You can please some of the people all of the time...

This post was written in reply to something someone said over at ScienceBlogs re: the Nobel Peace Prize. The general public seems ambivalent about Mr. Obama's having been awarded the prize and the GOP is of course making hay out of it. I am just weary of it all: Nomen Nescio: The nature of the Democratic Party has always been to fracture into a lot of different, competing groups. The nature of the GOP (at least in the last 40 years) has been to place party unity above principle, integrity and honor. that "nature" has proven to be a game winner, if winning elections is all that one cares about. I accept your criticisms of Obama and the dems as valid. I'm an independent and always have been. I'm left on social issues and centrist on most other stuff. I don't vote democratic tickets because I like them. I vote them because I perceive them to be the party that will do the least damage to my country. I know a number of republicans who told me that voting for Obama would not change anything. I told them they were wrong, because, I said, if Obama got elected my nation would die more slowly. Most of them laughed at my joke; I wasn't kidding. There is a shitload of anger (rage, actually) in a lot of peoples' hearts these days. People who don't know a fucking thing about the process of governance talk openly about killing the man they say is ruining the USA. What would be funny, if it wasn't so tragic is that they are being played like fiddles by the reichwing and the people who stand to profit most by the continued divisiveness. We expect Mr. Obama to be someone who is different from his predecessors, someone who is better than other politicians. We are disappointed that he is not--and we should be. That is OUR nature, to be disappointed when promises are not kept, when we feel we have been lied to and played for fools. Perhaps our disappointment will be fleeting, perhaps it will be profound. Maybe Mr. Obama will suddenly make a momentous change, as did Mr. DeKlerk upon becoming the leader of South Africa. Who knows? Not me, certainly. All I can do is all I can. I will continue to believe that there is purpose in this presidency, even though I don't understand what that purpose might be. I do wish Martin Luther King, Jr. was here to help, to lend his counsel. I won't be around twenty years from now (miracles of modern science notwithstanding) but I'd like to think my country will be. Is that an odd notion for someone who doesn't open his mail because it might hold bills?