I’ve been strongly tempted lately to feel optimistic about my country’s future – almost giddy, in fact, now that I can taste the end of the Bush disaster. I have to pinch myself occasionally when I watch Obama’s press conferences and realize that – at last! – there will be adults in charge, who know how to think, who actually care about trying to solve the nation’s problems, who talk in complete sentences.
But with this giddiness, alas, comes the risk of complacency. It would be so easy to slip into assuming that all Americans are savoring this historic moment, this historic opportunity to cleanse the land of incompetence and corruption on a mind-numbing scale. So a letter to a local paper last week performs a valuable service, reminding us that even now there are those who cling to the laughably bogus smears spewed by the McCain-Palin campaign, reminding us that there is still a long way to go if this is ever again to be truly a thinking nation.
Thus, once again, we hear that it’s all the fault of the “mainstream media.” In this view, the outright lies of right-wing talk radio have more credence than the meticulous reporting of the New York Times, and Sarah Palin’s colossal ignorance is all Katie Couric’s fault. Thus, once again, we have the jingoistic slamming of those who don’t “love their country” enough. (Quick! Where’s my flag!) This from people who voted for McCain, who showed total contempt for his country by running such a sleazy, dishonest campaign. This from people who, I’d guess, voted for our current president, who loves his country so much that he’s darn near destroyed it.
Thus, once again, we get pathetic cries of “socialism,” which as far as I can tell is a reference to a proposed slight adjustment in that insidious menace called the graduated income tax. (Bulletin: Social Security, a blatantly socialist program, works beautifully, and let’s not even get into corporate welfare.) There’s even talk of the tyranny of the majority – this after eight years of a president who was not, by any definition, legitimately elected but who, from his first day, trampled all opposition, not to mention the Constitution these people profess to hold so dear.
So beware complacency. Such, uh, interesting thinking is, sadly, alive and well.