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The Hunt for Red November
Nov. 3rd, 2010 09:02 amThis morning, I read in the quotations book we keep in the bathroom that people find it easier to name ten artists from any period than ten politicians. "That's easy," I thought. "Tony Blair, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith, John Prescott, Robin Cook, Boris Johnson, Anne WiddecombAAAAAGH"
Because it suddenly snapped into my brain that I had had a ghastly nightmare about my parents breaking the news to me (on my brother's birthday) that I was actually Anne Widdecombe's son. I asked who themother father was, and was told that, to made matters worse, she was actually both my parents, because it had all been the result of some horrific genetic engineering experiment. I've never been so glad to wake up.
Over here in real life, however, the mid-term elections were yesterday - there has been virtually nothing but constant attack adverts on the television for a few months (I've never seen this allowed in Britain - I honestly don't know how the people who live here have all managed to cope with American television all their lives). There are three branches of government and the population never allows one party to stay completely in power for long, and it had been known for some time that the Republicans were gearing up to turn the country red (GBR: blue) in November, but in a very unusual situation last night, the House changed majorities but not the Senate.
The new House seats include a surprising number of crazy people - the semi-organized Tea Party here has sprung up over the last two years as something approaching the BNP Extreme, though they don't appear to distinguish themselves from the main party on the results. Ian Hislop explains the difference rather well. In Britain we laugh at people like this, but here, they stand a chance of getting elected (that woman in the subsequent clip didn't, though).
The hope for splitting the power again is that the two parties will be forced to work together to improve the country, but what will actually happen is that they will never agree on anything and the country is shafted in terms of doing anything at all for at least the next two years - it's known that the world tends towards being more liberal as time goes on, but America lags behind somewhat and this won't exactly help.
As the party who isn't awful seems to have demonstrated over the last while that it's just useless and unwilling to work with its advantages, if I had a vote I would probably have used it to suggest returning to British rule. Perhaps David Cameron would allow Nick Clegg to have the country as some sort of runner-up prize.
Because it suddenly snapped into my brain that I had had a ghastly nightmare about my parents breaking the news to me (on my brother's birthday) that I was actually Anne Widdecombe's son. I asked who the
Over here in real life, however, the mid-term elections were yesterday - there has been virtually nothing but constant attack adverts on the television for a few months (I've never seen this allowed in Britain - I honestly don't know how the people who live here have all managed to cope with American television all their lives). There are three branches of government and the population never allows one party to stay completely in power for long, and it had been known for some time that the Republicans were gearing up to turn the country red (GBR: blue) in November, but in a very unusual situation last night, the House changed majorities but not the Senate.
The new House seats include a surprising number of crazy people - the semi-organized Tea Party here has sprung up over the last two years as something approaching the BNP Extreme, though they don't appear to distinguish themselves from the main party on the results. Ian Hislop explains the difference rather well. In Britain we laugh at people like this, but here, they stand a chance of getting elected (that woman in the subsequent clip didn't, though).
The hope for splitting the power again is that the two parties will be forced to work together to improve the country, but what will actually happen is that they will never agree on anything and the country is shafted in terms of doing anything at all for at least the next two years - it's known that the world tends towards being more liberal as time goes on, but America lags behind somewhat and this won't exactly help.
As the party who isn't awful seems to have demonstrated over the last while that it's just useless and unwilling to work with its advantages, if I had a vote I would probably have used it to suggest returning to British rule. Perhaps David Cameron would allow Nick Clegg to have the country as some sort of runner-up prize.
