Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I am now officially admitting that I am politically depressed.

I think I’ve been politically depressed for several weeks now, but I haven’t allowed myself to acknowledge that depression. The news today puts me over the edge, way past deniability.

Hillary Clinton is releasing advertisements on television that strongly imply that if Barack Obama becomes President, we may likely be attacked by Osama Bin Laden, and Barack Obama won’t be able to handle it. It’s an absurd attack, that preys on the fears of American voters.

The sad thing is that, like the Clinton 3:00 AM telephone call, it works. Voters buy the message. They’re willing to sell their hopes out for the sake of fear. Clinton’s consultants know this, and they’re going whole hog because, above all else, they want to win, win, win.

A few voters get it. They see how despicable this line of attack is. The rest don’t care. They really believe it. It’s these voters, and not even the Hillary Clinton campaign, who depress me.

It depresses me to live in a nation where people are too cowardly to live in freedom, and too lazy to get involved in their own government, and too stupid to tell the difference between a scare tactic and “experience”.

I’m not writing this to try to score points for Barack Obama above Hillary Clinton, and try to affect any election. You know why? I’ve finally realized that I am too little and too powerless to have any affect. In a nation of 300 million people who care more about whether Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake have really finally broken up than they do about the Bill of Rights, I’m not going to be heard. I’m not going to make a difference.

If I try, I’m going to fail.

I’m going to keep on trying, just because it’s a damn old habit that I don’t think I can shake. Nonetheless, I no longer have any expectations of success. My voice won’t be heard. Things won’t get better. America is on the way out, and the American government is just going to get uglier and uglier.

Tonight, Pennsylvanians are going to reward Hillary Clinton for her scare tactics. Hillary Clinton will stay in the race, gleefully running around cheering “I won! I won!”

And then we’ll go on to Guam… and Indiana… and Nebraska… and the next state… and all the way to the end… and Hillary Clinton’s tactics of never asking the American people to think big or step out on a limb will be vindicated.

It will be a stalemate, and although Barack Obama will have won the majority of primaries, and have gotten the majority of primary-elected delegates, Hillary Clinton will be made the Democratic nominee, just because she has more powerful people who owe her favors.

We’ll slump on toward Election Day, and maybe Hillary Clinton will win and maybe John McCain will win, but most Americans won’t really care. They’ll just want to make sure that the election coverage on TV doesn’t interfere with their favorite weekly TV show.

I’ll still care, but I don’t expect that this year’s election will change anything. Clinton won’t bring soldiers home from Iraq, and she won’t close Guantanamo, and she won’t have the Patriot Act repealed, and her health care plans will be forgotten within a year, and we’ll continue to watch America slouching into the margins as Bill Clinton has one last fling at sexual independence with some middle-aged barmaid he meets on the outskirts of Peoria.

We had a chance to do something better with this country, but people just don’t give a damn. Damn it all to hell.