Over the last couple of days I’ve kind of been overcome with the feeling that I’m spending a lot of thought trying to formulate a clear picture of mccain, bush, republicans, etc so that my republican friends fully understand what they’re voting for. Barack Obama has been trying to stay on the so-called “high road” during the campaign (which, in reality, hasn’t even started yet) and I’ve found it quite difficult to listen to the republican spin machine either attacking Obama or lying about mccain without seeing much response (although in my heart I know the response is coming – I really do believe Obama is a fighter). I mean, the other day when I saw a commercial from mccain claiming that he is the one who will bring “change” to Washington – by stopping the influence of lobbyists and “fighting big oil” – it made me think (after gagging) that if he gets away with this, we as teachers (I’m a teacher), really are doing a bad job because our public is unable to think critically at all.
As I see the poll numbers swing toward mccain I get incredulous, and I guess I get overcome with a sense that if Obama isn’t going to refute this nonsense – then I will – knowing of course that I will probably be the only one who ever reads my comments and the only thing accomplished by my writing them down is to make me feel better and leave a dated history for my “I told you so’s” to all the people I know who vote for mccain. When the roof caves in, so to speak, on this nation if he somehow manages to finagle his way into office I’m going to be even more vocal than I am now – assuming I’m physically able. However, my optimistic nature seems to be prevailing and I still believe that Senator Obama (we now know it’s Obama/Biden) will win in November and then the process of holding him to the promise to clean up the bush mess will begin. That being said, I was thinking today that I should be able to tell someone why they should vote for Obama besides the fact that bush/cheney/mccain is such a disaster.
In my heart I know that the only reason all the Hillary voters who are disenchanted with Obama and are threatening to vote for mccain has to be because he’s black. I’ve seen women who were for Hillary that, if they look even slightly at mccain’s record and listen to what he says, should be ashamed of themselves for even thinking about voting for mccain – and they should be doing everything they can to keep him out. A little digression: I still vividly remember the last really honorable democratic president, Jimmy Carter, who was defeated by ronald reagan because the republicans figured out how to split the democrats (remember John Anderson – who do you think funded his third party campaign??) and the end result has been almost 30 years of this push to destroy the American middle class and change this country into a corporatacracy at the expense of our standing in the world, our environment, and the fundamentals of our economy – which is teetering on crumbling. The republicans are the masters at manipulating the media and causing people to vote against their own best interests – and with possibly a little help from the Clintons that is how they plan to win this election.
So, if Obama wins, his presidency will be historically important for several reasons. One reason that isn’t talked about much, is about a black person in this office – kind of like the pressure on NFL quarterbacks a few years ago when many people thought a black person couldn’t be an NFL quarterback because of the “intelligence” stereotype. Well, like it or not, this kind of stuff is out there, in my opinion in much larger doses than we, as a nation, are willing to admit and if Obama wins the racists, like limbaugh, hannity, and many of the other republicans – and unfortunately more democrats than we would care to acknowledge, will be in full attack mode right from the start, trying to undermine his presidency. Beyond that, for the majority of Americans, the most important reasons Obama’s presidency will be historic, of course, are not related to the color of his skin – that’s really an issue for our society to resolve – they relate to our military which has been critically damaged and weakened because of bush’s ill-advised and illegal adventure into Iraq – stretching our existing forces to their limits and causing recruitment to wane to the point where the services are now accepting felons, high school dropouts, and new recruits in their 40’s.
Our economy is in a shambles, it is crumbling, and the best way I can describe it is one bandaid on top of a buch of other bandaids. I believe that bush has been trying hard to keep the actual collapse from happening until after January 20th so he and his water carriers (limbaugh, hannity, etc.) can blame it on the next president and the congress. Turning this economy around will be a daunting task, especially if the democrats don’t significantly increase their majority in the senate. To be totally honest, I haven’t seen a lot from the democratic senate that gives me confidence that they are going to stand strong against this corporatacracy – of course many of them have had their hands out as much as the republicans when it comes to collecting money from the corporate lobbyists.
Additionally, Obama will need to be at his best to restore America’s image in the rest of the world. Many of my republican friends don’t seem to understand the importance of this – but it is the people they voted into office – reagan, bush I, bush II, with a little help from Clinton, who have created this situation where we are subservient to the world economy. I’m sure this was inevitable, but it doesn’t make sense to me for us to create this “global economy” and then destroy our relationships with our trading partners or potential trading partners. I believe Obama when he says that he is going to change the direction of this government and that the fix will come from the bottom up, instead of the republican philosophy of top-down, or “trickle down” as it was known during reagan’s years in office. I also believe that Obama has the makings of a statesman as was quite evident in the overseas trip he took in July that led to the “celebrity” ads from mccain.
Furthermore, I believe that Obama will pull our troops out of Iraq and there will be a dramatic change, not only in how we use our troops, but in how we treat them. Somehow, the support our troops republicans, have done an excellent job of hiding the ways they don’t support our troops as they go around saber rattling at every chance they get. Both bush and mccain opposed the recent “GI Bill” that addressed many of the shortcomings for our troops who are sacrificing so much in Iraq and Afganistan. I’m still a bit incredulous as to how bush and mccain could oppose that bill – on the grounds that giving these benefits to our returning soldiers would encourage them to leave the service – then after it passed with a veto proof majority claim that they supported it. I really don’t understand how they could get away with that.
I guess because I’m presently reading a book on blackwater (by Jeffery Scahill – I encourage anyone who reads this – to read that book) I feel the biggest threat (internally) to our military may be the private, right wing, militias. So the idea of these private militias is heavily on my mind – from the fact the blackwater “soldiers” who pump the gas for our actual troops in Iraq are compensated considerably more than the troops they are augmenting, to their political connection to the extreme right wing of the republican party, and more so to the scary idea that they are virtually immune from any oversight and can be “invisibly” inserted into various situations around the world without the public’s knowledge – the whole idea of private armies is “cause for pause” but I believe, and I will do everything I can to encourage Obama to do so, one of the most important things that he must do, in addition to prosecuting the wrongdoing of the bushies and restoration of our constitutional rights, is to put these private armies out of business by refusing them government contracts. Should mccain win in November these private armies will continue to flourish.
As Roosevelt so correctly stated in 1940 – we don’t want, and it is beyond immoral (my characterization) for people to get rich off of a war. blackwater has made hundreds of millions from Iraq and Afganistan (and I’m very certain there’s others that we don’t know about), rumsfeld made close to one hundred million on Iraq, I believe that if cheney was investigated he made close to one hundred million on increased value of his haliburton holdings from the Iraq incursion, and there are many others that have become incredibly rich because of this illegal war – that kind of profiteering is immoral beyond words and has to stop – I believe Obama is the only chance that this will stop. From a practical point of view, does it make sense for the US Army soldier to be making $50 per day in Iraq while the guy whose serving him his food, or filling the tank on his vehicle, or many other “privatized” tasks is making well over ten times that amount – and without having to pay taxes on the money? I really don’t think many people understand that the way rumsfeld kept the number of troops down in Iraq was through their (the neocons) pet “privatization” process. As I write this I am certain there are more private “soldiers” in Iraq than members of our official armed forces. If this bothers you as much as it bothers me, then the only hope is Obama. The average pay of these blackwater “contractors” is over $600/day – over $1000 for some of the more dangerous jobs. We need for these militias to either be out of business or for them to go to Dubia with halliburton.
The point I’m trying to make here is that there are a lot of reasons to vote for Obama, our nation is desparate for the bottom up approach to “management,” and we need to be voting for him more than we are voting against mccain. I have lost all respect for mccain in this election, but I fully understand that the republican “infrastructure” is going to do everything they can to smear him. As Hillary did, they’re going to use the “kitchen sink strategy” to try to derail Obama, and while I will continue to try to define the “real mccain” I understand that Obama has a fundamental belief in the American people that he can win this election by staying out of the “mud” as much as possible and trying to stay on the “high road.” I hope he’s right!