Face, Why Have You Betrayed Me?
Jan. 21st, 2010 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinue"The Second Coming" is one of the best poems ever written and unsurprisingly is one of my favorites (and one of the few I know by heart). I read the lines "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity," and I think, "that is so true in politics right now," and I am pleased at being understood for about five seconds. And then I think, "that is so true, although you wrote that in 1919, and assholes have been fucking up politics since at least World War I, and somebody is going to read this poem in 50 years and think it is so true." Then I get shouty.
I still believe there is a chance my hero Obama can get the country back from being this angry foaming mob eating itself, at least temporarily. I also still believe, as I have for more than ten years, that we are having a constitutional crisis and need to write another one more suited to the current state of things (size of the country, complexity of the economy, new communications technologies). That probably will not happen, and thus in the best case scenario we will go the way of France - throwing our weight around in NAFTA, propping up agricultural exports with silly tariffs, and acting snitty about our cultural contributions because we are no longer a world power. So there's that.
I will say also that I have noticed that what is most abhorred in a female politician is not stridency (the "bitch" factor about which we are unnecessarily anxious) but smugness. It's the "uppity" of this political generation. We're fine with powerful women; we're just not okay when they start feeling they have more right to be there than the men they're running against. It killed Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas Governor race against George W., it killed Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primary, and it killed Martha Coakley last week. It does not matter what your poll numbers are - never play the "inevitable" card if you are a woman. We won't tolerate it. Keep smiling and saying how lucky you are.
In other news, I have been battling a cystic pimple on my chin. It's only the second such pimple I have ever had. The last was in December of my 17th year, and I still have a scar under my nose because I wouldn't stop messing with it.
I still believe there is a chance my hero Obama can get the country back from being this angry foaming mob eating itself, at least temporarily. I also still believe, as I have for more than ten years, that we are having a constitutional crisis and need to write another one more suited to the current state of things (size of the country, complexity of the economy, new communications technologies). That probably will not happen, and thus in the best case scenario we will go the way of France - throwing our weight around in NAFTA, propping up agricultural exports with silly tariffs, and acting snitty about our cultural contributions because we are no longer a world power. So there's that.
I will say also that I have noticed that what is most abhorred in a female politician is not stridency (the "bitch" factor about which we are unnecessarily anxious) but smugness. It's the "uppity" of this political generation. We're fine with powerful women; we're just not okay when they start feeling they have more right to be there than the men they're running against. It killed Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas Governor race against George W., it killed Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primary, and it killed Martha Coakley last week. It does not matter what your poll numbers are - never play the "inevitable" card if you are a woman. We won't tolerate it. Keep smiling and saying how lucky you are.
In other news, I have been battling a cystic pimple on my chin. It's only the second such pimple I have ever had. The last was in December of my 17th year, and I still have a scar under my nose because I wouldn't stop messing with it.
