65 Days

"For my next trick, I'll be turning Dow Jones Industrial Average into delicious pudding!"

I’m thinking that this is going to be one of those updates where I get political. I usually avoid doing this, not because I don’t want to offend people but because I really hate putting any more thought or effort into my blog than is absolutely necessary, and good political writing usually takes a little more thought or research than simply yelling the name of the guy you like louder than anyone else (all AM radio personalities, please take note). But if there’s one thing that’ll galvanize me into doing work, it’s spite, and I’ve been feeling pretty spiteful about goings on in the political arena recently. In the past, I’ve tried to keep these things out of my blog, once again not out of fear of offending, but out of fear of not being funny – as this is primarily a comedy blog, I try hard to adhere to truth in advertising; nothing is worse than sitting down in front of the TV, all ready to laugh your ass off, only to find that it’s a “very special” episode of Home Improvement. However, I feel as though I ought to say a few things in order to clarify why everybody needs to calm the fuck down, regardless of whether these things are funny or not. Fasten your seatbelts, stow your carry on luggage, and prepare to be teabagged by the sweaty testicles of political blogging.

There was nothing I hated more* over the last eight years than people who would defend George W. “Skippy McDumbass” Bush with the reasoning, “It’s a really hard job.” I would understand that if President Bush were in some sort of Jack Bauer situation where he was forced to become president lest his daughter be killed by terrorists or something, but I remind you that wasn’t the case – to become president, you really fucking have to want to be president. If somebody is willing to blow hundreds of millions of dollars on an extensive ad campaign, I’m willing to assume that they know exactly what they’re getting into and ought to be qualified to do the job well if they wind up getting it. This is a job which can essentially determine the very fate of the world – the guy doing that job is the last fucking person to whom we should cut slack. That guy needs to be under more intense scrutiny than anyone in the world. If I fuck up at my job, you get a small milkshake instead of a medium one. If he fucks up, nuclear war.

*Except Sarah Palin. Fuck Sarah Palin.

So it would be unfair of me to ask everyone to just chill the Christ out for a couple minutes and cut President Obama some slack because it’s a hard job – I won’t do that. Let me point out, though, that his job is significantly harder at the outset than Bush’s, thanks to an economic crisis and war that Bush started. But hey, you know what? Barack Obama is vastly more intelligent and capable than W., so I feel like he’s up to the increased challenge.

I see a lot of people – Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, conservatives on Facebook – talking about what a terrible job Obama has been doing over the past 65 days, due largely to the fact that the financial crisis is still going on and everyone in America has yet to receive free donuts. Republicans on the hill have called his proposed multibillion dollar investments in education, healthcare, and public infrastructure the most irresponsible legislation they’ve ever seen. Some people even accuse Obama of scaremongering because of all the speeches he’s made in which he talks about how bad things are now, and how they’re going to get worse before they get better.

Here’s the thing about the financial crisis – about 12 years’ worth of economic development pretty much just disappeared. It’s like on Arrested Development, when Gob turns $100 into 100 pennies, only here he starts with a lot more than $100 and in the end there’s nothing but broken dreams and snakeskin boots. Also, it’s not funny. This thing that happened took a long time to get into place – shout out, by the way, to all the business majors who thought real estate speculation was a great idea – and you can’t just hit the back button. There’s a lot of work to be done, and nobody is quite sure what will work; it’s a trial and error sort of thing. It took years for this to happen, and it’s going to take even longer to rebuild. Deal with it. Nobody - nobody - could fix this in 65 days, not even MacGyver.

And forgive me, but who the fuck do you think you are, Republicans? How the hell can you sit there talking about irresponsible spending after you all rallied behind a war to find weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there – a war which, might I add, sent our military into an absolute shitstorm without sufficient supplies, and which has seen mentally and psychologically wounded vets coming back to a VA system that can’t adequately care for them amidst a few million “Support Our Troops” magnets? We’ve all heard about how much our deficit could or will increase with Obama’s programs, but frankly, if our deficit is going to increase, wouldn’t you rather see your tax dollars getting flushed away on schools, healthcare, and roads in this fucking country? Let me tell you, I’d be thrilled to face a hefty tax increase if I knew that money was helping people instead of funding Dick Cheney’s jingoistic oilhunt, and that is indisputably what the War in Iraq was.

And what’s this shit about scaremongering? Obama isn’t scaremongering when he says that the economy is a disaster, he’s telling the fucking truth, arguably for the first time in recent White House history. I don’t know if you’ve looked around at all, but the world really blows at the moment, and a lot of it is our fault. Would you rather he keep on lying and tell you that everything’s fine, like the last guy did? Would you rather he continue to disrespect you? Because if that’s what you want, I’m more than happy to disrespect you. For starters, you’re an idiot. Go sit in the corner.

But here’s the thing: I am not a blind Obama worshipper. Admittedly, I greatly admire Barack Obama – I feel that he’s a very intelligent man of high moral fiber, and, unlike our last president or Sarah fucking Palin, he knows how to speak English. But like I’ve said before, our worst enemy is fundamentalism. By no means should we blindly accept everything any of our leaders tell us.

I disagreed with just about everything George W. Bush said or did – this is because I feel that he was a somewhat intelligent man of exceptionally low moral fiber who took advantage of our political system for his and his friends’ personal gain. By the time I became actively involved and interested in politics, he’d already made several high profile fuckups, and at the time was talking big about starting a war in Iraq. See, by the time I started hating our last president, he’d already proven his incompetence.

So I’m going to ask you this: Just give Obama time to screw up. Don’t like him, don’t idolize him, and certainly don’t stop scrutinizing him, but quit all this fatalistic, end-is-nigh shit until he’s actually done something. We could’ve just elected Han Solo and I guarantee you the economy would still not have improved – that’s not reflective of Han Solo, that’s reflective of the nature of the economy.

Jesus Christ, people, it’s been 65 days.

Truman Capps has suspended his disbelief in the economy for this update.