By Bill Britt
Alabama Political Reporter
As I am writing there are 38 days left until the presidential elections.
If I am to believe my friends, many people I meet in my daily routine and every commentator on Fox News, there are only a few days left until the end of the world.
That is if Barak Obama is reelected.
Current polls show that this is likely to be the case, four more years of Obama.
With so little time before the destruction of the nation, the demise of civilization as we know it and the final battle of Armageddon, how come I feel pretty good?
Maybe it’s because the end of the nation and the world as we know it happens so often that I usually miss it anyway.
Didn’t John Adams predict the end of the republic if Thomas Jefferson was elected President? I think he did. I wasn’t around to see the end of the world then, so I missed it.
I also missed the chance to see it when FDR was elected, born too late. I was hoping to see it when Jimmy Carter was president, but I was busy with my studies when the nation crumpled, the dollar was replaced by some other currency, (that looks suspicious like ours), people fled to the mountains and the communist took over. I was looking but I didn’t see. May be I had my head buried in a book.
Some people thought it was the end of the world when Ronald Reagan was elected, but, oh well, it was just morning in America. We needed some sun after all that darkness that accompanied the end of the nation in the 70s.
We have been pretty lucky for a while now, we haven’t had the end of the world since Reagan was beatified, but we have come close. I think it could have happened when Bill Clinton was elected, but it didn’t exactly. However, I think some remote parts of Virginia or Montana did fall into enemy hands.
When George Bush was running against Al Gore I lived in New York City and the folks there thought because the Supreme Court ruled Bush the President, that the end of the nation had come.
I called back home to Alabama and found out the world had been spared from doom by the supremes.
Just missed it again.
So, I guess I should be kind of happy that it looks like so many swing states are going to afford me the chance to see the end, before I die.
I mean I keep being promised the end of the world, and low and behold, the country just keeps bouncing along.
I know this time it is different, everybody says so.
But I think Alabama is going to be fine, we have given some good sized incentives to foreign businesses to come here and let us build their stuff. I mean the Germans, French, Koreans, Chinese and Japanese all know how to deal with the end of the world.
And if it gets really bad, we know the Republicans have our backs—if they can keep from fighting each other. But if they can’t I am petty comfortable that the Democrats will fight to save Alabamians if they can find enough people willing to admit that they are democrats. But if all that fails we have a Alabama Values and States Right Commission. They will surely help lead us out of the wasteland that was once our republic, I mean we are Alabamians and we dare defend our rights, right?
Sadly, it seems we have allowed the dishonest multitude of words constantly spewing from talking heads, apocalypticists, and conspiracy theorists to preclude any rational thought.
Must it always be the end? Can’t it be more like, “That’s going to suck.”
Let me be clear (as politicians say), the destiny of the United States has never rested on one man, or one party.
The Democrats will not destroy us and the Republicans won’t save us and the reverse is also true.
Obama, if reelected, will not mean the end or that wailing and gnashing of teeth must promptly began. Or that there is a need to take to the streets in armed conflict.
The people that live on my country road are heavily armed, but I don’t think they are much of a match for the county ROTC backed by Blackhawk helicopters, much less the Marines.
I am not worried about the end of our nation because I have faith in the invisible wisdom of the American people.
Do I think we can be ignorant, superstitious, vain and petty? Yes. But I also think we are a good, honest, smart, and brave people.
I also understand, that cable news, radio talk shows and most politicians are just playing our worst fears for ratings and votes.
What I do fear? Those who by code words, dog whistles and prejudice dismiss discourse, deny facts and discount the hundreds of years of struggle and compromise that has built this great nation. They worry me.
I don’t believe the end is here any more than I believe there will be tanks in the streets of Birmingham or F-16s prepared to bomb Montgomery, Austin and Atlanta should Obama win, except in the South.
But if the end does come I hope I don’t miss it this time, but it may be just my luck because I have looked for it every time, and I kind of get the feeling it didn’t happen.
So once again I will be denied, but I am watching. I am on guard against enemies foreign and domestic, but just in case the end is not here yet, I am going to keep busy building my American dream, in spite of it.
Stay clam, carry on, the end is always near.
