A Closer Look at Midterms From an Overseas Perspective…

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

As I sit in my Kailyard I wonder often about the future.

He’s guy gallas…

Heard frequently, especially around Glasgow, this expression has mystery at its core as not many people know where it originated or what it actually means, but if you hear it, then whoever it is being used to describe – you know they have it.

It is a swagger, a confidence, a braggadocio, but even more so than all that. It can mask a challenge, or it can show a hand. But what it does tell us is that somebody somewhere has the cahones to believe they have what it takes. I have pondered this much politically for some while. The attacks made upon people by those who feel entitled, can often be mistaken for a gallus pursuit of political office.

Now, US mid-terms are approaching. Over here we love the bizarre and the strange from over there – where you are! Y’all entertain us in bucket loads. Perhaps our humor is not justified as we tend to laugh at others despite the fact that we have our own set of clowns running round our country showing us up for being utter eejits for having elected them in the first place.
But as Rabbie Burns once wrote,

“O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!”

And so, over here, we have heard of Dr. Mehmet Oz. Puppy Killer. Allegedly…

Now I write this as it has been reported. I have no idea of Dr. Oz has been responsible for or indeed had a hand in the death of an adorable little animal, but in most households in the UK, a largely animal loving stronghold, such a person would not be allowed house room. They certainly would not be allowed anyone’s vote. It has been alleged that the celebrity Dr. Oz, who is backed by Donald Trump, has been responsible for the deaths of over 300 adorable animals due to his research.

He denies it.

His opponent John Fetterman has even gone so far to produce “Animal Lovers for Fetterman” stickers to cash in.

On the 8th of November, the electorate shall get an opportunity to give their opinion. In the US election this kind of story is known, apparently, as an “October surprise”. This is when a political story or scandal is unearthed which is set to derail or disrupt or just throw a whole campaign off the rails, appears as a news item from which a candidate is unable to survive.

Politics is something with which an electorate have a struggle. Candidates appear and then disappear, and we question and probe them to see if we can trust them. We want those with spotless records until it is proven they have no real-life experience. So, we turn to the candidate who is a little tainted by the past until we lose faith because if they misbehaved 25 years ago, then we should not trust them now… and then we go back to spotless records and then vacillate when they cannot cope and so on and so on and so on…

What is often missing is not the scandal or the moral authority of the candidate but our understanding of their beliefs. People tend to vote along particular lines – blue or red in the US means a little different in the UK as our red is your blue and our blue is your red, but the concepts are the same – and seldom countenance change. The way we all vote has similarities.
I believe that our judgments as electors need to be challenged and recalibrated along the lines of what people who seek our vote, represent first and foremost. From over here the deceit perpetuated upon the American people by four years of a fraudulent political hack is still your hangover. Dr. Oz should not be condemned for what he did to animals but what his ilk did to humans. The misery and perpetuated misogyny, racism and the destruction of a proud economy. That should be enough. Those who have the ability to ignore the nonsense and focus on the important should be truly treasured. His response is not gallus. His detractors are not gallus.

But John McCain…

There is a viral clip of him being questioned at a rally when he was seeking the presidency against Barack Obama. A woman starts questioning McCain with the nonsense about Obama not even being American. The stoutest defender of McCain’s political opponent was McCain himself. He refused to be drawn into what years later was proven to be a perpetuation of idiocy.

Brave self-sacrificing and a patriot. Standing up for what you believe. Having the moral rectitude to take it on the chin, listen and stay firm. Pretty gallus to me. Long may you find others like him and VOTE THEM INTO POWER!

A view from the new Kailyard or, how you look over there, from over here…

(Kailyard n. a cabbage patch, often attached to a school of writing – the Kailyard School – a genre of overly sentimental and sweet Scottish literature from the late 19th century where sentimental and nostalgic tales are told in escapist tales of fantasy, but here we seek to reverse it by making the Kailyard Observations of effective invective comment from that looks not to return to the past but to launch us into a better future by the one Donald worth believing…)

Gallus; bold, cheeky, or flashy- but more, oh so much more…

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