{"id":49614,"date":"2018-10-31T15:17:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T21:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=49614"},"modified":"2018-10-31T15:17:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T21:17:26","slug":"view-from-the-balcony-the-macabre-and-morbid-midterm-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/view-from-the-balcony-the-macabre-and-morbid-midterm-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"View From The Balcony: “The Macabre and Morbid Midterm Elections”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Midterm elections are looming on the horizon like Dracula hovering over the milky white neck of a helpless maiden. The horror stories being told are making my skin crawl and my stomach turn. Politicians are the monsters of the season.You don\u2019t have to wait for a full moon to see the werewolf in them\u2014they\u2019re day walkers. They rip their opponents apart and accuse them of being just shy of the spawn of Satan himself. It\u2019s worse than a sea of zombies. No wonder it\u2019s apropos that elections come right after Halloween.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I\u2019m running for office, you can bet I\u2019m going to slap a label on my opponent so fast it\u2019ll make your head spin. I\u2019m going to call you a right-winged radical racist, immigrant hating, sexist, homophobic Social Security busting, sexually-harassing, big-time Washington insider. Or maybe I\u2019ll call you a left-wing radical tree-hugging, gun-hating, anti-wall building, lobbyist-loving, traditional family hating liberal, intent on giving the country away.Either way, somebody\u2019s going to believe me, no matter what the facts are.\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Then I\u2019m going to get my supporters more stirred up than the angry mob of villagers who went after Dr. Frankenstein\u2019s monster. They\u2019re going to post on anti-social media some of the most damnable crap anyone\u2019s ever heard, and they\u2019ll be so zealous about it they\u2019ll have fights with their mummy, their deaddy, and their friends. They may even take somebody out with a choke hold or a presidentially endorsed body slam. Even if I were to talk about the issues, I\u2019ll pander to you and give you false information that will get me elected and nobody will care that what I said was a pot of witch\u2019s brew. As long and we keep the beasts out of office, the ends justify the means.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how we roll here in the ghastly ole USA these days. Is this a great country or what?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s spooky. It\u2019s downright bloodcurdling and bone-chilling. I haven\u2019t seen America so dismembered since the Civil Rights Movement and the Viet Nam War. In some ways today\u2019s slicing and dicingis even worse. Why? In part, because of the Grim Divider who lurks in his lair, The Ogre\u2019s Office. POTUS has become the Creature from the Black Lagoon of Washington, D.C. (Dark Cauldron).<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not all POTUS\u2019 fault. He\u2019s no Dr. Jekyll\/Mr. Hyde. He wasn\u2019t wearing a mask when he was elected. He is who he is and we all knew it. Phantoms, ghouls, and hobgoblins have infiltrated every political party and we\u2019re lashing out like scarecrows wielding meat cleavers. We need a wizard to freeze time, so a not-so-mad doctor can inject us with a civility serum. We need the Ghostbusters to suck the slime out of the nooks and crannies of the grisly process, so the horrors can end. But there\u2019s only one way that\u2019s going to happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

We the people have to spit out our fangs, withdraw our claws, and stop speaking with forked tongues. We must have a return to statesmanship with its climate of respect. We don\u2019t have to make nice. We can still disagree vehemently and fight vigorously for our causes. Personal attacks and lies must cease. But somebody has to do it first.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are going to put down their saws and scythes any time soon. Like every great social movement, the change will have to start with one person\u2014one brave soul who will pound a stake of sensibility into the heart of indecency. The wise old owl sitting in a tree under a full moon asks the right question: \u201cWho?\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Midterm elections are looming on the horizon like Dracula hovering over the milky white neck of a helpless<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[13453,243,13451,13452,10286],"class_list":["post-49614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-angry-mob","tag-election","tag-ghostbusters","tag-potus","tag-randy-weeks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}