Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Welcome to the Capital Hill Asylum

As predicted, American voters, at least that relatively small group that showed up to actually vote, elected the craziest inmates to run the asylum. Lunatics like Wisconsin Governor Scott “Koch addict” Walker, Florida Governor Rick “White-brother-from-another-planet” Scott and Senator Mitch “Yertle-the-Turtle” McConnell are all given back their respective jobs. And then there is the new crop of crazies headed by Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who made a campaign commercial where she linked her experience at castrating pigs to her desire to “cut the pork” in Washington. Iowans must have loved it.

As many others are pointing out, the electoral system in America is broken. From the money tsunami unleashed by Citizens United to gerrymandering to voter ID laws that disenfranchise minorities to hackable computerized voting machines, every election is now suspect and less a representation of the people’s will than a slave auction for white billionaires.

And paramount in this particular election was the issue of Obama hatred and racism. Primarily a red state mid-term, we saw how successful Republicans were at demonizing the President and shifting the blame for America’s problems from themselves to the “uppity negro” in Washington. Aided by a cowardly mainstream media, Republican candidates effectively used their code words, winks and nudges to stoke the racial hatred lying just beneath the surface of many white voters.

One rare bright spot was in my own state of Minnesota where we reelected a Democratic governor and sent Al Franken back to the Senate. I don’t envy Al because he is going to have his work cut out for him as one of a minority of sane voices trying to be heard amid the wailing, babbling patients of the Capital Hill Asylum.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not to mention so many of the so-called democratic candidates were so insipid that they couldn't raise enough votes to overcome the republican crazies that got elected. Capital Hill will indeed resemble American Horror's first season.