ENOUGH!

New rule: the next person who spews the words “Joe the Plumber” at me gets a guest role in the remake of “The Best of Al Zarqawi’s Home Videos”! I am tired of hearing those three words, and I am tired of hearing Obama called a socialist. Do any of the people who are talking this rubbish have any idea what they’re saying? If you actually listen to what Obama and Sammy Joe talked about, you’d blow a gasket too after hearing that encounter brought up again, and again, and again over the past weeks. I’ve finally had it with this election, and all of the absurd inanities that are being constantly brought up. ENOUGH!!!! Shut the fuck up about Caribou Barbie and her hundred fifty grand in new clothes! Shut the fuck up about McCain possibly killing someone in a car wreck forty fucking four years ago! Just shut up already!!! When Obama says that his tax plan includes cutting taxes for people making under a quarter of a million dollars a year, and raising taxes on the money above the quarter of a million dollars a year that rich fucks are making, when the first quarter of a million dollars those rich fucks are making every year is getting taxed at the same low rate other people are getting, DO NOT CALL IT SOCIALISM JUST BECAUSE OBAMA SAID IT WAS GOOD TO SPREAD THE WEALTH AROUND IN AN IMPROMPTU INTERACTION!!! Okay? Do you get what I’m saying? It’s not accurate to call that “redistribution of wealth,” because, if you follow me here for a second, the people getting a tax cut are still paying some taxes, the people who don’t pay any taxes at all aren’t getting extra welfare checks or anything like a handout, and the rich people are paying the taxes that they used to be paying before Bush made their load a little easier to carry! Can you follow that? I am barely eighteen years old without a very lengthy formal education, and that shit seems damn obvious to me. I am making a pledge, and I am absolutely serious about this, that if somehow McCain pulls this thing out of the gutter and squeaks in on the thinnest of margins, or if they somehow steal like they did eight years ago, I will do my best to get out of this country. Fuck you very much America! I might even do that if Obama wins, just because I’m pretty sure that whatever happens, this country’s a ship that’s already hit the iceberg, and nothing can stop it from going down. Excuse my language, I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’m a little cranky.

The Big Issue

I know that I am not looking at this thing objectively. I know that my viewpoint is skewed, that I’m looking at things through blue tinted glasses, but there seems to be one big feature of this race that stands out. There seems to be on the republican side an ugliness, a negativity, a certain vile strain of thought that just doesn’t show up on the other side. Am I crazy, am I seeing things that aren’t there? The progressive platform that Obama’s been running on seems to be so much more hopeful, and optimistic, and inclusive, and forward thinking. What’s going on? Could I be seeing this wrong? Is there something wrong with my model of the world? I don’t understand how these vast differences can exist, are we really living in such an inconsistent world? I have no idea. I don’t think I could be so terribly wrong, but it seems arrogant to think that other people might be as abysmally wrong as they seem to be. How the fuck is someone supposed to make heads or tails of this world?

In My Defense

I’m not used to people actually reading these things that I write; it was interesting to get comments from people who’ve probably stumbled across my little plot of land. I usually write thinking that my audience will only be people that I have connections with. I know that I exist on the interweb as a node that connects to different networks, like family, friends that I have, classmates, and all that. I haven’t been writing with the idea of people being introduced to it for the first time. Some of the comments were critical of what I did. What I want to do is explain myself, why I did what I did and said what I said. I don’t have very much sympathy for hecklers at performances. I saw George Carlin perform about a month before he died. Carlin was a very intellectual person, and he prided himself on trying to be logically consistent. I saw him perform at the plaza theatre in El Paso. He got to a point in his routine where he was talking about how much importance we place on symbols, and said that cemeteries around the world are filled with dead brain washed soldiers. A gentleman who was also attending took offense at that. He might have been drunk, which is just an extra detail, and he started out yelling from the balcony. He would shout things like “shut the fuck up!” and “fuck you!” and he continued on with that with several different variations on that theme. I thought that man was out of line. You pay money to go see an entertainer, a performer, you should know what to expect, and you shouldn’t have to deal with people who don’t like it. I see a difference between things like heckling performers when people are out to have a good time, and heckling politicians whose actions have real world impacts. You shouldn't try to shut entertainers up, because that's all they are. Entertainers. Fluff. What they say doesn't really matter, only as much as it influences the people who hear it. But with politicians, the issues that they talk about, they actually matter, they have consequences. These are the people that will be making life or death decisions. When he goes out and gives a speech talking about how we will only let our troops return with victory, he is the man who will be pushing those troops into continuing that war, and it would lead to people being killed who otherwise wouldn’t have been. When they speak, it’s not just entertainment. Interrupting them, correcting them, offering counterpoints in that public environment of a rally, I think it should be considered fair game. There are actual implications and consequences when a candidate campaigns, it’s not entertainment, where you could take it or leave it as you like. This isn’t just a matter of disagreeing about politics, many, many lives are hanging in the balance in a very real way. What they say matters in a way that is horrifyingly real.

Heckling McCain

One of the lone benefits of living in the state of melancholia known as the Land of Enchantment is that every four years it gains a small, brief flash of prominence. It is, thanks to the absurdities of our electoral system, one of a handful of “battleground” states that are considered up for grabs. While that liberal bastion of depravity called California is the juiciest prize with fifty five electoral votes, its outcome is reliably anti-American. Similarly with Texas, the land of inflated egos, its thirty four votes ought to be much more enticing than the paltry five of neighboring New Mexico, but it’s bound to go for whoever the Republican is. Unless the Republican is Alan Keyes, then it’s a toss-up. But since New Mexico can teeter-totter either way, and has done that quite a bit, its five votes can go either way, it’s a slightly bi-curious state. That means that we’ve been blessed with campaign stops by all of the major candidates, and their surrogates, and we’ve been subjected to an unrelenting stream of torturous campaign ads, and robocalls.
Due to my fortuitous residence, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to see men from both tickets up close, and managed to miss the single woman from the main candidates by a matter of mere hours and ninety or so miles. Both men appeared weeks apart in the exact same venue.
I showed up to see Joe Biden on a Friday. Tickets were required, I showed up a little before the announced time for distributing the tickets the day before. There was already a line of a dozen or so people who had showed up even earlier than I had. The group was diverse, an assortment of the elderly, college age young adults, middle aged fogies, with several different ethnicities.
The rally was in the Mesilla Plaza, gates opened at eleven thirty, which is right when I arrived. Joe was scheduled to show up at one thirty. My associate commonly known as Waffle Bob, and my very lovely Mexican friend decided to humor me and come along. I was gladdened to see that security had improved markedly in the four years since I’d last seen a vice-presidential candidate in the same spot. When John Edwards showed up to speak in his failed attempt to unseat Dick Cheney, the security was abysmally poor. There wasn’t a metal detector in sight, and the short staffed managers of the event picked a few large looking high school students out of the attendees to do crowd control. The school to which I went, an alternative school peopled mainly by gangsters and delinquents, was just across the street, and students were allowed to attend as a lesson in civic responsibility. So when they needed bouncers to stand at a gate, and only allow people with the right ticket to pass, they picked out some the more imposing students to do that job. I happened to know the ones they picked, and luckily they took that responsibility seriously.
The Biden rally and speech was mostly unremarkable. Our own Governator Billy Richardson dropped in, his beard in tow, Senator Jeff Bingaman also put in some face time, and Mr. Udall, the democratic candidate for senate, was unable to attend, but his lovely wife Jill attended in his stead. The most lasting thing I took away from that event was a nasty sunburn. I do love Biden though, and think he’s a great guy, always one that’s good for a laugh.
I really wanted to go see Sarah Palin. She was going to be in Roswell the Sunday after the Friday that I saw Joe, and that weekend I was with my mom, sort of in the area, about an hour and a half drive’s a way. Alas, I was unable to convince her to put in the gas and the time to make it to it. That one might’ve been fun.
McCain’s the big guy; he’s at the top, not a mere number two. When I heard that he was coming to town, my first thought was I need to get tickets to go to this thing, and my second thought was, I should make a big “VOTE MULATTO! 08” sign to smuggle into the rally. Unfortunately people weren’t very accommodating, so I didn’t manage to make that sign. I did get tickets. They were being handed out at the McCain campaign’s Victory office. Showing up there, I made a point to not park too close to their office, lest they see my Obama bumper sticker and realize that I’m an impostor. Every time that I’ve been to an Obama office, the people there, workers, volunteers, tourists, whatever, were very diverse, they were from every age group and every ethnicity. Walking into that McCain office, I was greeted with a uniform collection of white, wrinkled faces. Everybody else there must’ve had at least thirty two years on me. Every single person other than myself was old and white, which I guess should be expected, the supporters mirror their candidates.
The rally opened at two, which is right around the time I got there. I had to be a little early to pay parking scalpers two bucks to park in a dirt field. Amid dozens of trucks and SUV’s adorned with McCain-Palin stickers and various other obscenities, mine was the lone car sporting a sticker saying “Obama 08- Si se puede!”
I didn’t have backup this time, the one time that I probably needed it most. I got there early enough to get an advantageous spot to stand, probably about forty feet away from the microphone, almost as close as I had been when Biden was there. A crane had raised a giant American flag, at just the right angle, so that minutes into it, the sun snuck behind it, eclipsed by the flag as America’s eclipsed the hope of the world. That was roughly what I said in a photo-text-message that I sent from the rally. I think I got a pretty good shot of it dipping behind the flag. That flag was the best, if only for the shade that it gave me. I may have escaped with only a minor sunburn this time.
People started filling in around me, and I let a few people g closer, because I assumed that they legitimately wanted to see the guy. Workers began assembling the podium, and the crowd roared as the “Straight Talk Express” drove past. The McCain campaign is in such dire financial shape that they were handing out hand painted signs, at least that’s the spin I’m putting on it. There were a handful of professionally printed signs, but most were of the elementary school chic type. They may have been going for a folksy feel.
I saw one black guy there, he was wearing a McCain shirt, I tried getting a photo of him, to have the caption, “The uncoolest black dude ever.”
I was standing alone, in a sea of enemies, wondering if they knew that I was not one of them. It was definitely whiter than Biden’s crowd, and older, but there was some variety, and a few young people, parents had brought their young children, presumably to warn them about what types of men may make it in politics. A republican candidate for the New Mexico state legislature gave the opening, prayerful invocation, a whole bunch of religious mumbo jumbo; for the most part I stayed respectfully silent, shouting at the tail end of it something along the lines of “Atheists for Obama!”
Vikki Carr was there, I don’t really know who she is, apparently some Grammy winning singer from El Paso who supports McCain, she didn’t say anything that I felt required a response, she did bring up Vietnam, going to visit the boys. She sang some songs, America the Beautiful, and went into a thing where she was singing “let it be him,” god willing, let it be John McCain.
Tinsley showed up to speak. I don’t like him very much. He is the republican running for congress, and he was quite an annoying windbag. He got to a point where he all but accused his opponent of being a child pornographer, a statement I felt did warrant a response, so I so eloquently shouted back “BULLSHIT!” And a few people turned around to stare at me for a second or two.
Next up to the plate was Steve Pearce, a truly vile republican, gap toothed scumbag who snubbed my sister’s college wine class. He is the current congressman, and he’s running for a seat in the senate that’s being vacated by Pete Domenici. I don’t have any unkind words for Domenici, who was also there, but I don’t really know if he deserves any or not. But Pearce, when he started talking about Joe the Plumber, whose name is not Joe, and who’s not really a plumber, and who can’t afford the business that was the point of him talking to Obama, I couldn’t stand it. Enough with Joe the Plumber! I’m tired of even hearing his name (I must admit, in the interest of fairness, that Lindsey Graham talking about Joe “the Biden”, I let out a little laugh). Pearce said that we needed to elect McCain, so that Joe the plumber would be able to afford his business, and create new jobs, while Obama just wanted to spread the wealth around. Since Joe the not actually “Joe” and not actually a “plumber” actually makes forty grand a year, I yelled at Pearce “Under Obama’s plan, Joe the Plumber would get a tax cut!”
Steve went on to say that McCain needs to be president, so that we’ll get good republican economic policies, tax cuts to create jobs and grow the economy. Naturally, a shout of “It’s worked great the past eight years!” was in order. And all of my heckles were timed, almost perfectly, because I cannot hope to claim perfection, so that they were said in that little window of opportunity after the speaker has finished his sentence, and after the crowd has died down, right in that moment of silence as the speaker draws his next breath, so that they would have maximum impact.
By the time the elderly war hero finally came around, I had picked what I wanted to say, and was waiting for a good silent moment to shout it in. So after he talked about how we’re winning the war in Iraq, “Surge, baby, Surge!” I found an opportune time to ask, “How many more soldiers are you going to send to die, is forty two hundred not enough for ya?!” It was at this one when I most feared for my safety.
A rotund, middle aged white gentleman with thinning hair started pushing against me. His wife said something, and I’m paraphrasing here “you better watch out buddy, he’s a soldier.” Big scary soldier feels like he needs to shove around a thin, gangly white boy, why? I have no idea. I wanted to say to him, “if you’re a soldier, you should be more upset, I’m not happy about dead soldiers, this fucking guy wants to make more of them, why do you have a problem with me? You should care about dead soldiers more than I do.” But not wanting to provoke anyone anymore than necessary, I said that I’d appreciate it if he stopped assaulting me.
By this point I was definitely found out, I was no longer undercover. People knew that I was not one of them. Through the various shouts people were turning around and looking at me, some said “you can leave if you want to.” “Why would I want to leave, I’ve waited an hour and a half out here in the sun for my chance to shout invectives at these politicians. It’s my right to be here.” And I think that most of what I was saying were legitimate things to say, not just taunts and jeers, but things that were for the most part grounded in reality. Which has a well known liberal bias.
I stuck it out there, feeling fairly unwelcome, clapping politely at the applause lines. Some people were shouting Socialist as Obama’s name came up in discussions about economic policies. The one time I pulled my punch was when McCain started talking about how the government needed to buy up all the bad mortgages across the country, because that’s where the problem started. I so dearly wanted to yell “SOCIALIST!” because that’s as socialistic as anything the other guy’s put up, but I was tempered by not wanting to provoke the man who might be a veteran who was still eying me. I stayed till the end, trying to strike up polite banter with the people next to me. As I walked out, I heard someone whisper to somebody else “there’s the demonstrator.”