Gabriel Garnica
Undecided: the new stupid
By Gabriel Garnica
It is fitting that Clint Eastwood, the iconic star of the epic 1966 Spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, spoke at this year's GOP convention. After all, this year's electorate can already be called The Right, the Wrong, and the Stupid.
We have the greatest nation this earth has ever seen sliding toward oblivion, fast becoming one of those pathetic cinema high schools where flashy, smiling airheads serve fawning fools empty promises between struts and finger points. The school paper, The Daily Spin, reads more like groupie fan mail than any semblance of objectivity, ever ready to bury any evidence that its favorite candidate, Joe Cool, is nothing more than an empty suit reading someone else's words with the conviction of a health instructor rattling off the best ways to avoid athlete's foot. In fact, the more important the situation, the more obvious the proof that Cool is clueless, buried way over his head and floating on fertilizer. Despite this clear incompetence, Cool grins, winks, and points smugly as if he knows something most of his audience is oblivious about. Namely, that he has the wrong and most of the stupid vote all but locked up strategically, and electorally enough, to provide him with four more years to finish off what is left of this once great country.
This is not so much about those who have chosen a side in this contest, for at least they have either the gumption or the passion to choose. Ironically, the ones who will ultimately put a fork in this country are precisely those who are presently dense enough to be undecided at this nation's most crucial fork in the road, still unable to make one of the clearest choices in recent election history. This is not really about how great Mitt Romney is as a choice or option to Barack Obama. Clearly, Romney has his own issues and the personality of stale bread. Rather, this is all about not being able to decide, 50 days from the most transcendent presidential election in recent history and after four years of this trip, whether one wants four more years of Barack Obama.
Simply put, there is enough information out there, from enough objective sources, for any sane person to make a rational choice on whether or not Barack Obama deserves four more years. If you are a core Catholic, a Christian or Jew for that matter, in the middle class, a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, or a patriotic American, and you cannot decide whether or not you want Obama for four more years, then your intelligence is in question. If you truly believe that the present Middle East riots and the American consulate attack are due to a You Tube video and not the symptom of a dysfunctional foreign policy, then you are likely seeking the deed for the Brooklyn Bridge.
Ultimately, those who have chosen a side are either perceptive or blind, depending on one's own political perspective. However, at least one can say that such voters have guts, loyalty, a backbone and, hopefully, some rational basis at the root of their position. The undecided, however, lack these virtues and have freely surrendered their ability to practice independent, rational thought. They can see Obama's blank, clinical, calculated, almost bored reaction to the Libya consulate attack and remain undecided. They can read laundry lists of Obama's lies and remain unsure. They can see Obama's divisive tactics, selective outrage, hypocritical accusations, hidden or whitewashed past, and continue unresolved. They can be exposed to the various critical film and book reviews of Obama's administration, activities, beliefs, and policies, and remain ambivalent.
If the undecided's inability to choose given such evidence is mind-numbing, then their propensity to ultimately decide based on the mainstream media's twisted depiction of reality is devastatingly tragic. The only thing worse than buying anything the mainstream media sells today is to then use that purchase to make one's most important civic and personal decisions. In fact, the tendency to make major decisions based on the mainstream media's advice or propaganda should be classified as stupidity per se, and such a course of action is what many undecided voters, whose intelligence is already in question given the above points, tend to do.
In Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, an inexperienced sheep dog drives a shepherd's entire flock off a cliff. Those who, despite the wealth of evidence before them in this critical election, remain undecided about the most important presidential vote they will ever cast, are like those sheep, ready to follow inexperience into the abyss with the blessing, and guidance, of media and political wolves whose vision of America would make Karl Marx display the kind of smug grin, confident strut, and narcissistic pointing to the crowd that apparently still swoons so many sheep to leap, and vote, for the abyss that panders to their personal entitlement and not their country's best interests. Ultimately, the greatest irony of this election is that someone who humbly envisions himself as a combination of Abraham Lincoln and JFK would be all about dividing the country and asking what this country can do for you. Similarly, the greatest tragedy of this election is that our country's fate may be in the hands of cliff diving, ambivalent sheep too stupid or lazy to make up their own minds and too ready to let CNN or MSNBC do the honors.
© Gabriel Garnica
September 20, 2012
It is fitting that Clint Eastwood, the iconic star of the epic 1966 Spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, spoke at this year's GOP convention. After all, this year's electorate can already be called The Right, the Wrong, and the Stupid.
We have the greatest nation this earth has ever seen sliding toward oblivion, fast becoming one of those pathetic cinema high schools where flashy, smiling airheads serve fawning fools empty promises between struts and finger points. The school paper, The Daily Spin, reads more like groupie fan mail than any semblance of objectivity, ever ready to bury any evidence that its favorite candidate, Joe Cool, is nothing more than an empty suit reading someone else's words with the conviction of a health instructor rattling off the best ways to avoid athlete's foot. In fact, the more important the situation, the more obvious the proof that Cool is clueless, buried way over his head and floating on fertilizer. Despite this clear incompetence, Cool grins, winks, and points smugly as if he knows something most of his audience is oblivious about. Namely, that he has the wrong and most of the stupid vote all but locked up strategically, and electorally enough, to provide him with four more years to finish off what is left of this once great country.
This is not so much about those who have chosen a side in this contest, for at least they have either the gumption or the passion to choose. Ironically, the ones who will ultimately put a fork in this country are precisely those who are presently dense enough to be undecided at this nation's most crucial fork in the road, still unable to make one of the clearest choices in recent election history. This is not really about how great Mitt Romney is as a choice or option to Barack Obama. Clearly, Romney has his own issues and the personality of stale bread. Rather, this is all about not being able to decide, 50 days from the most transcendent presidential election in recent history and after four years of this trip, whether one wants four more years of Barack Obama.
Simply put, there is enough information out there, from enough objective sources, for any sane person to make a rational choice on whether or not Barack Obama deserves four more years. If you are a core Catholic, a Christian or Jew for that matter, in the middle class, a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, or a patriotic American, and you cannot decide whether or not you want Obama for four more years, then your intelligence is in question. If you truly believe that the present Middle East riots and the American consulate attack are due to a You Tube video and not the symptom of a dysfunctional foreign policy, then you are likely seeking the deed for the Brooklyn Bridge.
Ultimately, those who have chosen a side are either perceptive or blind, depending on one's own political perspective. However, at least one can say that such voters have guts, loyalty, a backbone and, hopefully, some rational basis at the root of their position. The undecided, however, lack these virtues and have freely surrendered their ability to practice independent, rational thought. They can see Obama's blank, clinical, calculated, almost bored reaction to the Libya consulate attack and remain undecided. They can read laundry lists of Obama's lies and remain unsure. They can see Obama's divisive tactics, selective outrage, hypocritical accusations, hidden or whitewashed past, and continue unresolved. They can be exposed to the various critical film and book reviews of Obama's administration, activities, beliefs, and policies, and remain ambivalent.
If the undecided's inability to choose given such evidence is mind-numbing, then their propensity to ultimately decide based on the mainstream media's twisted depiction of reality is devastatingly tragic. The only thing worse than buying anything the mainstream media sells today is to then use that purchase to make one's most important civic and personal decisions. In fact, the tendency to make major decisions based on the mainstream media's advice or propaganda should be classified as stupidity per se, and such a course of action is what many undecided voters, whose intelligence is already in question given the above points, tend to do.
In Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, an inexperienced sheep dog drives a shepherd's entire flock off a cliff. Those who, despite the wealth of evidence before them in this critical election, remain undecided about the most important presidential vote they will ever cast, are like those sheep, ready to follow inexperience into the abyss with the blessing, and guidance, of media and political wolves whose vision of America would make Karl Marx display the kind of smug grin, confident strut, and narcissistic pointing to the crowd that apparently still swoons so many sheep to leap, and vote, for the abyss that panders to their personal entitlement and not their country's best interests. Ultimately, the greatest irony of this election is that someone who humbly envisions himself as a combination of Abraham Lincoln and JFK would be all about dividing the country and asking what this country can do for you. Similarly, the greatest tragedy of this election is that our country's fate may be in the hands of cliff diving, ambivalent sheep too stupid or lazy to make up their own minds and too ready to let CNN or MSNBC do the honors.
© Gabriel Garnica
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