I am sitting here watching an excerpt of Obama's stirring speech from Virginia yesterday where he directly confronted the Sarah Palin nonsense of "real" parts of the country versus "fake" parts. It's really good stuff and it is why Obama burst onto the scene in 2004, was able to beat an "inevitable" primary candidate and is looking, 12 days out, like he is about to decimate John McCain who is increasingly destroying any vestige of honor he once had.
Follow me over the jump for videos and some thoughts.
Here is a video of the good parts of the speech:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Wonderful stuff that gives me hope that Obama is gonna do things very very differently than the horrible 50% +1 - divide, demonize and conquer politics of Rove and Bush.
And then I saw this video:
What the hell?
This woman lives on a completely different planet than I or anyone else I know here in Portland. Watch the video again. She is as convinced in her righteousness as I am when I pound the table and expound upon why it is insane to continue our disastrous economic, environmental and foreign policies.
Is she clinically insane? That would be too easy of an explanation and cop out. There are millions more like her in this country. They all can't be crazy.
But I simply do not understand them. Not the "I don't understand how they can support X abortion policy or Y tax cut" thought. This goes beyond that. I fundamentally don't understand them as a person.
And I suspect they look at my liberal, Portland, organic eating, public transit using, non church going, evolution believing, premarital sex having, ass and shake their heads as well.
I like to think I am a pretty easy going guy who can have a conversation with just about anyone, even a hardcore Republican. There are a million things we can connect on - our love of the Washington Redskins, the status of our tomato garden or maybe woodworking. I can and do have these conversations all the time with Hatfield/McCall Oregon Republicans.
But then I look at this video and realize there really are people out there that I would have nothing to say to. Her world view is so dominated by a "rapture chistianism" that the space between us is more like a gaping chasm.
So why I want to believe Obama when he talks of "one America", I think he may be wrong. And that saddens me deeply. What does that mean for the future of our country?
Cross posted at Finnegan's Wake Blog: http://finnswake.wordpress.com/