crazy to commence my compendium with. While Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are neck-and-neck over who has closer ties to smiling in public at an illegal immigrant in their “6 Degrees from helping brown-people” insult-fest (12)(13), Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich are running with the idea that with the elimination of our (paltry and insulting, but something nonetheless) national health care, the medical needs of the disadvantaged can be covered by charity groups (14) – which honestly strikes me as just coming right out and saying, “If you’re looking somewhere for assistance to be treated with decent human compassion, the government’s the last place you’d want to look”. Herman Cain’s tax plan is so grossly favorable to the upper-millionaire class – at the expense of everyone else – with such shameless aplomb that it would make a herd of hired escorts blush in shock and a pimp choke on his morning coffee (15). He also apparently doesn’t know how to use Google, since he claims to have not heard any science debunking the idea that being gay is a voluntary (16), and typing in the words “Scientific Studies proving homosexuality is not a choice” appears to be beyond his capability – meaning he’s either lazy or stupid. He also, quite possibly, may have had a stroke on national television when trying to name a middle-eastern country (17). I don't know how someone hasn't made a techo-remix of “Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” yet.
But in all honesty, my favorite main attraction is Rick Santorum. A man on the wrong side of the one of the greatest burns in the short but storied history of the internet (18). A man so utterly consumed with being terrified of gay people and the Things They Do, so violently black-out stupid and vengeful at the apparently crazy idea that where you jam your junk should not immediately define you as either a 1st or 2nd class citizen, he is my favorite Walking Drinking Game. He will weave the most spectacular tapestry to turn the topic back to gay dudes boning that the mental wind shear in your head to try and keep up will drive you to drinking out of necessity. He’s like Rudolph Giuliani was in 2008, except instead of 9/11 at the end of every sentence, it’s strap-ons and lube. He has literally said he would give his life to prevent gay marriages, and that offering kids safe-sex education will create a “License to do things in a sexual realm” (19), which for some reason makes me think he believes premarital sex involves a wizard in and/or from another dimension.
I want to make one thing utterly, perfectly clear: I don’t like Obama. I almost voted for him in ’08, but I luckily defaulted back to another Nader vote, so I can still look myself in the mirror knowing that whatever he does that makes me puke, I can at least sleep occasionally knowing my vote had nothing to do with it. I can safely say that at least he doesn’t wear a tinfoil hat and shit himself on national television when he tries taking a swing-and-a-miss at a sentence containing any words with more the two syllables in them. That just means he’s in the game for the same reason the Republicans are, but he’s smarter about it. He’s got brains, I can’t deny that. He’ll need his own concentrated effort, but right now I am but one man, with a limited amount of space here today. For now, this is just about putting them all on notice. And, if I’m honest, myself as well. The easy way is not an option anymore. There are people out there risking a lot more than just their free time, the least I can do is write something down and do my best to put it in the conversation. This is my monkey wrench! There are many like it but this one is mine!
It doesn’t matter if you’re outmatched, outgunned, outspent, out-resourced and looking down the barrel of certain and abject failure. If the spectre of utter ruin has you in a staring contest, you’re going to blink. It’s a fact. But it’s how long you prop the lids up that counts. Far past the point of pro-ing-and-con-ing on whether or not it was a good idea. It’s the right idea. Politics is a giant field of pig shit, with no bottom and no end ever, ever in sight. They would break a plate on their own mother’s face, and your mother’s too, and spit on her if they thought it would get them The Vote. It is a never-ending shit storm and hatefest. But you sharpen your shovels anyway, and try to stop the drowning, cascading madness, knowing that even if it does happen, even if the knife drops anyway, you did your part to make sure it didn’t happen as smoothly as they’d hoped or thought it would.
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