My brain\u2019s a self-flogged chunk of meat and my nerves tight because the Electoral College is an undemocratic and grievous institution that, to understand, requires daily tracking of polls in critical states.\u00a0 Tabulating popular votes would be fair and easy, but the system insists it\u2019s better to stew about who\u2019ll get winner-grab-all electoral votes and be first to two hundred seventy.\u00a0 No one forced me to undertake this obsessive task.\u00a0 I\u2019m capitulating only because the internet is so tempting, like chocolate.<\/p>\n
John McCain probably isn\u2019t going to defeat Barack Obama on November fourth, but even if he does I\u2019m not going to worry anymore.\u00a0 I\u2019m tired of grinding over what candidates are doing and may do.\u00a0 In the future I\u2019ll simply cast my vote and remember that spending much time on contemporary politics consumes the soul.\u00a0 It\u2019s more soothing to study a little history.\u00a0 Lyndon Johnson angered me when I was an adolescent but he\u2019s long been just a fascinating dead man.\u00a0 Once this Bush is out of office a generation, many will find him congenial to read about.<\/p>\n
Last night I grabbed my burned-brown-by-age 1981 pocket paperback of Norman Mailer\u2019s Cannibals and Christians<\/em> originally published in 1966 and that I\u2019d first read in a library in the mid-70\u2019s.\u00a0 I knew I\u2019d enjoy revisiting his essay about the 1964 Republican National Convention.\u00a0 From San Francisco Mailer reminded us that during the California primary rich Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York, had been opposed by the unusually ardent supporters of front-running Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.\u00a0 When Rockefeller spoke for ten reluctantly-granted minutes in the cavernous old Cow Palace, righteous conventioneers booed him for lamenting that \u201cextremist elements\u201d had made \u201cthreats of physical violence,\u201d unpleasant phone calls, disseminated \u201csmear and hate\u201d literature, and used \u201cstrong-arm and goon tactics.\u201d\u00a0 These maneuvers had been effective; Rockefeller finished third.\u00a0 So far as I\u2019ve determined during internet overexposure, the current candidate from Arizona has been a bit more restrained.<\/p>\n Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, the 1964 runner-up, standing at the podium and anxious to concede, was cheered \u201cmodestly\u201d by delegates who recalled Scranton\u2019s recent comments that Goldwater was \u201cdangerously impulsive\u201d and \u201cspreading havoc across the national landscape\u201d and showed \u201ca cruel misunderstanding of how the American economy works\u201d and was \u201cinjurious to innumerable candidates\u201d and created \u201cchaos and uproar (by) talking off the top of his head.\u201d\u00a0 Scranton, presumably, could not have also been referring to the current Republican nominee, who was then but a dashing and reckless naval pilot in his late twenties.<\/p>\n Arizonan\u2019s original bellicose senator had stated this in a May 1964 article in the New York Post: \u201cThere have been several suggestions made (regarding Vietnam.)\u00a0 I don\u2019t think we would use any of them.\u00a0 But defoliation of the forests by low-yield atomic weapons could well be done.\u00a0 When you remove the foliage, you remove the coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n Barry Goldwater had the vision the Republicans wanted, and in his acceptance speech he said: \u201cNow my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom.\u00a0 Our people have followed false prophets\u2026 We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom\u2026 Every breath and every heartbeat has but a single resolve, and that is freedom\u2026 Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elderly\u2026 despair among the many who look beyond material success toward the inner meaning of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n As Goldwater continued to speak \u2013 and he should have stopped \u2013 Mailer noted that his voice \u201cgrew barren\u201d and he began selling fear of communists as many politicians today peddle terroristic doom.\u00a0 \u201cHalf the pigs, bullies, and cowards of the twentieth century had made their fortune on that fear,\u201d wrote Mailer.<\/p>\n Barry Goldwater\u2019s rhetorical journey erupted with this phrase: \u201cExtremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice\u2026 Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.\u201d\u00a0 Lyndon Johnson, who would crush Goldwater in November, could have made that statement.\u00a0 Ditto Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.<\/p>\n Mailer concluded: \u201cThe wars are coming and the deep revolutions of the soul.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My brain\u2019s a self-flogged chunk of meat and my nerves tight because the Electoral College is an undemocratic and grievous institution that, to understand, requires daily tracking of polls in critical states.\u00a0 Tabulating popular votes would be fair and easy, but the system insists it\u2019s better to stew about who\u2019ll get winner-grab-all electoral votes and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,248,240,226,249,208],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n