Not Funny Anymore

It was already, frankly, disgusting -- however eerily par for the course given Republican behavior since the Clinton Administration -- to hear McCain accuse Obama of "wanting to lose a war to win an election" just because he was talking some sense about our catastrophic illegal immoral wildly unpopular among the "liberators" and unwelcome among the "liberated" occupation of Iraq.

It has been nothing short of flabbergasting to watch the underqualified underinformed theocratic wingnut Sarah Palin cheerfully repeat lies that have been forcefully debunked even in mainstream media only to be applauded and showered with contribution by the dangerously deranged death-cult base of the Republican Party.

Now, a McCain ad, approved by McCain -- not some shadowy 527 he can disingenuously disavow as is more usual for these scoundrels -- is describing Obama's support of a bill to provide accurate age-appropriate information to protect children from sexual predators as "teaching sex-ed to kindergartners"?

The creepy blissed out "that's not change we can believe in, heh heh heh" and the rictus grin was funny. The assumption of the mantle of "Change" by the man who voted with the vile and justly despised Bush Administration over 90% of the time these last worst years was hilarious. Whisking Palin off to her bunker because she can't answer basic questions about the office she's one superannuated multiple-cancer-bout-surviving heartbeat away from was surreal.

But it's not funny anymore.

It's not at all that I think we're going to lose. I think Obama's going to win. And I think he'll win by margins that are obscured for now by the current corporate media desire for the appearance of a "horse-race," as I have said before.

But, despite all that, I'm truly outraged at this point that the awfulness of McCain (who, truth be told, has long been worse than his fluffers have portrayed him as but still seemed better than his unbelievably disgraceful current incarnation) has now grown so epic-scaled in its stink that I cannot even contemplate loss to the Republicans without feeling I am contemplating some sort of overthrow of the social and moral order of my nation. I no longer have the terms available at hand to describe how a decent lawful honorable functional let alone flourishing United States could eventually assert itself after such a complete debasement, such a failure of institutions, such a jettisoning of standards as would be represented by a Republican victory in this historical moment, given what we know, given what they have done, given the terms on which they are presently campaigning.

I don't like feeling this way. I don't appreciate it. However much I disapprove of opponents and hope to prevail over them when I have right on my side in my considered opinion, I still don't like to feel that a loss to them threatens me with absolutely total goddamn dishonor, apocalypse, and dictatorship. It's like fighting a mob of saucer-eyed screaming lunatics with pitchforks at this point. Nobody wins fights like these.

I have been so moved and so uplifted so often by the hopefulness and energy inspired in young people and long-disaffected citizens by the Obama campaign, even when I was supporting Edwards (boy, was I wrong about that one!). But the campaign now is an ugly savage demeaning immiserating slog through a shit-choked swamp. I'm hating every minute of it at this point, even the moments when Obama so gracefully and consummately debunks their lies and rises above their poop-flinging and redirects the collective gaze away from their gossip-mongering back to actual issues, I just want it all over with.

After all their crimes and lies and dishonor I contemplate the spectacle of the Republican Party with neither hatred nor hilarity at this point but just... anguish, at what they have done and at what they are doing to us all. Anguish.