If McCain Wins

As things begin to look better and better for McCain, I’m actually starting to get worried about the reactions that will follow if McCain does pull this one off. If he loses, oh, well, I don’t think that people on the right will be all that distraught- they’ll make a big deal about it, they’ll complain about it, but they’ll move on. Conservatives don’t put all of their trust in the government or worship their candidates, as a general rule, so the idea of having one that they dislike is tolerable to say the least. But, if McCain wins, as Russ Smith puts it:

I have no clue if or when that could happen, but I do have an opinion of what will follow in this country if McCain pulls off what so recently seemed the miraculous feat of becoming the country’s 44th president. Voter fraud, conspiracy, “sleazevertisements” (the preferred term of many left-wing bloggers), disenfranchised voters, the return of redneck chic; those will be the immediate cries of Democrats who thought the election was in the bag. Once again, scores of celebrities will claim they’re moving abroad (and inevitably won’t). And then the depression will kick in hard.

Silly and irrational as all of the Bush 2000 election rhetoric wound up being, I do think that it really hurt the country that so many people were so tied up in hatred of everything that he stood for the entire two terms. Had liberals not been able to tie themselves up emotionally in the idea that Bush’s entire presidency was illegitimate and unfairly won, then I think that the country would not have been so divided, and perhaps we could be in a better place, in terms of world support and the war efforts.

Here, if McCain wins, even if it is decisively, there are already too many ready made arguments (racism, redneck-ism, etc) that liberals can cling to in the same way that they have during the Bush presidency, and they are so tied up in Barack our savior that many simply cannot believe that he could lose this election on the merits. And the crying, and fussing, and gnashing of the teeth will be nearly intolerable.

Finally, Tucker Carlson, the witty veteran of cable television shows, who’s been mercilessly and unfairly maligned by left-wingers, expressed an opinion that’s close to my own. “Even those who supported Hillary in the primaries will scold the rest of us for voting against a black man. They’ll be shrill and self-righteous, more even than usual, and they’ll never stop. It’s almost enough to make you want to vote for Obama, just so we won’t have to hear them.”

Tucker’s a card, but you can’t argue that a McCain win, for liberals, will be the political equivalent of Black Friday back in 1929.

On 9/11

The History Channel is running a retrospective on 9/11 tonight. I’m recording it. As I look back over the last 7 years, it’s hard to believe that it was so long ago, but also, so short. So much as changed in my life since 2001. I was a newlywed, and a college student who didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. The highest job that I had reached was waitress, and I had never even considered the idea of law school.

As I look back, I think that I have forgotten a lot of the true, unbearable absurdity of that day. The dazed look around campus as I walked to class knowing that things are different now. The voice of my history professor, explaining that he couldn’t lecture that day, because this was going to be big, big, bigger than Pearl Harbor, he didn’t know what it would mean. Attempting to find some normalcy as I watched the news with some of my classmates while we stuffed envelopes for the Honor’s program, a promise to help that I had made seemingly a century ago.

I think that in a lot of ways, the human mind tries to gloss over these things and forget them. I think that its easier that way, to not dwell on the bad. And I’m not sure that I want to remember, to relive. But then, I think that in some ways it’s necessary. I think that it’s more human to remember, to not lose touch with what happened, and why. If I forget, then I am nothing, and I can do nothing to make it better.

Who's happier?

I was watching CNN the other morning, and they ran this story, describing that a new study that found that men were happier than women later in life, although women were happier earlier in life. The host wanted to know, why are middle aged women less happy? She read a few emails responding to this question on air, which all disparaged men and blamed them for any problems that these poor, unhappy middle aged women might have. The host cheered them on, laughing and screaming “I love it!” about the anti-male comments.

If you ask me, we should be a lot more concerned about unhappy young men- they are in their prime educational years, productive years, and child creating years. How they choose to live their lives with regards to education, career, marriage, and childrearing have huge implications for the rest of their lives and for society in general. Not to mention the fact that young men are by far the most likely to commit crimes, exspecially violent crimes (thus creating a danger for society in general). Compared to that, I’m really not all that concerned about a bunch of middle aged women who aren’t fulfilled.