Forward...Into The Past?

Earl Weaver,  longtime manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Hall-of-Famer, inarguably one of the greatest managers in baseball history, was shrewd, smart, and eminently quotable.  His Orioles teams were invariably in the thick of the pennant race every September, and Earl used every tactic he could to psych out his opponents.  In September, 1975, as the O's were in Boston trying to catch the Sox, and all of Red Sox Nation held its breath anticipating another collapse, Weaver said "We've climbed out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi." 

In 1966, the US Supreme Court struck down, once and for all, we thought, the poll tax, perhaps the last of the Jim Crow laws, clearly intended to suppress the ability of poor and minority, especially black, voters to exercise their right to vote.  In 1973, the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade finally, once and for all, we thought, gave women the right to control their bodies and to make their own decisions regarding fundamental human rights.  In 2008, we elected a black man (well, half-black; why is it that we characterize such mixed-race people as "black?"  They're equally white.  But I guess it's better than two alternatives that come to mind: ""blite" or "whack," and oh shit I've just given those "non-racists" fodder) to be President of the US, an act that was unthinkable when I was a kid and, we told ourselves, was clear evidence that the country had finally, once and for all, overcome its heinous past and was no longer virulently and institutionally racist.

Comes now Election 2012,  and so many of the issues we thought were buried and behind us are being pulled back out of their coffins by the Grand Old Party.  Jim Crow, meet Voter ID, a straw man used by Repugnicants countrywide in an attempt to disenfranchise generally Democratic demographics, in the name of preventing voter fraud.  That there is no evidence anywhere of significant voter fraud (except for, in one of life's grand ironies, a voter-registration firm hired by Repugs in FLA to increase their voter registration, and which was found to be fabricating names on their rolls) matters no more to the Right-Wing Elites than the overwhelming evidence that there is climate change happening.  Women's right to choose, meet "Life begins whenever one man thinks lustful thoughts about one woman, and rape is just God's way of saying 'Um, are you sure?'"  Barack Obama, meet the New America, same, in way too many respects, as the Old America.  I heard recently from a resident of Houston that the local PD there refers to African Americans as "Mondays" because "everyone hates..."--yup.

It seems unfortunately appropriate that the election comes so soon after we've turned back the clock;  Romney/Ryan, Inc. and their assorted partners, puppetmasters, sycophants and toadies are trying to turn the calendar back to, say, 1957, when white men ruled, as god intended, and if you didn't like the way they did things it was too bad, because they couldn't really see or hear you anyway.  And it almost wouldn't be quite so bad if that's all it was; after all, we survived Nixon, Reagan, and W.cheney, Inc.   But the GOP now is venal, virulent, and vehement in its outlooks and proposed policies.  They're turning their backs on infrastructure, healthcare, education, science, for chrissakes, the poor, the downtrodden, the elderly, their very own citizens and constituents.  If the French had any balls (sorry--stooping to a stereotype for a cheap laugh) they'd ask for the Statue of Liberty back, or at least to have its motto sandblasted off: it will no longer pertain even to natives, let alone immigrants.  "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" need not apply.

We are told that every election is (imagine the stentorian tones of John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films, the new Voice of God)  "The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime," but damn, this one might be.  I dimly remember a Paul Simon quote about rap from the ('80s?)--and this surely says something about his and my biases-- to the effect that " Rap is like dropping an atomic bomb on the history and evolution of popular music--I mean, how long will it take us to get back to Charlie Parker?"    If RomRyan, Inc. gets elected, how long will it take us to get back to basic humanity, to the fundamental responsibilities and trust intrinsic to government and civilized society, to pull ourselves, if not out of the coffin, at least back out of the subprimordial slime?

What The Fuck is happening to my country?  Please make it stop.

BTW:  the titular (I obviously love that word) quote comes from Catherwood, the duplicitous butler in Firesign Theater's "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger (Third Eye)."