Responding to the Republican Response

Out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, I actually watched the Republican response to President Obama's speech before Congress on Tuesday night.

Jindal Ho!

But first, of course, I had to watch the President himself. Not that I HAD to, you understand. I tentatively decided to expose myself to it with no prior commitment. So I told myself. Such political theater can be old school b-o-r-i-n-g at best; infuriating to sit through in recent memory, and never more than an indulgence in crass manipulation of public opinion, which I resent more than anything. I pride myself on my long held ability to resist the kind of charisma that is Obama's strongest, scariest suit. I would prefer to just read the transcript of the President's speech tomorrow, rather than let myself be sucked under the spell of his rhetorical embellishments tonight. So gifted with gab, this guy could probably make a fetid turd glisten like gold on national TV.

No sir. I wouldn't let myself fall for any of that. I kept the remote in hand. There might have been something on HBO or Comedy Central I would rather fall asleep watching. But resist as much as I did, I stayed with PBS through the entire speech.

Obama's reputation for giving good oration is definitely well-founded. It was an uncommonly magnificent performance. The delivery itself, apart from any of his actual words worthy of an Academy Award. You have to admit that there is real value in that. It is downright redeeming to wake up the morning after such a spectacle having been beamed to the world from our country and not feel humiliated because we just treated the human race to another embarrassing Thanksgiving Day pageant at the local school for retards.

And speaking of the Academy Awards, is it a coincidence that the still-retarded Republican Party response was given by the Indian-American governor of Louisiana? True to their offensively shallow, out-of-touch character, it just seems to me that the Dumb Dog Billionaires who pull the GOP strings think their message of "tax cuts for the rich" is going to go over better coming from the wide eyed visage of a brownish-skin manchild who sort of resembles the star of this year's Oscar winner and was rewarded with a trip to Disneyland the next day (this is true).

It is SOOOoo insulting how transparent their shallowness is. They appoint a hard core conservative who happens to be black to head their racist party, a radical right wing bimbo to take second place on their misogynist ticket and a goofy Indian-American sock puppet to give their immigrant-hating Party's follow-up response after Obama's opening act. And they think we will buy this shit? Are they just daring us to make some comment they can screw into a sexist or racist slur on them? "How dare you talk that way about our boy? Can't you see he is defective? Mean, cruel, vicious liberals!"

Anyway, as taken in as I was by the President's powerful rhetoric, I am still powerfully bothered by the short shrift given to this military escalation in Afghanistan. I am still not buying the fiction that this is about trying to stop terrorism. Come on! That's Bush's line and this is Bush's war. We have rejected all that.

And Obama is smarter than that. He knows that waging war in a Middle Eastern country can only / has only / exacerbated the threat of terrorist acts against Western Culture. He knows we have no legitimate business in Afghanistan. I think it was the only time I saw him wince during his long lovely speech - when he declared that we were not going to let terrorists get away with planning further attacks on America and that's the a reason for our being there (that's about all he said about it, isn't it?).

Obviously Obama doesn't believe this stuff himself. It has to be a devil's bargain that's keeping us there.