You’ll have to pardon my thoughts here...they’re going to be a bit disjointed and nonlinear (as they usually are), but I’ll do my best to write them up in some coherent fashion.
So it’s five days to go...and this is why I want Obama to win.
It’s not because I’m a Democrat, formerly from a small industrial town in Massachusetts who’s moved to San Francisco, that hotbed of crazy liberalism and a Den of Iniquity. It’s not due to any intellectualism at all—while I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from a college in Boston, I don’t consider myself the smartest kid on the block, far from it. It’s not due to a raving hatred of Republicans—I’ve met and been friends with many, even though we disagree at times. It’s not about disliking John McCain or Sarah Palin.
It’s about taking the situation seriously.
When I was driving home from work on September 11, 2001, still in shock from the events that had happened earlier that day, I listened to NPR to keep up with what was happening. There were a lot of people interviewed, a lot of journalists, pundits and others reporting on what they had seen, what was happening, and how the government was responding. I wish I could remember the exact words and who it was that said it, but one particular interviewee had said something that I completely agreed with. To paraphrase, he said that ‘things were going to be markedly different from here on in.’ He hadn’t meant that in a way that meant we would have to be scared from here on in—more on that in a few moments—he’d meant that in a way, almost a sad, melancholy way, that meant the collective atmosphere of the country was going to change, and maybe not for the better, because of that event.
Even then, I knew that our emotions were going to get the best of us, and we were going to enter a new era of the Politics of Fear. Those with the loudest voices were going to start waving their flags, just like the emotionally patriotic paintings of yore, screaming from the top of their voices that this would not happen again. Even I agreed that we would take care of our own and ensure it wouldn’t happen again.
However, as said, the Politics of Fear kicked in.
This is what I mean by not taking the situation seriously. Those flagwavers started pointing fingers at those who weren’t patriotic enough. There were those angry enough that they bellowed that they would kill the Taliban, or al Qaeda, or even the entirety of Afghanistan if they had to. And of course, there were those who knew were smart enough to want to start war...and proceeded to attack a country that had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. Sure, these people thought they had ample proof that Iraq had the so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ I myself was once heard saying I did not and never did agree with war, but I could understand the reasoning behind it. I disagreed that we were going into Iraq, but only because it wasn’t the right time—I felt that capturing Osama bin Laden was a bit more important of a goal. But once we found out just how embarrassingly wrong that proof was, not only did my trust in Bush and his cabinet fall considerably, but it brought me back to the words that man had said that Tuesday afternoon—things were not going to be the same.
I really felt that the direction we as a country were going in was disastrously wrong.
We were not taking the issues seriously enough.
Why? Because we were operating on the Politics of Fear. We were told that if we did not go into Iraq, they were going to build bombs that were going to hurt us. If we did not change basic rules of security here and abroad (and in between, at the airports), who knew what kind of heathen was going to get through! And our man, Fearless Freep, Commander Dubya, was going to pull a Teddy Roosevelt and charge up those stairs to San Juan Hill yelling and waving his sword, Rambo-ing his way into battle. Hell, he even took the phrase "Axis of Evil" out of storage and made it fashionable again! And before everything was even said and done, there was the infamous ‘Mission Accomplished’ episode. We didn’t quite finish the war the way we wanted—hell, it’s not even done yet—but fuck yeah, we kicked ass! Or so we’ve been told!
The 2004 election was another case in point of the Politics of Fear. While Kerry may or may not have been a good President had he won, the fact that there was a team out there—the so-called Swift-Boaters—who used that Fear by questioning whether or not Kerry was patriotic enough. And there were the waves of right-wing talk show hosts, the very same ones who attacked Clinton throughout his two terms, who jumped on the bandwagon, fueling those fires of patriotic ire every chance they got, even under the label ‘fair-and-balanced’. And they’re still doing it to this day.
And for some, it’s kind of tough to ignore.
Sometime in the late 90s, when I was writing what became an urban fantasy trilogy centered around religion and spirituality doing good for the public rather than bad, I found what ended up being one of my favorite quotes in the Bible. Here is the International Standard version:
Then we will no longer be little children, tossed like waves and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, or by clever strategies that would lead us astray.
--Ephesians 4:14
Within the context of the Book of Ephesians, this passage actually had to do with ensuring that the populace let go of their numerous variations of pagan ways and unite under Christianity. I used it as an epigraph for one of the books in that trilogy because I felt it fit the overall idea behind the story—that though you can listen to the other side and understand what they have to say, the true strength of it all is not to be easily swayed by it, to stand your ground despite everything to the contrary.
This is how I felt most of this decade, to tell the truth. I admit that I grew up easily swayed by every wind of doctrine. Let’s be honest, I was pretty gullible as a kid. Even up into college, even when I protested and proclaimed that I was a nonconformist and refused to follow someone else’s ideas, I found myself emotionally being swayed into places and ideas I should not have let myself go to. And it took me a lot of bad decisions to realize just how bad I was, and so I closed myself off from the world for a few years. I ‘unplugged,’ as I called it. Because of that, though I still followed politics, I rarely went far with it because I didn’t trust myself yet. It took until sometime this decade for me to break out of that and form my own true thoughts, opinions and emotions about politics. And most importantly, I made sure I didn’t fall prey to the Politics of Fear. So when Fearless Freep won a second term, I decided to take the high road. It was only four more years. We could only hope, then, that nothing bad happened.
And so this brings me to the present day, five days to go before Election Day.
What I’ve watched over the past few months, perhaps despite my best judgment sometimes, is the Politics of Fear in full swing on the Republican side. And to be honest? It really bothers me—not in an annoyed way, but in a concerned way—that the party is still depending on that kind of politics, in an attempt to scare the public into trusting them. It’s call Rovian politics now, but fear is fear, no matter what it’s called.
Which brings me to why I want Barack Obama to win.
In the primaries, in all honesty I was torn between Hillary and Obama. Back then, I ended up voting for Hillary, but Obama quickly won me over when it was obvious he was in the lead. Since then he’s impressed me with his speeches, his intellect, and especially that he laid out his presidential plans for everyone to see, and I’m willing to give him a try. His speech during the DNCC impressed me to the point that I realized he was very much like Bill Clinton, someone who would stop and talk to you if you met him in the street, and one who talked to you and with you, not at you or down to you. He was an impressive sight during the DNCC and he instilled in me a feeling of hope and eagerness to look to the future that I hadn’t had for awhile. And most importantly, I feel I could trust him.
This, in contrast, is why the RNCC and the nomination of Sarah Palin for the Vice Presidential position was such a shock to me. I felt that they were up to something, and that they were still using the Rovian politics, the Politics of Fear, to scare us into voting for them. That there had to be something evil about Obama. It had little to do with race, at least in my opinion, but had everything to do with not letting anyone else be in charge but themselves. My first reaction about Palin wasn’t so much that of confusion but of guarded concern; my first thought was they’re up to something. It was obvious from the get-go that the pick wasn’t about who was or who wasn’t "ready" at all. It was about trying to upstage Obama and Biden’s impressiveness. And that’s what they’ve been running on for the past few months, and will continue to do so, all the way until next Tuesday. I could go on about them, but enough has been said already.
And this is why I don’t want McCain and Palin to win; it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re Republicans; it has everything to do with the fact that they’re clearly not taking the Presidency seriously enough. I certainly cannot, in my mind, trust a President that has made too many unsafe decisions over the past month about his own run for presidency. I cannot trust a man who spent way too much of his time playing the Fear game. I certainly cannot trust a vice president who has gaffed so many interview questions that, if she were actually prepared for the job, could have answered them correctly (and if not, could admit to not knowing). And I cannot trust a person or party that treats such an important position for this country with such recklessness. Had the party chosen a nominee and a vice president that took their potential job a bit more seriously, I would not feel as concerned as I do now, and though I might not have voted for them, I certainly would not feel distressed by a potential win.
However, this is not the case.
We cannot afford to have another presidential term where the leader takes actions regardless of the outcome and its effect on the country. We cannot afford to have a President who runs the country as if it were a company, which it is not. We cannot afford the Politics of Fear anymore; we are too tired and too frustrated to cringe in the corner anymore, and eventually some of us may fight back. And we cannot afford someone who won’t take the position seriously.
This is why I want Barack Obama to win.