Are We Ready for Hillary?

As we hurdle down the home stretch of this presidential election the question is who will be our next president?

The people yearn for another serious political candidate who has surely experienced baptisms by fire, knows and understands the real critical issues facing all Americans and has a master plan for making America better. Americans are ready for political progress of the “no jive and frills,” quantum type.

Aghast by the chicanery and buffoonery of the past election cycles of resentment and pinata politics, the American people want dynamic, meaningful change. Still reeling from political campaign overkill from past elections, some are flat out fatigued ad nauseam with the trite profanities and the impish inanities of present and past American electoral political snake-oils-man-ship where we seem to keep changing the political labels on empty political bottles through a fractured political process where the Golden Rule seems to override and rule.

Is it true that he or she who has the gold, ultimately buys, owns, and controls the rules and the political rule makers?

Well, with all the Barnumesque grandstanding by the few political quacks with quirks, and with all the peevish political caravanning reminiscent of an earlier carnival era where “a sucker is born every second,“ the people at least want bread with their circuses. They want substance with form and not forms without substance.

So now must we tread through another season of gleeful hankering and political bickering, the partisan cheap shots, the uni quack and Orwellian doublespeak; the moon shining and analog re-runs of “Kermit’s Swamp Years,” the feckless “aw shucks” political huckstering passing itself off as “good old boy-ism,” but seems nothing less than “blue grass” chauvinism, “mood indigo” racism, brash anti-feminism and homophobia, aged and bourbonized in “swagger before the dagger” jingoism; gulped warm and smooth as a “Biggie Waterford Crystal” glass of Jack Daniels,- straight no chaser- at breakneck speed in a funk fettered, smoke-filled, four-cornered room in a dingy dehumidified saloon on a rainy, rainy, rainy night in Georgia- what will America become in the A.D, meaning “after dat?”

Will it be more of same political hokum via the “Moorish Raptures and Ruptures” accompanied by the “Kenyan Birther Sym-phonies,” and the “You’re not one of us cause you ain’t really a son of us” bombast and orotundity, much of which has deadlocked, gridlocked, and padlocked political processes from Buloxi to the Beltway all across America of late?

Will the same feudal forces run amok this election season where chivalrous and glorious swashbuckling politically caped crusaders with masked sponsors “goodly in girth,” and medieval “torch lighters” strapped in their Victorian girdles, flanked by minion mannequins gleefully chorusing their shrill hallelujahs because they are finally “making America great again” by taking it back to Gomorrah or Gormenghast or to the O’Hara or Shelby Plantations?

Will Hillary continue to endure a boorish belligerence from her political opponents similar to what President Obama experienced because she is a woman, or because she is the “Stand by Your Man,” wife of former President Bill Clinton?

If elected, will misogynists continue to jack hammer the political process and discredit her presidency?

Will her thrashing by the Benghazi Blues Merchants persist? Will she be perennially hounded by an invasion of the email “body  snatchers” or continually interrogated by her grand inquisitors because she is a woman of substance: intelligent, gritty, resilient, a compassionate public servant, not a femme fatale or a fawning sycophant, who can stand firmly on her own outstanding record of service to her country? She has done amazing work and seldom gotten the real credit she deserves.

Surely Mrs. Clinton has taken large sums of money from Wall Street for her speeches but does it mean that she should not command a lofty price for her speeches, that “he who pays the fiddler always calls the tune” or she who takes the money will always do the bidding of her payers and never be strong or purse-proud enough to irk, vex or displease them for decisions she makes for the greater good of ordinary, everyday Americans?

What about Trump?

Will orange become the new red?

Let’s be honest folks, the apprentice has entered. Here to stay and shunned from the outset, he snookered the nomination and has spoken truth in ways which politicians before him did not have the courage or gall to speak publicly. Rules have been broken. Glass has been shattered. His flame throwing, scorched earth rhetoric has angered but appealed to many people across America by expressing the frustration they feel deep inside. Many people are stark raving mad at how the political system has pummeled, battered and bruised them in the name of liberty and prosperity. They are “mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.” Trump gives strident if not outlandish voice to their pent-up concerns.

Few expected the emergence of the real estate mogul whose Ricklesesque charm for insult would speak so piercingly to the needs of everyday white folks chastened by the recent economic meltdown and a beat up by the beat down of a political party which promised them the world but instead lured their vote by stoking their deepest fears;  by simmering their rage and percolating their outrage, and thus heaped misdirected, collective blame on black and brown folks for their misery while artfully bamboozling their bread and future.

Surely, Mrs Clinton has made some missteps along the way but is it commensurate to ripping off students at her University, foreclosing real estate deals, underpaying and firing workers then claiming bankruptcy, calling Mexicans rapists, insulting persons with disabilities and demeaning the Khan family whose son gave his life for his country? Is it as irksome as groping and demeaning women and bragging about it, asking Russia to hack into her opponent’s emails, and openly applauding the belligerent cold cocking of a black man at a political rally and then offering to pay the white assailants attorney’s fees?

It’s one thing to dog whistle racist ideas and laud such scurrilous behavior behind closed doors, but another to verbally “pay tribute” and openly award “gold medals” for kicking the behinds of black folks at your own political rallies! Have not black people’s booties been kicked long enough by white racists in this country?

What racial fires are being stoked here and how is a culture of racial violence being encouraged in a nation which has had such a long sordid history of such violence? Has such public revilement given some people even more license to hunt and kill those different and other by fomenting their racism and hatred more vociferously and openly because of the current political tailwinds?

Do we have here echoes of Wiemar? Do we see here the messianic invocations of a perpetual racial, class and gender Kulturkampf, which will not wane under such incendiary conditions, but whose flashpoints can easily crescendo into the destruction and further dismemberment of a country already disfigured and hobbled by such odious race and resentment politics?

Are we ready for Hillary?

As an independent, full fledged citizen still mostly proud and not ashamed to be American, I am glad that progressives have pressed and incorporated their demands into the Democratic platform.

But will it be enough?

Will cooler, gentler minds and spirits prevail yielding a new Zeitgeist, a more progressive agenda for all which finally gets our country moving in the right direction?

If conservatives would be true conservatives and progressives would be true progressives we might make some real political progress in this country through the principles of complementarity.

Obama tried persistently to talk sensibly to Republicans. There was a day when Tip talked to the “Gip” and they all got something done for America. They agreed to disagree. It wasn’t perfect. Not everybody was happy. Republicans took care of the rich white folks post Eisenhower, and Democrats took care of the black and brown, middle class, poor and everyday folks post Franklin D. Roosevelt. Everybody got something albeit not everything!

The ideals seldom become completely real. We long for a world in which Americans take care of Americans notwithstanding race, class, gender or political party.

“He serves his party best who serves his country best.”

Now some Republicans want it all for themselves with some Democrats getting no-thing. In the coming days, they will take their bongos and peanut butter and go home than talk and work out their differences and govern in a way which wins the day for all Americans.

When everybody wins, everybody wins and nobody loses.

So what will become of all this? Will anything positively change? Will it only be more of the same after the election?

Surely we need more progressive policies and ideas. Truly, we need to move this country forward with more bold and innovative ideas with leaders who have compassionate hearts for service; more public servants and fewer near sighted politicians; men and women with the political will to get things done and not chronically given to political muckraking which always blames the wrong folks for the woes of America but unwilling to “face the music” by standing and speaking truth to people responsible for the present mess we are in so we can make changes which we can all believe in to make America better.

Trump can still win.

Are we ready for Trump?

Hillary can still win.

Are we ready for Hillary!