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Seriousness
Sep. 15th, 2008 02:07 amTo follow the lead of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pir8fancier, some political seriousness in place of the snark. Just this once. Don't worry, it won't happen again.
Frankly, I'm not wild about any of the candidates. My preference was John Edwards, just as it was in 2004. I thought he had the legal background and knowledge, and the demonstrated ability to do what was right for the common person. No, I don't particularly care that he had an affair - any more than I cared about the servicings Clinton received from various women in his time in (or out of) office. I don't want anyone paying attention to my sex life, so why should I worry about theirs unless it actually influences public policy? (I'm not even going to get into that whole "he perjured himself under oath" bit - since the question he perjured himself over was sexual in nature and not at all relating to his job.) Great White Hope Ronald Reagan divorced his WIFE for his pregnant girlfriend. Newt Gingrich and John McCain both cheated on their previous wives.
Do you see how dangerous this kind of pissing contest gets?
Anyway. I did not support Hillary because I felt she had ample opportunities as First Lady and then a senator to implement policies she had touted - and then we just almost never heard of again once she was in both offices. Where's the health care plan we were promised 16 years ago (that we heard about maybe once or twice once Bill was in office)? Where's the campaign reform she went on about when running as senator - that we never heard about again once she was in office? And where is the admission that voting to OK the invasion of Iraq wasn't very smart? (Edwards gave us that - many times, in fact.) Obama, I worry at his lack of experience, in the sense that I wonder if he'll be able to get the parties in Congress to work together to make the necessary mending this country needs - economically, culturally, educationally, in foreign policy, etc.
This does not detract from my current support of Obama, nor do my reservations about Biden and his war voting record. I figure you have to pick somebody, so you should choose the person closest to what it is you're wanting - and what I'm wanting is positive change from what we've had for eight years.
Don't get me wrong. Our economic unraveling may have begun with Reagan's embracing of big-business deals and abolition of anti-monopoly laws, but Clinton didn't do us any favors by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (AFTER he ran on the platform of not supporting what Bush had written - and he turned around and approved it almost as soon as he took office). Things were already starting to turn downhill at the end of the last decade.
And then George W. Bush came along. The most inexperienced, inept failure of the Bush family (don't take my word - look at his work record), who got into the White House on the genius of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes banking on the innate goodness of Christians who are trained to forgive anyone so long as they allow themselves to be saved by Jesus. Perhaps after eight years of Clinton's objectionable sexual mores, they thought they were getting somebody they could identify with, at last. (Perhaps instead, they should have remembered Jimmy Carter - who actually IS a good Christian but was also a lousy president. I suspect it's because he had too many morals, but that's neither here nor there.)
Okay. You have an economy already sort of teetering, that needs somebody dynamic and savvy and diplomatic - not to mention with a nice, honest face - to help make America ready to compete with other countries producing cheaper goods. Somebody who, perhaps, has the sense to point out our goods were better made or better engineered; somebody who has the sense to concentrate on marketing and tax breaks to the correct mid-level businesses and struggling breadwinners, so they HAVE more money to hire workers and spend in this economy on American goods, to keep fellow Americans in jobs.
Instead, we got Bush (don't get me started on the other choice - Gore is an oilman, too, and I wasn't wild about THAT choice, but I feel the party platform was at least better than the neocons). I won't elaborate on everything that's gone wrong in the past eight years, except to say those out there who still deny he's a massive failure haven't had to hurt. They haven't missed meals, missed critical health care, missed opportunities because the jobs simply no longer existed. They haven't gone so deep into debt trying to not be a burden to their families that even with a good job, they can't dig themselves out now. They haven't put up with being called unpatriotic, godless heathens, elitist, traitor, and simpleminded - all while paying their fair share of taxes. They haven't watched as the Secretary of State admitted, under oath, that she knew 9/11 was going to happen, but simply didn't have an engraved invitation with time, date, place, coordinates, etc., to stop it.
I HAVE EXPERIENCED ALL OF THIS.
I do not wish to put up with another eight years of this attitude or this treatment. I finance this government; it does not finance me. It exists on MY say-so. It exists to serve me; I do not exist to pay for the personal resource-grabs of those at the very top who think the U.S. Treasury is their personal piggy bank. The Constitution guarantees that I do not have to run my life based on what somebody else's Big Book of Mythology states - nor is that believer forced to listen to my agnostic ramblings in their school, their office building, their courthouse, or when they go to the doctor.
For me, McCain/Palin represents more of the same of what over the last eight years has reduced my life financially and health-wise to work, home, and work again, with very little between. It represents failure to procure any kind of health care (which my condition requires) should I lose this job due to downsizing. It represents religious tyranny in which I will be forced to give respect to the beliefs of one segment of society without being able to expect the same in return, and in which I will be forced to turn decisions about my body over to the government - at the age of almost 40 - instead of being allowed to make them myself as I have always done. It represents watching tens of thousands more young people be marched off to unnecessary and immoral wars against countries which would not be a threat to us now, except for the catastrophic diplomatic blunders Bush has made over the past eight years - and watching innocent civilians in those countries die at American hands. It represents for me even more contempt for science and progress and civil debate.
This is what I foresee. I'm not a prognosticator - just a reader of history.
pir8fancier, some political seriousness in place of the snark. Just this once. Don't worry, it won't happen again.Frankly, I'm not wild about any of the candidates. My preference was John Edwards, just as it was in 2004. I thought he had the legal background and knowledge, and the demonstrated ability to do what was right for the common person. No, I don't particularly care that he had an affair - any more than I cared about the servicings Clinton received from various women in his time in (or out of) office. I don't want anyone paying attention to my sex life, so why should I worry about theirs unless it actually influences public policy? (I'm not even going to get into that whole "he perjured himself under oath" bit - since the question he perjured himself over was sexual in nature and not at all relating to his job.) Great White Hope Ronald Reagan divorced his WIFE for his pregnant girlfriend. Newt Gingrich and John McCain both cheated on their previous wives.
Do you see how dangerous this kind of pissing contest gets?
Anyway. I did not support Hillary because I felt she had ample opportunities as First Lady and then a senator to implement policies she had touted - and then we just almost never heard of again once she was in both offices. Where's the health care plan we were promised 16 years ago (that we heard about maybe once or twice once Bill was in office)? Where's the campaign reform she went on about when running as senator - that we never heard about again once she was in office? And where is the admission that voting to OK the invasion of Iraq wasn't very smart? (Edwards gave us that - many times, in fact.) Obama, I worry at his lack of experience, in the sense that I wonder if he'll be able to get the parties in Congress to work together to make the necessary mending this country needs - economically, culturally, educationally, in foreign policy, etc.
This does not detract from my current support of Obama, nor do my reservations about Biden and his war voting record. I figure you have to pick somebody, so you should choose the person closest to what it is you're wanting - and what I'm wanting is positive change from what we've had for eight years.
Don't get me wrong. Our economic unraveling may have begun with Reagan's embracing of big-business deals and abolition of anti-monopoly laws, but Clinton didn't do us any favors by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (AFTER he ran on the platform of not supporting what Bush had written - and he turned around and approved it almost as soon as he took office). Things were already starting to turn downhill at the end of the last decade.
And then George W. Bush came along. The most inexperienced, inept failure of the Bush family (don't take my word - look at his work record), who got into the White House on the genius of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes banking on the innate goodness of Christians who are trained to forgive anyone so long as they allow themselves to be saved by Jesus. Perhaps after eight years of Clinton's objectionable sexual mores, they thought they were getting somebody they could identify with, at last. (Perhaps instead, they should have remembered Jimmy Carter - who actually IS a good Christian but was also a lousy president. I suspect it's because he had too many morals, but that's neither here nor there.)
Okay. You have an economy already sort of teetering, that needs somebody dynamic and savvy and diplomatic - not to mention with a nice, honest face - to help make America ready to compete with other countries producing cheaper goods. Somebody who, perhaps, has the sense to point out our goods were better made or better engineered; somebody who has the sense to concentrate on marketing and tax breaks to the correct mid-level businesses and struggling breadwinners, so they HAVE more money to hire workers and spend in this economy on American goods, to keep fellow Americans in jobs.
Instead, we got Bush (don't get me started on the other choice - Gore is an oilman, too, and I wasn't wild about THAT choice, but I feel the party platform was at least better than the neocons). I won't elaborate on everything that's gone wrong in the past eight years, except to say those out there who still deny he's a massive failure haven't had to hurt. They haven't missed meals, missed critical health care, missed opportunities because the jobs simply no longer existed. They haven't gone so deep into debt trying to not be a burden to their families that even with a good job, they can't dig themselves out now. They haven't put up with being called unpatriotic, godless heathens, elitist, traitor, and simpleminded - all while paying their fair share of taxes. They haven't watched as the Secretary of State admitted, under oath, that she knew 9/11 was going to happen, but simply didn't have an engraved invitation with time, date, place, coordinates, etc., to stop it.
I HAVE EXPERIENCED ALL OF THIS.
I do not wish to put up with another eight years of this attitude or this treatment. I finance this government; it does not finance me. It exists on MY say-so. It exists to serve me; I do not exist to pay for the personal resource-grabs of those at the very top who think the U.S. Treasury is their personal piggy bank. The Constitution guarantees that I do not have to run my life based on what somebody else's Big Book of Mythology states - nor is that believer forced to listen to my agnostic ramblings in their school, their office building, their courthouse, or when they go to the doctor.
For me, McCain/Palin represents more of the same of what over the last eight years has reduced my life financially and health-wise to work, home, and work again, with very little between. It represents failure to procure any kind of health care (which my condition requires) should I lose this job due to downsizing. It represents religious tyranny in which I will be forced to give respect to the beliefs of one segment of society without being able to expect the same in return, and in which I will be forced to turn decisions about my body over to the government - at the age of almost 40 - instead of being allowed to make them myself as I have always done. It represents watching tens of thousands more young people be marched off to unnecessary and immoral wars against countries which would not be a threat to us now, except for the catastrophic diplomatic blunders Bush has made over the past eight years - and watching innocent civilians in those countries die at American hands. It represents for me even more contempt for science and progress and civil debate.
This is what I foresee. I'm not a prognosticator - just a reader of history.
