the as-if factor in Iowa

There's a reason I put off looking at the US Presidential races--it's not just the glossy shallowness of the media coverage, but the whole As If factor. What, for example, does Hilary Clinton stand for? Here's a snippet: ""As we start this new year, America is at a crossroads....We're a nation at war in a dangerous world. We have a faltering economy and 47 million people without health care." There's your meat and potatoes. There's your substance.

As If. As if Hilary had the guts or the plans to push forward socialized health care, thereby bringing US citizens into the civilized world. Oh no hell no, she has never stood for such a thing. And the "dangerous world" is a lot more dangerous because of her votes fot the Iraq war and the upcoming Iran war. (Sure, Iranatrocity's still on the agenda, otherwise you'd see plenty of expensive and obvious military demobilization.) Obama has at least criticized Clinton for her Iraq war vote, but neither he nor Edwards will come out with a troops withdrawal proposal. And Kucinich--well, he's been sufficiently starved of media coverage, that he now must advise his supporters to come out for Obama, wherever they number under fifteen percent in the caucus.

Ugh. Blech. Yeccch. I hate looking at the Presidential races. It's as if...as if we had some sort of pseudo-election system, in which candidates had to compete for attention by buying multimillion-dollar ad packages on corporate media, that they obtained by sucking up to corporate interests, so that they could never really represent the majority of the people. It's as if the inheritance class had the game sewed up tight. As if.

Then there are the Republicans, who somehow go out and pretend that they're legitimate standard-bearers, and not representatives of a criminal confederation with an indelible history of war, poverty, hatred, and division. Huckabee (this is just FASCINATING) turns out to be more Godly than Romney, apparently because his Christian gay-hating weirdness is somehow more acceptable than Romney's Christian gay-hating weirdness. What I want to know is, how are the snake-handling rapturists gonna vote, when their choice is limited to two anti-evolutionists? Will they turn on Romney over the Jesus Jammies issue? Maybe they want some real choice, like anacondas versus cottonmouth rattlers.