Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Making Predictions

Well, we lost. By "we", I mean America. Bought into a fantasy. It's the Nigerian 419 scam of American politics, and I'm just wondering how much we're going to pour into it before we realize it's not going to work out as promised.

Republicans can take a breather: they don't control anything in Washington. In that regard, it's similar to 1992. Two years later, the Republican Revolution came as the American public realized it's not a Good Thing to give unsupervised control of the cookie jar to those who act like it's bottomless. Maybe that will happen again. I don't see any reason to believe that Democrats have learned to be fiscally responsible, ethical, or in-touch. Sadly, Republicans have not lived up to their promises to be different in those areas, which is why it has come to this.

As for the Obama administration, I expect it to be ironically George W. Bush-like. He's every bit the privileged autocrat that W has been. It will be partisan. It will paint the opposition as un-American. It will probably go significantly further to stifle dissent, a prediction I base on the blinding hatred exhibited by so many of his supporters. It's pervasive and is encouraged more than condemned.

I used to wonder why liberals decried talk radio as "hate radio". There's very little hate in it. Lots of criticism, a fair amount of anger, but very little hate. I can only conclude that they are projecting their own hate for it as coming from it. So I think there will be a big push to shut it down, because they do hate opposing voices.

Predictions for Republicans: I think there will be some level of ODS, the Obama variant of BDS, but I don't think it will be as pervasive, because we've seen how ugly it is. Conservative hate groups are more reviled and marginalized by Republicans than those of the left are by Democrats. And maybe there's more nobility among Republican ranks.

I guess we'll see.

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