Spare change?

I know I’m probably taking this a little too literally (or am I reading too much into it?) but I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to the new House Republican’s slogan. In a season of calls for change, democratic contests, encouraging numbers of people expressing hope, a sincere interest in the electoral process, and a clear national disapproval of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, and the President himself, the GOP have re launched themselves with a new slogan: The Change You Deserve.

So what are they saying? I deserve no change? That to continue along this hateful, mud slinging, divisive, war based, economy destroying, mood deflating, propaganda laden path is what Americans actually deserve? Is that what they’re really offering? Is that really the best they could do? Even deigning to develop a slogan (and a color scheme) which is so clearly a depressive and negative response to Obama’s campaign doesn’t bode well for the nation’s elephants.

I’ve long said that regardless of my personal feelings about Mr. Bush, in my opinion America has had the president they deserve for the last seven and a half years. We are a nation of under educated, television watching, slack jawed and very greedy bad drivers who seem to want a scape goat for everything, a pill to make it go away (that’s legal) and the religious high ground. That’s a scathing condemnation of the USA, it’s true, but I think it only actually applies if you watch a lot of television. Walking around the streets, and looking into people’s eyes, talking with them, Americans are pretty wonderful people. The pendulum has just swung pretty far out, and this appears to be a natural phase of our development. It’s just too easy to be so broad, take cheap pot shots, and sum it all up with cliché. If you’re offended, forgive me, I had to develop some line of thinking in order to recover from the nightly rages I felt while watching the news. I took it out on you in my mind, (and here on my journal) but otherwise I have tried to be as kind and accepting as possible (even in my music.)

So what the fuck does “The Change You Deserve mean?

I can’t say what’s on House Republican’s minds, because I don’t really care, but I will posit that the change I believe we all deserve is a moment to catch our breath, the opportunity to hear what our representatives have to say without being patronized by a team of parsing agents who relentlessly continue to evaluate what they imagine our government to be saying. I believe we deserve change in the form of the media, the pundits, the talking heads, and the power elite making the assumption that we are intelligent, and allow us to hear them out and make our own decisions. The change I want is for our representatives to start sticking up for the working people of this country, and stop backing their bosses. I want our society to stop looking to the government as an errant parent, and take responsibility for themselves (even if they make mistakes, royally fuck it up, and feel terrible about it.) I think the change we deserve is for the local, state and national government to get the fuck out of our bedrooms, cell phones, marriages, and civil liberties. We deserve fully funded education, infrastructure, health care, and general assistance for the elderly, the disabled, and people in transition for a change. We deserve relief from this crushed economy in some form other than issuing more and more incentives to big box business.

We deserve a lot of change. Who’s got some change to spare? Do you? Does anyone?