The Lunatic Asylum
Dear Undecided Voter,
I understand that the choice you are being asked to make on November 6th, 2012 is an important one that will have many unknown and long-term effects, and that as such, you wish to make the best decision you possibly can.
Truly, it is important that you, Undecided Voter, be given every opportunity to scrutinize both major candidates for the Presidency of the United States, and be given all the time you need to ensure that you understand each candidate's position on a wide variety of issues of burning import. I comprehend the magnitude of the decision that you are being asked to make, and the sheer sense of solemn responsibility that you feel for having to make it.
Really, it's quite alright if you take your time, and make certain you know what all the angles and issues are before you make that all-important decision.
Basically, your choice can be summed up, thus:
You can either vote for Barack Obama, a man who has shown himself to be about useful as fleas are to a dog, a man who has a proven record of saying one thing and then doing the exact opposite. A man who acts surprised and annoyed that we -- the Voting Public -- somehow have the audacity to challenge him or hold him accountable for the results of his policies (usually, his response is that we're stupid and did not infer the sheer genius hidden within lofty-but-empty speeches, or conversely, we're all racists for daring to question such an august personality and towering intellect, or even that we're impatient rubes who aren't sophisticated enough to await the always-just-around-the-corner magical explosion of rich, creamy goodness that is inherent in every enlightened Obama Policy) because we actually took him at his word, silly goose.
You can vote for Obama, who still believes that George W. Bush is to blame for everything, including the resurgence of whooping cough and bedbugs, who feels that his mere suggestion that 'something be done' about X,Y and Z should encourage others to do the heavy lifting of actually solving the problems, and who is apparently wedded to a sort of political ideology that went out of style in the 1930's (largely because it failed), if you want.
You can pull the lever for the man who, in a series of actions that reminds one of Nero and a fiddle and a burning city, decided that when America needed a strong economic plan to begin the slow process of recovery from a fiscal body blow, thought it best to attack the one sector of the American Economy that worked just fine and spend a year-and-a-half flogging a Rube Goldberg Monstrosity that generated a 2,900 page bill that no one has read, which doesn't take effect until next year, and has done nothing but frighten the bejesus out of people, if you like.
You can vote for the man who borrowed nearly a trillion bucks form the Chinese to make sure that turtles could safely cross the interstate, and that municipalities could (temporarily) hire more workers they then subsequently fired because they couldn't afford them absent the government check, and who brought us the phrase "Shovel Ready" which we morons interpreted to mean a project ready to commence -- and thus put people to work, and spur some economic activity -- but which, alas, apparently referred only to our Enlightened Overlord's overblown-and-written-by-some-white-guy's rhetoric.
You can choose to expend your franchise on a man who has quadrupled our National Debt in under four years, and blamed it all on someone else. You can vote for the guy who is still running against George W. Bush, despite the fact that a) he never actually did run against GWB to begin with, and, b) GWB is no longer President, but Obama himself is. Obama has turned the office of the Presidency into a travelling circus, popping up all over the country to give boilerplate speeches in front of hand-picked audiences, to shamelessly beg for money from people who he then calls the worst of names and demonizes on a daily basis, for his own benefit, from behind the Seal of the President.
And assholes that they are, they somehow manage to give it to him.
You can decide to punch that card, pull that lever, or whatever, for the man who once promised to heal the racial divide in America, but who has only, thus far, succeeded in reinforcing every negative stereotype about Black Men that comes to mind. You can vote for the Man who never held a real job in his life before this one, and whose lack of experience, knowledge, and a work ethic shows on a daily basis. You can vote to continue living in a status quo world where the status is measured in sound bites, demagoguery, nastiness, lies and deceit, political posturing, and a dearth of ideas, and the quo is measured in Food Stamps, Unemployment lines, dead Ambassadors, increasing National Debt, military weakness, and Green Energy 'investments' that turn out to be little more than bribes and swindles.
If you're one of those people who cared about rising sea levels, you can continue this act of faith that Obama will, eventually, get around to calming the oceans, or conversely, passing a law -- assuming he can get it past those goofy republicans! -- that requires the oceans to lower of their own accord by 2057, and then to submit a rigorous regime of regulatory paperwork every other month for review by the Ocean Czar, or face a hefty fine.
I can truly see how attractive it might be to you, Undecided voter, to agonize over the prospect of giving your endorsement to a man who promises you everything and then explains that delivery is impossible. You probably have along and painful experience with men who tell you things like "It's good for your teeth and prevents pregnancy, Honey" who then fail to call the next day, and I understand how old habits become hard to break. I sympathize with the dilemma you are faced with in trying to decide whether a long, slow, national suicide is perhaps slightly more preferable to an abrupt collapse, at least for the sake of your conscience and comfort. I savvy that most of you are Undecided simply because you're holding out for the bigger and better bribe, or perhaps dumber than Kelly Pickler on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
I really do feel you on the magnitude of what you're being asked to do, what with sorting out the various nuances of a vast array of often-confusing issues, most of which often have nothing to do with you, personally; how many men out there agonize over the voting decision because of a candidates position on contraception, or partial birth abortion, just so that when they try to pick up chicks at cocktail parties they don't sound stupid? There must be dozens of you women out there who are kept awake at night by the specter of reduced or eliminated ethanol subsidies.under a Romney regime, or scared shitless by the ramifications of an early withdrawal of American influence from Khazakistan.
I know you don't want to make the wrong choice with such incredibly important subjects on the table.
Then again, just to complicate matters to the point where your tiny little brain almost can't handle it anymore, you have to deal with the added and annoying variable of a possible second choice.
Because there's someone else running for President, too, you know. That means you'll have to take time out of your busy day, Soccer Mom, to listen to what he has to say, too, and maybe even expend more energy and braincells trying to figure out what his suggested policies mean to you, Hacky-Sack-playing-stoner-who-lives-in-his-parent's- basement.
All this Mitt Romney fellow is trying to do is get into office so that he can advocate for and enact policies that actually work. It's been proven they do. You can look that up on Wikipedia, the First Resource of Choice for the Undecided Voter. All this Mitt Romney character wants to do is lower your taxes (unless you're one of those 47% who don't pay any), put you back to work (unless you enjoy collecting 1/8 of your regular salary in Unemployment checks, and have taken a shine to No Frills Mac&Cheese three meals a day), and give you the opportunity to live up to your fullest potential, rather than make you a slave to an unfeeling, uncaring, unquestionable Federal Government which either sees you as a number or an expense to be killed off by some anonymous and unaccountable Medical Review Board.
I'm going to tell you a little story about a person who could never make a decision, even a clear one, to save her own life:
I once dated a very lovely, intelligent woman who was able to handle just about anything life threw at her right up until the second she was confronted with the possibility of making a choice. Never failed; whenever the hint of a decision came into the picture, this woman would vacillate, talk to everyone she knew to get their opinion,.second guess herself every fifteen seconds, begin to act and then change her mind, she would take one step forward, and then two steps back, descending into a virtual swamp of indecision that gave anyone watching it indigestion.
One day, having been invited to a friend's wedding in a few weeks, we went shopping so that she could buy herself a dress for the occasion. Several hours into this endeavor she finally found something she liked, style-wise, and was all primed to buy it. But, the indecision came.
The dress came in three colors; should she buy the black one, the navy one, or the red one? Then again, the dress was on sale, and it might make sense to buy at least two. Of course, since they were on sale and she could afford it, she might as well buy all three. Then again, if she bought all three we'd have to start attending more formal functions, just so she wouldn't have wasted her money. No, no...she was going to buy the black one, and that was it. Standing on line to pay, she decided she would rather have the red one, and went back to fetch it, losing her place in line in the process. She then decided to go back and get the black one, too, as it was her first choice, and she always wound up returning to her first choice in any case.
She walked between the rack and the register so much that she was in danger of wearing a hole in the carpeting.
Finally, exasperated by the experience, and no longer willing to hold her fucking purse for another hour or two, I stepped in. I took all three dresses off the rack, told her to sit the fuck down, and then paid for them myself, just so we could go home and finally get something to eat.
All the way home I was subjected to a soliloquy on how glad she was to have decided to buy them all, and which one did I think she would look better, because if she wore the black, it made her look taller, but the red gave her otherwise pale skin a certain glow, while the blue made her look all serious and mature, and wasn't it too bad the damned thing didn't come in Hunter Green, too? But anyway, the pattern was still a great choice, don't you agree, etc, etc, etc.
Needless to say, that chick only managed to last five years because she understood that it was good for her teeth and prevented pregnancy. And she was so good at it that the aggravation and potential ulcers were a risk worth running.
I get the general impression that the Undecided Voter of Today is very much like that girlfriend in Bloomingdale's all those years ago. They mostly seem to possess an odd mixture of neuroses and situational stupid that literally paralyzes them when it comes to making any sort of choice, particularly one that carries with it a grave responsibility, and which can be seen by us clear-thinking individuals as an obvious one.
The choice in 2012 is clear: you can continue to be led down the road to beggarhood, being attacked by terrorists, harranged to inhuman levels by your government, to have your intelligence insulted on a daily basis, to have everything that was once uniquely American 'transformed' into a stinking pile of turds, to have your wealth (well, whatever wealth you have left) systematically stripped from you to pay for everything from basic shelter to triple bypass surgery for people who will serve no future economic purpose, and whose only virtue is that they are wards of the state and thus amenable to democratic (small 'd' intentional) political propaganda. You can chose to live in a polarized, politicized, government-run Soweto in Southern California, Bangladesh in Baltimore, or Calcutta-on-the-Hudson, or you can choose to live as a free person, who has had his personal rights and freedoms restored.
It is apparent that some citizens out there are unable to make this simple choice. It behooves us, the Normal People who can tell the difference between sterling silver and a polished turd, to help these troubled souls finally come to the right decision.
I hope have made the choice easier for you, Undecided Voter, with this heartfelt and sincere attempt to sway your mind, because all the other alternatives involved forced sterilization and running you over with a rented U-Haul truck.
Crossposted @The Lunatic Asylum
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