Well, I finally started receiving my New Yorker this week, which are being delivered to the NY office and folks are putting it in the HK pouch for me. The early pieces in the issue were pretty heavily focused on the Republican National Convention. The New Yorker gave the folks at the RNC their usual clever, subtle skewering, but I could not help but feel disgusted and a little depressed by the smug folks walking our streets and the convention floor that week. It made me consider whether this administration just decided at some point to go all-out to gather wealth and power, by whatever means necessary, to such a degree that the Dems didn't have a fighting chance this time around, thereby guaranteeing a second term. I mean, the GOP is papered up big time, and they receive hearty support from businesspeople of every age and industry, from the Coors dynasty to young dot-commers who "just don't want to pay taxes", scumbaggios peddling ketchup to children of the scions of Newport. Whew. Ugbo.

What is also frustrating is that they have done so many blatant, offensive, underhanded things over the past four years that many of us feel a deep sense of outrage and we really put our emotions into it - too much, in my estimation. It's a frustrating place to be, getting this angry but feeling like there is no other option. The dynamic that has been created is one in which we rant and rave and hold up our expletive-laden signs and chant offensive slogans, and they have the luxury of politely referring to us as liberal nutjobs and crackpots and the like. It reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons when Bart and Milhouse are running the comic book store; Milhouse gets more and more angry at Bart's laziness and abuse of power, raising his voice and getting all pissy, and Bart only enrages him more by saying things like, "No, use your indoor voice, Milhouse" and things like that. Of course, Milhouse loses it and attacks Bart, which we cannot afford to do in real life. We have, however, been put in this situation because of the callous, disingenuous behavior of this administration, and our anger and sense of outrage - moral and otherwise - is understandable.

The thing is, we need to suck it up a little bit. The Democratic party, and the voters who support the party, have indeed gotten smarter over the past few years, but we are starting out a little too late - well, a crapload too late - and now we are forced to play catchup. The progress we have made recently should not be underestimated; we are beginning to leverage the radio airwaves to a greater extent than the Dems have in decades (a strategy which the Republicans have been employing with great success for a while now), and I for one am willing to accept Michael Moore's own heavy spin tactics and loose interpretation of the facts in order to make his case. Lord knows that the Republicans and their supporters in the media have been pulling that stuff for a long, long time, and even basic psychology classes will teach you that nice guys absolutely finish last, so we need people like Moore in our camp to play the game their way. Too much is at stake, and we need to go all-out in this election and future elections if we are to level the playing field and start making real progress in the voting booth.

Going back to my earlier remarks, however, this is the lesson we need to learn if we lose this election (and chances are that we will lose by a fairly wide margin, unless Kerry completely schools Bush in the debates, which probably won't happen; Bush schooled both Gore and Ann Richards, and they are pretty sharp cats). We need to get smart and focused and all that, but we need to calm down and get our shit tight, so to speak. We need to spend less time on clever signs and cool outfits for the Critical Mass ride and really get a good grasp of the issues. We need to be able to put our emotions aside and engage an opponent in a calm deliberation of the issues, backing our claims with facts and statistics. We (including myself) need to know where Kerry's policies are similar to Bush's and where they differ, and be able to both call out the failures of the Bush administration and, more importantly, graciously acknowledge where Kerry's ideas fall short and require remediation. It's not enough to say that Iraq was a huge lie, and point to anecdotes. We can't afford to merely be armed with indignation, a raised fist, and some chant about the Fox News Channel. We must never, never lose our passion, but we must give our brains a few rounds in the ring as well. If we don't take ourselves seriously, no one else will - and in a country with so many (however inexplicably) undecided voters and non-voters, it is crucial that others regard us as passionate yet knowledgable and informed participants in the political process.

Ok, so none of that was about the H to the K, but I hope you don't mind. I need to get a little social life and travel update in before the next weekend hits, and perhaps I'll knock a little something out tonight. Damn I miss you guys sometimes - walking around Victoria Peak was mad cool, but like I said in a previous post, it's kind of a bummer when it's just you and the ipod and the camera, and all the ipod can say is, "REP YO' CITYYY! REP YO' CITYYYYY! REP YO' CITYYYY!". Actually, I didn't listen to that one up on the Peak, but you get my point.

More later,
Chucky