FEAR AND LOATHING IN DELAWARE

I know, I know.  It's true.  I'm not posting in my journals, I'm not reading your journals, not eating, not sleeping.  Living in Zombie mode entirely. The weekend was political rallies and Red Sox games  (thank goddess for the Red Sox) evenings are phone banks to Get Out the Vote, and in between I try to appear compos mentis for my students, both adult and juvenile.  I am trying to keep up with news, but then I have panic attacks:  380 tons of serious explosives gone missing in Iraq, Rehnquist has throat cancer, oh holy shit, what next?  Kerry appeared with Bubba in Philly yesterday, I almost skipped my obligations and went, but in the end I was a Good Girl, sixty years of being a Good Girl are hard to overcome, stayed home and taught everyone as best I could.  I watched it on CSPAN last night for quite a while, they were both in great form.  Clinton certainly came through bypass surgery well, good for him.

Something I do read religiously, as it were, is War Room 2004 on salon.com, although it does bring on shortness of breath, heart palpitations, all those panic symptoms.  In a War Room piece on Jon Stewart's now infamous appearance on "Crossfire" Rebecca Traister offers some very accurate impressions of our current state of mind and some advice to help us maintain sanity:

"...We are all jittery and bloated ourselves, overfed on coverage, statistics, polls, trends, heroes, villains, conspiracies, lies and anger. We have overfeasted on our own cleverness, on our own ability to gather information and process it instantly. We are sick of ourselves and sick with worry about what will happen next week. We can barely stomach the idea of the eight more days -- or God knows how long -- to come before we know who the next president will be. And so, wandering aimlessly, crazily looking for any piece of fresh meat to rip from the bone, the addled, self-loathing media have caught our own tail and are dumbly gnawing on it.

So let's just breathe in and breathe out. Drink a cool glass of water and maybe throw back a stiff drink. Head home early and get a good night's sleep. We are a week away from this thing."

I am relieved that I am not a member of the media, but I feel exactly like the description in her first paragraph., sick of myself, sick with worry, unable to stomach the idea of another week.  I'm trying to ignore polls, easier said than done, but still...

 

IMAGINE THAT

Miracles do happen.  E called last night to tell us the complete biopsy shows the lymph nodes to be free of cancer.  This is the best possible news we could have.  Again, bless you all for caring so kindly with us through this.

And, the Sox beat the Yankees.  I can hardly believe those words as I type them.  They were ahead when I came home from GOV (get out the vote) phone banking, they were even ahead when I had to collapse into bed.  So, I fully expected that they choked in a later inning - and the news on AOL Sports took me by complete surprise, nay, amazement.  I think G stayed up for the whole thing, but she's still sleeping.  I know better than to wake her up to ask

 GO SOX!

Dare I hope for two more miracles?  I think that's asking a lot, really.  A series for the Sox?  A sweep for Kerry?  Okay, I'll settle for one more.  You should know me well enough by now to know which it is.  I seldom write about sports.  Politics is definitely my obsession.

IT ALL COMES TOGETHER WITH GRACE

Into the midst of political obsession come things that make us realize what is really and lastingly important.  Family, friends, health, community.  I have seen this very clearly in the past few days.  So thank you to my virtual community for responding so generously to the request to keep M (our daughter-in-law) in your thoughts and prayers during her surgery and after.  It was a long day for all concerned, her especially of course.  We thought of little else all day.  E's (son) phone call in the early evening, letting us know the mastectomy was over and the reconstructive surgery had begun, was such a relief.  An even greater relief was that the initial biopsy of the sentinal lymph nodes showed no cancer.  This is the best news of all.  It means much better recovery time, far less likelihood of metastisis, the hope for complete recovery.  We're waiting for the more thorough biopsy to be done, results later in the week, before we entirely release our held breath.  I'll keep you all in the loop as we know it.

Everyone is home now, she says it hurts to laugh - but smiling is okay.  Which means she's spiritually able to laugh, imagine that.  Again, heartfelt gratitude to readers for being with us.  I love you all.

And then - still on the subject of community, friends, grace freely bestowed - I was able to experience what the J-Land folks are calling a "confluence" yesterday.  If you read sunflowerkat's journal you know she trekking around on a Hornsby tour.  She emailed me (the night before, but I didn't see it til early Friday morning before I left for school) to let me know she'd be driving down the Delmarva Peninsula, could we possibly get together for lunch?  That was one of the few weekdays in my life when it would have been possible.  So she met me at the college, we drifted around for a while looking for a place that was open (it was a late lunch) and had food healthy enough for our healthy and fit friend Kat.  My brain finally kicked in (it was the day of concentrating on Denver, I really wasn't all there) and I thought of the perfect place.  We had a yummy and healthy lunch  (sharing a piece of cherry pie, however) and talked for about two hours.  She's as darling and lovely, full of life and energy, quirky and interesting, in person as she is in her journals and photos.  No, more so.  It's the whole person.  And she's even going to make me a Bruce Hornsby CD and send it.  Maybe next time she goes on a groupie tour I'll go with her!  I was embarrassed and sad that my life is in such a shambles, house, refrigerator, etc.  Next time, if I have a little more notice, lunch will be at my house and I'll fix it.  I really wanted to invite her to stay the night with us, but - oh, the amount of dog and cat hair mixed with dust; oh, the empty refrigerator, the piles of papers and books everywhere!  Oh the shame, the horror!  All my friends working on this Democratic campaign assure me their life is in exactly the same condition.  Okay?

This experience has made me want to do more of this meeting my virtual friends in real time and space.  How about it you guys in Maryland, New Jersey, D.C., Virginia, Penna?  A small regional confluence?

 

A DIFFERENT KIND OF NET

I mentioned in an previous post that one of our daughters-in-law had been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Today, for most of the day, she will be in surgery, undergoing a double mastectomy and beginning reconstructive surgery.  We talked with her, with the whole family, last night - she is so brave and positive, determined that this is the beginning of recovery.  It's a huge ordeal, nevertheless, and my purpose here is to ask any readers who pray - in any of the many forms of prayer that are humanly possible - to keep her with you today.  Send powerful forces of goodness, light and hope towards that hospital in Denver.  Our son will be there all day, the kids will be taken to school and picked up by aunts and their other grandmother - there is a good and widespread support network surrounding them all.  Please join us and be part of it - she swears that the net of love and prayer surrounding her is working.  Thank you, and know that I will always do the same for any of you.

NOTES FROM THE FIRST DEBATE

Okay, yes, it's a cheap shot.  It's also pretty funny.

We watched number three with a huge gathering of like-minded folks at the Virden Center on the Univ. of DE campus in Lewes - and my was it fun!  I couldn't stay in one of the "quiet rooms" for most of the debate (though towards the end none of the rooms were actually quiet: guffaws, snickers, horse laughs became rampant) so I hung out by the bar with other irreverent types who couldn't keep their mouths shut.  We raced home afterwards so I could vote in online polls, which by that time were so far ahead in Kerry's favor it felt like carrying coals to Newcastle. 

Here's a little piece from salon.com's WarRoom 2004, which I think sums it all up nicely:

Mr. President, you're no Ronald Reagan

The scowl and the smirk bombed in the first debate. The winks and the high-testosterone swagger in the second didn't cut it. Trying in the third and final debate to turn George W. Bush into Goldilocks' oatmeal -- not too hot, not too cold, just right -- Bush's handlers obviously told him to smile, be optimistic, folksy, likable, and generally do his best Ronald Reagan impersonation.

And so during almost every answer, what was supposed to be a warm, confident smile was plastered over Bush's face. His answers to Bob Schieffer's questions, too, were right out of the tried and true Reagan playbook. Constantly bash your opponent for being a (gasp!) liberal -- worse, an "out of the mainstream" liberal. Avoid substantive discussion of policy issues -- those are for Massachusetts pointy-heads who secretly believe in World Government. (Cue sound of black helicopters.) Repeat charges about a Kerry Global Test that will result in the U.S. being instantly swarmed over by swarthy evildoers in turbans wielding scimitars. Talk vaguely, yet passionately, about "values" and religion. And when confronted with the actual consequences of, say, tax cuts for the mega-rich that hurt the middle class, say that you just want to get the government off people's backs.

And all the time, keep smiling. During his concluding statement, Bush even tried to resurrect that old morning-in-America feeling, with a homey reference to Texas sunrises.

The act flopped. Bush wanted to come across like Reagan, but he looked more like a beauty queen at the end of the Macy's parade -- the forced smile, the mechanical wave, the worn-out "charm." Bush lacks the expansiveness, the self-assurance of Reagan. His "confidence" felt like it was painted on by Karl Rove. In-over-his-headness flashed from him like a Vegas sign. He was a mere facade, a Potemkin Village of Reagan-ness. And since even Reagan himself was little more than a high-grade imitation of "Ronald Reagan," a mythical John Wayne-like entity, watching Bush was like trying to warm yourself with a picture of a picture of a fire.

And yet Bush is supposedly the guy with the common touch, the Joe Sixpak who connects with average Americans. An insta-poll on CNN found that Kerry won decisively, but that most viewers found Bush more "likable." Right-wing talking head Joe Scarborough said on MSNBC, "Debating coaches from Harvard or Yale will say that Kerry won, but the average working men are all going to look at the screen and say I relate more to that George Bush guy. The only question is can I afford to vote for him?" (Although by the end of the evening, regular old Joe, sitting for some reason in a suspiciously tony-looking, book-lined study somewhere, seemed to have lost his pro-Bush gumption, resigning himself to Kerry's triple-crown debate wins and his presidential stature.)

I just don't get the Bush as beer-drinking buddy thing (even if he still drank beer). It isn't like John Kerry is Mr. Personality. He's a bit of a stiff. But you sense that behind his wonky, methodical exterior that he cares and that he's actually engaged with issues -- which, after all, is what we hire our politicians to do, not be incoherent cheerleaders for anti-government zealotry. Bush, presiding over a deeply divided country, mired in a disastrous war that he misled us into, offers only a bad Reagan imitation. Which could, in fact, describe his entire presidency.

If Bush somehow pulls it off in November, it'll be for the reasons Thomas Frank outlines in his new book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Frank explains how the American working class has been seduced into voting against its own economic interest by Republican appeals to cultural issues that stir primordial passions. Your wages going down? Rage at queers. No health care? Wash yourself in the blood of the Lamb! Meaningless war waged under false pretenses got you down? Shut down those evil abortionists!

It's the ultimate triumph of resentment over rationality, of superficial cultural signifiers over actual issues. Amped up by the propaganda geniuses at Fox News, it isn't surprising that it works. But what is surprising is that it works with Bush as its pitchman.

If America will buy a used ideology from this guy, it'll buy anything.

-- Gary Kamiya

BUGS?

Okay, there seem to be bugs in the posting again.  The entry I just made has a lot of weird stuff in it.  But I think you can read it, basically.  And the links are perfectly clear.  So.  Please, read it.