us preserdential electern

firstly-- ive been unable to post to this blog for nearly a month thanks to my laptop breaking. i couldnt even remember my gmail account thanks to lifestyle choices, but thats all fixed now.

ANYWAY probably the biggest event to happen recently, if your criteria for importance equals news coverage, would have to be obama's reelection. in my opinion it was a boring end to a crappy campaign but i still cant help being fascinated.

my initial reaction to his landslide victory was a savage joy in the fact that the predictions of the commentators and pundits (a close election, maybe even a republican victory) were hugely off the mark.

i indulged in this schadenfreude because over the years ive become pretty convinced that the vast majority of political commentators dont know what theyre talking about, and it's nice to see my suspicions confirmed on a larger scale.

remember constant talk of a rudd comeback? remember the negative response of the press club to gillard's wildly popular misogyny speech? remember how all the political experts totally saw the coup coming that replaced rudd with gillard because they have an innate understanding of politics that we simple plebs lack?

this same class of experts asserted overwhelmingly that the us election would be incredibly close. as it happened, it was nowhere near.

as far as i can tell, it looks like white racists in southern states turned out in huge numbers to vote republican (skewing the popular vote) however in the rest of the country non-racist whites and every single minority group voted in numbers large enough to ensure an easy democrat victory.

how could the hundreds of people employed by news networks solely to analyse and explain politics be so wrong? there’s probably a number of reasons, but it doesnt really matter why. the mainstream media is consistently unable to challenge government agendas or discuss actually significant issues; so it's unsurprising that political analysis should also be so out of touch.

my second reaction to the election results was of course a feeling of relief that romney was not the new president. but it was only a slight feeling of relief really, because it had always been literally inconceivable to me that romney could ever win. i really mean this.

no matter how you look at romney it is insane to imagine he could ever have won. he's stupid (i dont need to expand on this). his ideas were exactly the ones that got the us in its current troubles except they were even more extreme.

policy aside, even on a personal level the guy is fucking awful. just terrible. he comes from an incredibly wealthy background and increased his own personal fortune by sending jobs overseas; stripping and selling off companies piece by piece at a profit. he is literally the bad guy and the personification of the troubles ailing america. bad president material imo

and his name is mitt. people call him mitt, and he responds to this particular sound and understands that it refers to himself. black americans are made fun of for choosing bad names (shanequa etc). well this dude's son goes by the name tagg. mitt and tagg.

anyway, that was reaction number two for me. a feeling of relief. if obama had lost then, well, i honestly just don’t know. would be bad times. at least the pretence that america is a democracy could finally be done away with then.

ah but alas! mixed feelings of joy and relief were momentary! ephemeral as steam, dead and gone almost by the time they were born, and in their place came my third and final reaction to the election: a vast feeling of "it doesnt matter", cynical as hell.

the better of the two candidates won, and that's good sure, but in many ways obama's reelection only serves to highlight the various things that have gone very wrong and that wont be changing anytime soon. (i do not have the time to list even the problems i am aware of here, and ive basically got nothing but spare time so day-um)

it's funny that many americans accuse obama of being a socialist. obama has consistently swung to the right on a whole range of issues in the name of "compromise" and is certainly no socialist. i wish he were a socialist. it would be much better if he were.

it would also be nice if socialism was recognized in america as an alternative form of government that has a lot of good aspects instead of being used as the ultimate put-down, but hey.

obama's reelection is a reminder that even a young and idealistic outsider cannot bring about any sort of real change to a system that has thoroughly entrenched the privilege of the few at the expense of the vast majority and is corrupt to its core. obama's win means that the global militarized oligarchy hell bent on the accumulation of wealth retains the best possible stamp it can get.

america's decline will im sure be slowed by a second term with obama, but the fundamental inequalities of the united states (both economic and cultural) are, it now seems evident, too great to ever be addressed.

so more of the same terrible shitty status quo from undoubtedly the best guy for the job. fantastic.

it's factually accurate to say that romney losing was good, and so hence it stands to reason that obama's win must therefore also be considered good. so in that sense, i am happy he won. but it's still really nothing to celebrate. everywhere is still getting hotter. exploitation is still the name of the game and --oh-- *checks watch* israel is attacking the palestianians again. theres another one he hasnt done shit about.

so there you have my comprehensive three-stage reaction to the election.

to summarize, it goes:
- happiness, at being reminded that almost all political commentators are largely ornamental
- relief, that the vulture capitalist did not win
- apathy, because it changes nothing at all. things will still get worse, but the world has avoided romney hitting fast forward on america's collapse.

____________________________

and i think there's a good chance i'll go through these same reactions next federal election here.

because so long as the party leaders stay the same, i think our election will go a similar way to theirs; white racists will provide abbott with loud and passionate supporters that will dominate much of the election coverage, but the election results will be nowhere near as close as the pundits will predict. labor will remain in power and we will keep our own disappointing leader. another least-bad-option kind of deal.

i reserve the right to change this prediction at any time