Election Day, Part II: The Survival of the Statist Quo

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Well, it’s over! The results are in and after 18 months of dedicating my life to this monotonous freak show, I have never been happier! Not because I am pleased with the results, I think either way that this race could’ve gone would have been bad, but because I can go back to a normal life where I’m not pulling out my hair on a daily basis and drowning my sorrows in a tall glass of lukewarm bourbon. Oh, and the best part is, no more political ads for a couple of years! Hello YouTube, I have missed you! That in and of itself is a reason to paint a big smile across my face this morning!

Okay facetiousness aside, there are some things to be vehemently pissed off about. For starters, the economy will still go down the shitter, the police state will continue to grow, our drones overseas will continue to kill innocent women and children almost daily, we’re still stuck with a diabolical corporatist system, the Federal Reserve isn’t going anywhere and neither is its captain Helicopter Ben Bernanke, Wall Street will continue to win in a risk-free environment at our expense, fuck – the list goes on and on and any halfway intelligent American should understand this ongoing clusterfuck of endless dilemmas.

The fact that so many Romney supporters are absolutely shocked just boggles my goddamned mind. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? You weren’t prepared for this loss? Did you think Ol’ Mittens was going to win in a landslide victory? Did you actually think it was going to be over quickly when Fox News reported that Romney was in the lead 33-3 about an hour into their coverage? C’mon?! We all knew it was going to be close, didn’t we? And if you knew this, you should have been prepared for it. You should have worked harder and spread the word for your guy more than you did. Maybe if Honey Boo Boo got switched off long enough for you to go out and rally the troops in your favor, things could’ve been different. This result wasn’t that hard to see; hell, I predicted this result four fucking years ago! Sure, I doubted my foresight at times but ultimately, Obama beat Romney and even though the popular vote was pretty close, the disastrous Electoral College made this thing look like an ass kicking! Disagree all you want with that assessment but a tally of 303-206 is an ass kicking. In basketball terms, that is like beating your opponent 101-69 (and I rounded up to 69)!

Realistically though, even if you fought hard and Romney won and the Obama supporters were pissed at the world today, things would remain the same – they always do – stop kidding yourself. As I’ve said, the two party system is a giant piece of broken machinery that needs to be replaced not constantly used over and over again. Regardless of this election’s results, people will still continue on using the broken machine even though they have the power to implement a new one.

To those mad at Romney for whatever reason, he did not fail – he did great considering who he is and what he represents. He was the best establishment Republican candidate available. It is the Republican Party that failed because they refuse to let the new ideas flow. Times are changing and if you don’t adapt, you die. That’s evolution; then again, evolution is something that the GOP establishment doesn’t believe in, which is part of their problem. Until their religious nature is overcome and their social fears eliminated, they will not move on into the future. In this ever-changing day and age, a political party that would seemingly favor a theocracy at times, will not survive in a climate where more and more people are turning away from religion and its archaic dogmas. This will always be a losing battle for Republicans and as new generations are born, the GOP’s numbers will dwindle. There is no place for religion in politics and the GOP must get past that and go on to embrace their positive aspects, such as fiscal conservatism. Then again, if the establishment guard aren’t taken out and replaced by more capable and more up-to-date younger leaders, there isn’t much point in talking about fiscal conservatism.

This isn’t an argument for the Democratic Party; they need a serious facelift as well. While they seem to have their hearts in the right place regarding social issues, drug issues and environmental issues, they are borderline fucking insane where it comes down to numbers. They are completely ignorant of taxes and the fact that they are incredibly immoral, they think that there is always a free lunch and they think that they are entitled to other people’s shit. Now I am all for helping out my fellow man and giving what I can afford to put food on someone’s table but I am not for a broken welfare system that rewards those who are just clever enough to make a shitty living off of it. Democrats need to be serious about the welfare system and alter it in a way that gives the money to those who truly deserve it and who are working to better their lives and move on so that they don’t need to continue relying on the system. This also goes for unemployment, social programs, education and anything else where the government freely hands out money. However, Democrats are addicted to government and truly believe that it is the ultimate problem solver, despite the fact that it is the ultimate failure at everything it touches. Until they get realistic about spending and taxes and come to the realization that balancing a budget is something that people have to do, they will have a hard time winning over the hearts and minds of future generations. Then again, it’s the leftists who run our public school systems and do their damnedest to indoctrinate our children with their ideals, so maybe the Democratic Party is our future and we can all look forward to a much more socialistic landscape than the Republicans would provide. Yes, I am fully aware that I am implying socialism on the part of the Republican Party.

Now let’s talk about both parties. Both need to get real about our foreign policy. End the wars, don’t just fucking talk about it! This includes the War on Drugs and the rarely mentioned or discussed War on Poverty. They both need to truly understand economics, especially in regards to what a free market actually is. Both need to stop referring to our economic model as “capitalism” as it is not capitalism and falsely represents and demonizes what capitalism really is – freedom. They need to heed the lessons of the past in regards to economics, especially in regards to the Federal Reserve and its purely chaotic tactics. They need to stop attacking our constitutional rights and civil liberties with their expanding police state. They need to stop being our nannies and realize that we are adults that can make our own decisions – this goes for what size soda we buy and our freedom of expression. Both parties need to truly understand and not just respect but uphold the Constitution. I could keep going but the point is, neither party has the backs of average Americans. And ultimately, the more these parties try to control and manage, the less freedom “we the people” have.

Now let’s be clear, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party didn’t win anything last night, that’s the reality. Hell, nothing really changed as far as who controls what. The Democrats still have the White House and the Senate and the Republicans still have the House of Representatives. We are right where we started before all the campaigning and primaries kicked off a year and a half ago. All of this craziness and we are in the exact same spot where we started. The monstrous and unstoppable Tea Party machine has seemingly become ineffective and the Occupy Movement claimed to be a sleeping giant waking from its slumber but instead continued to sleep through the most important bits.

The Tea Party and the Occupy Movement weren’t the only disappointments. The real Freedom Movement also didn’t perform as well as it should have yesterday, as Gary Johnson only got one percent of the vote. However, he did get more votes than any other Libertarian Party candidate in history. Sadly, it was still four percent short of the five percent goal he really needed to hit. Why five percent? Well, it would’ve provided him with $90 million to use for the Libertarian Party in the future to better combat the two party system. If all the Ron Paul supporters out there would’ve given their vote to Gary Johnson, a man who is nearly ideologically identical to Ron Paul, real effective change could have happened in America on Election Day.

Unfortunately, I encountered more Ron Paul fans that were going to send a stark message by writing Ron Paul in on their ballots over even remotely entertaining the idea of voting for someone else – even a person who was still in the race and an almost mirror image of their hero. That stubbornness is counterproductive, as only very few states will actually accept write-in votes. Unfortunately, these linear-thinking Paul supporters (or Paulbots) did write-in “Ron Paul” while well-informed and well-aware liberty-loving individuals voted for Gary Johnson. If you consider yourself informed, you should’ve looked at your state’s write-in rules first because most of these write-ins were thrown out. What’s even more disheartening is that many that fall into the Paulbot category are still naive enough to think that working within the GOP is going to accomplish something and that fighting the two-party system at its core is a meaningless waste of time. Ron Paul has stated that he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did if he wasn’t running as a Republican and that is a solid point, however regardless of how well he has done, his party has never accepted him and has gone well out of their way to stop him at all costs while disrespecting him and his supporters. Do I need to bring up the horror of what happened at the RNC? The Republican establishment’s actions were proof enough that they will do absolutely anything to maintain their stranglehold over their own party by any means necessary.

And to that establishment, who disrespected Ron Paul and his people, how are you feeling now? You rejected his ideas and what he stood for maliciously. You then turned around and expected his jilted and mistreated supporters to support the GOP going forward. I remember watching an interview of Paul Ryan where he called for Paul supporters to back Mitt Romney because Obama was the ultimate evil. For the most part, the millions of still angry Paul supporters didn’t back Romney. Looking at the numbers this morning, it’s pretty obvious that if the Ron Paul people would’ve backed Mitt Romney, the result of the election could have been very different. Obama won by a small margin in the popular vote, a margin that could have been eclipsed by Romney had he received the support of the Ron Paul people. Depending upon where those Paul supporters lived, the Electoral Votes could’ve been altered significantly. Do you Republicans remember when you said, “Ron Paul is unelectable”? Well, I guess Mitt Romney is unelectable as well, as was John McCain four years ago. It’s all water under the bridge however and the Republican Party can now go back to the drawing board, although we all know that they are just going to dust off the same set of blueprints that they use every four years. Good luck with that fellas!

So due to the horrible mismanagement of the 2012 presidential race by the Republicans, I really have no fucks left to give them. They made their own bed, took a big ass shit in it and then tried to cover it with satin sheets. It’s pathetic really and makes me never want to be associated with their ranks again. Something would have to drastically change for me to even take them moderately serious. That change will not come though. It won’t come in the form of Rand Paul or any other liberty-loving politician within their ranks. The country is going to crash and burn economically and as much as the GOP points their fingers at the spend crazy Democrats, the are just as guilty. Shit, until Republicans actually get serious about military spending, they aren’t serious about spending and that’s that.

Looking back, it’s been a long journey for me as I have chronicled this process every step of the way. I chose to do it to learn more about it and to peer more deeply inside the machinations of this steel beast. What I have walked away with is more anger and more distrust of the government. I have learned to not take anything that either of these big political parties says at face value and I have come to the huge realization that both parties aren’t all that different. Sure, there are differences that come out in debates and in rhetoric but if you look at the core of the operations of Republicans and Democrats, they are one in the same. I wanted to believe what Ron Paul expressed – that the Republican Party could be changed from within. Well, I’d like to hear his take on it after his mistreatment at the Republican National Convention. The truth is, politics is full of bastards and jackals and while there are a few good apples in their ranks, they are still overpopulated with ravenous barbaric vermin who do not have our best interests at heart and never will. They’d prefer to eat each other alive purely for money and sport and leave us to deal with their leftover carnage.

I thought I could walk away from this experience with some optimism, even though I knew from the beginning that my guy wouldn’t win. I was wrong however. I’d love to say that there is hope but I have stared into the abyss long enough now to know that there isn’t except in one way. That way is the complete destruction of the duopoly known as the two party system. Honestly, I think that is what my next book will have to be about.