Wow.I have no idea how to think about this presidential campaign. There's just nothing to compare it to. McCain was fascinating tonight, talking about WARSHington, as if he'd never learned phonics and didn't care. But he made some sense, and was himself, unadorned and unpretentious. I guess all rumors of his "practicing" were real, and that maybe he really did practice the speech in front of the mirror, in front of his mother, in front of ...I want to say...in front of GOD.
The other night I fell for the Sarah Palin trick. Most of my kids and co-workers nearly strangled me to death for saying even a little bit positive about her this morning. By noon, I had allowed them to convince me that I was crazy, caving in. It took me all day to get my defensive footing back and to square my shoulders, preparing to listen tonight to McCain's speech objectively. But now, I'm starting to believe it all, starting to fall for it all again, bamboozled, stirred, shaken, uplifted, yea, UPLIFTED by a Republican.
I was there in the 60's when music was at its best, and we knew there'd be a revolution. I was protesting peacefully in California (at UCSB) when Reagan was governor, and swore I'd leave the country if Nixon was elected, but I didn't. I was the first Democrat ever in my family, and the source of disappointment and some shame I'm sure. My grandfather was a Republican senator for 32 years. I strove for Democratic ideals, such as they have been, for many years as I raised my family. I never cared about money or capitalism and free enterprise. I know now, in my sixties, that that was risky, given the education and advantages I had had in life. As the little wooden plaque above my other grandfather's chair said: "We grow too soon olde, and too late schmart". But still, what the Republican party is now is not what Winston meant by conservative.
I've thought a lot about McCain's captivity in the context of the era when he was in Vietnam, and in the context of psychology, and decided some time ago that his refusal to accept that offer of freedom from his captors could have been more a result of an Oedipus complex than anything else, a slap in the face to his father the admiral, who had been pulling strings for him. Sort of a "F+++ you, dad, I'll show you what a REAL soldier is, and make mom proud"- but those things (deeper meanings) get brushed aside in men's lives, as well they should, I suppose, to keep things simple.
Tonight I'm remembering that Winston Churchill said something like "If you're not a liberal in your twenties, then you have no heart. And if you're not a conservative by age 40 or 50, then you have no brain." I'm just wondering which I'll be by light of day.
In any case, all things considered, I'm moving to Canada.
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