Before I go under the knife

I started out to say: I was hopelessly confused about the current hodge-podge of mis-guided opinions, mud-slinging and conclusion-jumping, frantically going on in American politics...but it's not hopeless. Many of the people involved, some of the commentators and many, many of the pundits maybe hopeless, but not the whole situation. Before the big oral surgery event occurs on Friday, I just want to say that I've made up my mind who to vote for, what to do in the meantime (will November NEVER get here? Good grief!)and what course of action I will take as soon as I hear the results of the election. Now, where's the anesthesia?

While I was convinced that hysterics, jumping to conclusions, making dark, horrid assination inferences and endless political pandering language would rule the day, I've decided it needn't be that way. I know these things: I can't bear to see Hillary's strained face or hear her failing, tired voice on TV anymore: I just won't watch. Obama I can take in small and medium doses but it is clear that staying on the positive side of any real issues is tough, when so much of the opposition rhetoric calls for reactionary speech and defensive posturing. I get his message, now let's move on. Too much of a good thing, and all that.

McCain is the part which is hopeless. He is too old, can't keep his facts straight, mumbles when he speaks, seems afraid to come clean and surrounds himself with money grubbers. He is antithetic to the idealized form of American life, seems vicious and hot-tempered and largely untrustworthy. He is like listening to and watching a balloon deflate. And after the Rev. Wright flap, not that he has married Rev. Haggee, he wants us to grant him a public divorce and absolution. He is a kind of walking malady. As Barbara says, when reminded of McCain's war record (his sole claim to fame and justification for his qualifications?), " How much skill does it take to get captured?"

To make bad matters even worse,even the spam filter service I pay for cannot protect me from the dozens of pleas, painful begging misives and self-serving proclamations and petitions I get through email, every day. These have become nauseous. Enough, already. The system is broken and it may not be fixable. But asking me, mired in the red-necked, sort-sightedness of the hideous politics of Texas, to donate money to, or sign petitions for, causes and candidates in other states is like asking Somalia to give aid to Switzerland, because someone there unearthed a Swiss government official who bought a package of condoms, two years ago, from a dirty vending machine in a porno-shop in Belgium. Would someone please stop this? You wanna help? Stay home, look out for your own and shut down Rush Limbaugh and Fox Noise.

Anyway (no surprise here), unless something as awful and (almost) unimagineable as the nay-sayers are both imagining and pushing for in the press actually happens, I'm voting for the slender, well-dressed,clear-speaking, succinct bi-racial guy who is not a Muslim at all, for President. I can think of three or four other folks I'd like to see as VP besides Hillary, but if that turns out to be the case, so be it. If I were Barack, I wouldn't trust her behind my back with anything sharper than a wiffle ball, but it's his call (I hope. There's always the manipuable DNC) . And if he goes truly Lincoln-esque and fills a cabinet with people like John Edwards (AG?), Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and a few others who are imminently qualified to unravel the crappy, disgusting mess we have now, then I think we will be fine. Eventually. It will take awhile, but I'll be happier than I am now.

If Hillary gets the nod, which I think would be a travesty and would indicate that somethng really IS rotten in Denmark, I'll back that up, too. Even that mediocre move would be better than the gigantic world-wide stench we live in every day, now. Of course, she may want to keep Cheney on as VP. Think about it.

Now if more worse does come to worse (or worser or worst, as Olbermann would say), and McCain somehow becomes POTUS, because the Damocrats can't get their act together and keep scrapping in the schoolyard, playing kickball with one another's heads and some of them claiming inalienable rights or some such crap, then I'll have to turn my buggy around 180 degrees and get my energies, inventiveness and creativity up to speed in a different arena, altogether (I know, I just mixed up my metaphors).

Should the most dubiously honored party of the jack-ass manage to win the election, and even if they do it with "that woman" from New York, I'll go to work to find ways to make a difference in the way we live and survive and look toward the future. I'll enthusiastically plug myself into the system somehow, and figure out how to develop and maintain what my friend Ron calls "committment strategies": ways to get yourself on course and stay there once you get there. I ain't dead yet and I have time to give it all I've got.

Conversely, should the worser or worst indeed happen, I will pledge my energies to do exactly the same thing, EXCEPT, to simultaneously work as hard as possible to discredit, disarm and diffuse the Republican party in every legal and precise manner I can. They are already, by virtue of their actions in the last nearly eight years, reprehensible by their behaviour and morally indefensible in their actions and inactions. I will declare my own war on them and their tyrannical practices, their repugnant unethical stances and their greed-laden, myopic view of life on this earth.

I came to this conclusion after a conversation with Barbara, the other night, as we watched something on television, wherein Dubya made a complete ass of himself and lied, again, about yet something else. Barbara stopped the TV recorder, looked at me asked, "So what are you going to do?"...or words to that effect.

And suddenly it hit me: I'm gonna wait and see. On the Morning of Nov. 6, I'll know which way to go, where to put my energies and what heading to put the buggy on (I have to use a buggy; I can't afford the gas).

In the meantime, I'm going to swear off the media, read some more, save my energies and get my teeth fixed. Somehow, everyone will get to Nov. 5 without my further help, criticism, money or commentary.

Unless, of course, we decide to arbitrarily bomb the hell out of Iran, as a distraction. Nuts: I forgot about that one.

Life goes on in Texas.