Respect Authority

Can I just be the… billionth or so… person to say, “Holy fucking shit.”

It really happened. What is this, anyway? Some kind of modern country or some shit? Clearly, it’s time to start creating some “ANGRY IDIOTS FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF BARACK OBAMA” Facebook groups.

First of all, now that the silly election thing is over with, I feel like I should let you know that Barack Obama actually is a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer, and, in fact, has a history of sleeping with both a copy of The Communist Manifesto and a defaced Precious Moments Bible under his pillow.

Nonetheless, throughout his campaign, Obama ran on a platform of hope. And clearly, he inspired hope in many American voters — including me, and I was under the impression that my capacity for hope had iced over years ago, that space in my heart left barren and forgotten, its haunting desolation not unlike that of lonely Pluto. Indeed, with Obama’s decisive victory against America’s oldest fart tonight, I regained some small amount of hope for the American people as a whole.

Understand that I drink an overfilled glass of negativity instead of orange juice every morning when I wake up, and as a result, think everything is always terrible, without question. So of course, it’s my belief that we hardly have any real reason to hope that we’ll see it out of the current economic case of the runs without losing even more of our assets yet. Nor do we have any reason to hope that Iraq won’t continue to be a mess of epic proportions, a mess that Tide Magic Stain Remover couldn’t even clean up. But today, there is hope that as a country, we are not entirely stupid.

We took real steps forward today, aside from the obvious ones of electing America’s first black president and finally moving away from eight years of face-slapping, eye-rolling, and ever-increasing despair. We took steps forward, thankfully away from the anti-intellectual, evangelical religious zealots. We took steps toward diplomacy over war, unity over greed, and thought over instinctual action. That’s right, people, America actually cares about thinking after all.

But I also shed a single tear for John McCain, and not just from laughing uncontrollably, but also because it’s hard not to feel bad about his lengthy and respectable career being torn asunder by a race to the White House that turned shamefully ugly and turned the Senator into a disgraced caricature of himself who began reminding us that he was a maverick far more often than he actually was a maverick anymore. Naturally, when you make a policy of acting like a fucking insane person, doing insane things like, haha boy it seems funny now, seriously putting Sarah Palin on your ticket hardly comes as a surprise so much as a massive disappointment.

And I think that word, largely, describes McCain’s presidential bid — an utter disappointment for the Senator, who clearly really wanted to win, considering he’s been running for the office constantly for the past 16 years, even when there wasn’t an election going on. Look, nobody wanted to tell him, and as long as you keep an eye on grandpa to make sure he doesn’t get lost, it’s much easier to just let him do what he wants rather than get in an argument with him about it. And I imagine today, there’s not much McCain wants to do except throw up his hands in defeat. Too bad he can’t lift his arms! Fuck, the poor guy can’t even lose successfully.

Gloating isn’t exactly attractive, I know, but I’d like to think we’ve earned it, and all you mourning superpatriots need to finally just shut the hell up or begin seriously considering suicide as a viable option. I’ll settle for either.

Despite the hope we may have today, we must remember that winning the election was actually the easy part. As surprising as it might sound to say, convincing the majority of Americans to actually take the initiative and remove their heads from their asses truly has nothing on fixing our lost, stumbling country. Barack Obama has a hell of a job before him, and it will be his ability to fulfill his many promises, and to handle all the unseen crises in the long days ahead, that will keep our hopes from being dashed to bits like they have been so repeatedly under the current administration. Indeed, it will seem strangely uncomfortable for them not to be after so long.

Now, if only Sarah Palin would actually disappear, everything might be as close to perfect as we can get in this fucked up, ever surprising world in which we live.