techno.blog("Dion")

I apologize for another political post. My mind is very much on the election at the moment, and tech stuff will come back to the fore in a couple of weeks.

I am a schizophrenic at the moment. I am thinking a lot about the election and can’t wait to get this campaign over. I am cautiously optimistic, but wouldn’t be at all surprised at being disappointed.

The schizo part comes from me mentally jumping between “are you frigging kidding me? How isn’t this the biggest no-brainer in the world” and “Ok, let’s try to think about how other people could see this.”

I think about how people see things in the extreme.

Obama

• Extreme For: The golden child Harvard genius who will solve all of our problems
• Extreme Against: Not a US citizen baby killer who will change the country to a communist state

McCain

• Extreme For: Hero that will bring in a bright new day for the Republicans and save us from communism
• Extreme Against: George Bush the 3rd, with all of the same henchmen

What if you look at the middle ground though? I don’t think that Obama will be able to fix the country in six mouths. I don’t think he does either! Getting in will be a massive burden, beyond belief. This could be the end of the US empire as we know it, so getting power now will be a hard time indeed. On the other hand though, what if he did change things? If Obama is able to change the direction and bring back a 21st century prosperous country we will have to get the chisels out and make room for his bust on Mount Rushmore. What an opportunity! (that goes for whoever the next POTUS is.)

If Obama gets in, he will have massive expectations. Since he won’t be able to wave a magic wand and fix the economy, get out of Iraq, and change all that is bad in a week, he will have to look to other things.

There are many low hanging fruit that would get the message across to the people. In his 2004 speech he famously said that we aren’t a red America or a blue America, but rather the United States of America. He can do a lot of work on making good on that, and uniting the country. He can reach back to 9/11 and do some of what could have been done then. Taking the bad situation that we were in, and making good out of it.

He can be a new kind of leader. Government needs to be more transparent, so what if he makes good on his thoughts there? What if we see him on a weekly basis answering questions from the press and the people (prime minister question time baybee). Bush refuses to talk to anyone. What if he used Twitter and Facebook and the like to truly enhance political exchange, and talk to people about his thoughts. Imagine a world when a new bill was on the table, and we got to see truly what it was about, what the positions were (without CSPAN), and reasons why the president signed or veto’d.

Anyway, back to the median. What if Obama isn’t a liberal pinko, but rather slightly to the left and will actually work hard to do the right thing.

What is McCain doesn’t hire all of Bushes people, but rather does fight for change himself and manages to reach over the aisle a little.

Even in these worlds, Obama seems so much more compelling. With Obama winning the election, I believe the entire world will have a sigh of relieve, if not outright jubilation. Finally, those Americans we love are back. They get it. They realized they are on the wrong track, and they will have an amazingly smart candidate sworn in. Someone for the new generation. Someone to truly change the game. And, let’s say it, a black man. That will say SO much for this country.

On the contrary, if McCain wins, you will get “see, they still don’t get it.”

I was just forwarded something that focused on “What if there was no racism?” The race card can not be overlooked, and I wonder if it would be a landslide if a candidate as great as Obama was white. This is what it said (NOTE: obviously biased):

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to painkillers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain had graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Saving and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a more charismatic, eloquent speaker than Obama?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama’s family had made their fortune from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

Even disregarding the colour issue. It flips me back too… how is this even close! McCain has been dealt an incredibly back deck of cards. 8 of the worst years in the history of the US (where he matched the president 90%+ of the time), and the guy is ancient.

And then the education:

Barack Obama:

• Columbia University – B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
• Harvard – Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:

• University of Delaware – B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
• Syracuse University College of Law – Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain: United States Naval Academy – Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:

• Hawaii Pacific University – 1 semester
• North Idaho College – 2 semesters – general study
• University of Idaho – 2 semesters – journalism
• Matanuska-Susitna College – 1 semester
• University of Idaho – 3 semesters – B.A. in Journalism

I mean, come on. We have just gone threw the pain of having a commander in chief who had a silver spoon that got him threw life with poor grades and the rest of it. How can people fall for that again? Intelligence does not equal “elitism”

If Obama pulls this off, I will be partying on the 5th, and then looking forward to seeing a very different America. One where we all get stuck in and stop arguing about silly things in a campaign, but we are elbow deep solving the problems and making the World a better place.