Pinko Magazine Hedonism + Activism

For the last week or so, my beleaguered better half has been calling me from the road with travel crises and genuine work stress, and my response is basically “yes, yes, okay, yes but WHAT ABOUT SARAH PALIN OMFG.” My friend Carl (who has small town values, btw) and my Pinko co-conspirator Stirling are perilously close to being abandoned by their significant others if they don’t stop fretting so constantly about the election. My friend Christa recounted her dire Friday afternoon phone-banking for Obama in her hometown of Scranton, PA. She was calling from a list of registered Democrats, one of whom told her he wouldn’t “vote for a nigger;” another who said “I’m voting for Palin. I don’t like how Obama treated Hilary.” 

In short, everyone is freaking out. 

Reading my Times this morning, both Frank Rich and the suddenly on-message MoDo, I was struck by just how serious a moment this really is. It’s way more serious than distractions like wolf hunting, troopergate and Cindy McCain’s pill-popping. Naively I’ve assumed that if McCain won and then Palin ascended to the Presidency and things were worse than the last 8 years, eventually the Republicans and conservatives would get their commeupance; we would be proven right and they would be proven wrong and everyone who voted for them would realize they made a mistake. That’s what I thought eight years ago; it’s what I thought four years ago; and it’s how I reassured myself during my week in St. Paul. (Along with a shitload of red wine.) 

The reality is that things don’t work like that. If it’s true that John McCain has really become a trojan horse for neo-conservatives more extreme than Bush (and Palin a “trojan moose,” as Arianna Huffington called her) than the impact of a disastrous 4-8-12 more years of conservative rule won’t be my liberal fantasy of America learning the error of it’s ways. The impact would be the real consequences of an extreme and hostile foreign policy: mass global destabilization; expanded middle east conflict; maybe nuclear war if we exacerbate conflict with Russia, or if we don’t commit ourselves to tracking down all of the “unaccounted for” loose nuclear weapons currently bouncing around. Such outcomes wouldn’t mean more votes for Chelsea Clinton in 2024; they would mean an even fiercer and uglier fight for power. 

I’m very torn on how this should be won, and how “negative” Obama needs to go. I’m torn if he needs to be more of a full-throated, RFK-style economic populist or hit McCain on his batshit crazy foreign policy. I’m hopeful about the genuinely significant effort on the ground to register new voters and expand the rolls. But the only thing I’m certain of right now is the need to get to work; giving money if we can; making phone calls through the Obama campaign or outside groups like MoveOn; maybe going door to door. I know that some of our readers are to the left of me, insisting still that the two parties are two sides of the same coin, that Obama has already sold out, that we are cheerleading a hollow leader. But looking at this week’s Sarah Palin interviews, and considering the conservative reaction to her nomination, it’s clear that this election present two very different world-views. One of them is even further to the right than those currently in power, and their trojan moose has pulled them closer than any of us had imagined to actually winning this thing. In short, we have seven weeks to do whatever we can to head a very dark time off at the pass.

About The Author - Ben Wyskida is a writer, activist, conscientious hedonist and political communications strategist living in Brooklyn. - Visit Ben's site.