Before the debate, I made a comment on facebook warning people about potential distractions, and how we should focus on things that actually matter. I mentioned the "Big Bird" thing. And binders. I wish I would've mentioned "Romnesia," that stupid phrase is all over the place now. Predictably, liberals are gleefully jumping up and down over a fairly condescending comment made by Barack Obama tonight. Romney said, "Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917." Obama responded:
"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. It's what are our capabilities."
Romney also made some idiotic comment about how Syria is Iran's route to the sea, which is false. In one of the most completely hilarious displays of ignorance in the entire electoral farce, Romney actually said, "America has not dictated other countries. We have freed other countries from dictators." Obama gave us such classics as, "We've visited your website quite a few times. And it still doesn't work." and "The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back."
ZING! Wow, what a fucking zinger, amirite. Republicans.
This is fucking stupid. It's pretty damn clever, and I almost suspect on purpose, because if these candidates and their cheerleaders didn't focus on the irrelevant horse race and feel-good zingers, voters might actually take notice of how similar their policies are. I'm seeing tons of comments throughout the internet from liberals wondering why Romney was just reiterating Obama's very policies. Some examples I've copied and pasted from random people:
- Did romney just reiterate exactly what Obama said on Syria?
- Romney said it better because he said it while being white.
- If you're against Obama's policy but you parrot what he says when questioned, you might have Romnesia.
- Is it me or is romney repeating what obama says... never mind obama just pointed it out.
- Every time Romney talks it seems like he's just saying, "I agree with the president, but let me tell you about something the president is also doing that he didn't mention."
- Right now, Romney is thinking of voting for Obama.
- New prediction: Romney is going to reword every statement that Obama makes and try to claim it as his own.
Am I a survivor in a fucking zombie apocalypse or something? How goddamn stupid can you be? These are not Obama's policies. They are George Bush's policies. Republicans have not shifted politically, democrats have. Romney is agreeing with everything Obama says because Barack Obama's policies are conservative.
Do Obama supporters even fucking know why there are so many critics on the left? Do they even care? We've been shouting this shit from the rooftops, and it flies right over their heads. They think George Bush's foreign policy is Barack Obama's, and Mitt Romney is trying to "claim it as his own." How are you even supposed to respond to these people? No joke -- I've seen the term "political hipster" used to describe leftists who refuse to vote for Obama. These guys just don't get it, and I doubt they ever will.
The debate tonight was nothing more than a 'tough guy' contest, and I regret watching it. It was a complete waste of time. Those internet observers were correct in saying Obama and Romney agree with each other on literally every foreign policy issue. When that's the "debate" going on, the only thing you can do is put on some fake swagger and demean your opponent with funny comments about Battleship. That's the debate.
Here's some better comments from some of those tumblr leftists I've been mentioning lately:
Rocky Anderson brought up an extremely good point during the third party debate on Democracy Now: both of these candidates are proclaiming their undying love for Israel, and neither ever mentioned Palestine. Not. Once. The Israeli occupation is illegal, and condemned in some way by virtually every nation on the planet that isn't the United States. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is nothing short of ethnic cleansing, and these candidates' unwavering support for it is one of the most disgusting and horrific things I've ever seen.
We heard again the lie that Obama is pulling all of our troops out of Afghanistan in 2014. No one explained why we're still there at all. What is the objective? What are we doing that still needs two years to be accomplished, and how many more of our soldiers, and innocents, are going to be slaughtered in that time, and for what purpose? I've mentioned this before, but we're of course not leaving in 2014, we're keeping thousands of troops there until 2024 to safeguard our imperial spoils. If things turn out in any way like Iraq, then we're leaving behind a barely-functioning, shattered state. This time, in the hands of opium drug lords.
Probably five separate times throughout these debates, I heard loaded questions start off with something like "Iran's nuclear weapons program..." or "Iran is the most serious threat to American security." The entire frame of the discussion is inherently biased before the discussion can even begin. The IAEA concluded that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. They are not a threat to the United States or Israel, because they would be utterly annihilated if they attacked anyone, and they know it. In fact, Iran's entire military is structured defensively. None of these facts were brought up in the debates, because what we watched were advertisements, not debates. I fucking hate Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and the Irani government, but 90% of casualties in modern war are civilians, and if we're going to be talking about slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people, at the very least, we should do so based on facts. That's not going to happen here, because there is going to be a war no matter who's president, there are already interests attempting to spark it.
Climate change was not brought up at any point in any of these debates. This is the first time this issue hasn't been mentioned in a presidential debate since 1984. With how hard Barack Obama is pushing fracking and oil drilling, it's pretty safe to assume that the question of the environment is now officially a complete nonissue among America's elites. Their consensus has been reached, and I doubt climate change or the environment will ever become a serious issue ever again in American politics, or at least in the foreseeable future.
I am absolutely ashamed of this country. It's bad enough that the entire process is a sham owned and operated by corporations, completely lacking any serious debate or discussion -- but the vast majority of Americans are actually satisfied with it, and believe they are free. Frank Zappa said that the inauguration of Ronald Reagan "just laid the foundation of the next 500 years of Dark Ages" and I think he was 100% correct. It goes without saying that America's hegemony and influence throughout the world is waning. How we react to this spiral is going to be important. We could use it as an opportunity to look in mirror and reevaluate all the death and destruction we've wrought on the world in the last half-century -- what I thought Barack Obama's campaign was about in 2008. But the way Obama has been acting, that the democrats -- America's left -- have been the ones ushering in endless war and police state policies, gives me absolutely no hope whatsoever for this nation's future. The planet is dying, resources are running out, and everything indicates that these corporate fascists have absolutely no idea how to deal with it. I wouldn't say there's no hope for humanity's future, but the world's power structure as it stands now is never going to give it to us. Ever.
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