Ok, so tomorrow the Americans are going to elect a new President. In the interest of being fair, I will wish good luck in any case. However, in the interest of sanity I hope that moderates prevail, in which case I'm personally throwing my moral support behind Barack Obama. I don't have that much of a beef with John McCain, other than him coming off as a bit of a flip-flopper, but Sarah Palin scares the living hell out of me -- especially considering that if McCain wins, she will likely take over for him in a few years time.
As far as I can tell, McCain is a relatively moderate man, so for the most part I'm fine with him. Palin, on the other hand, has always come off as divisive, self-absorbed, fundamentalist and incredibly regressive. Honestly, picking her as the running mate was just plain stupid; Americans all across the political spectrum want a change from George W. Bush's fear mongering power trips, yet Palin comes off as a slightly dumber version of him, if that's even possible. When a high-ranking level of the government has little to no clue on foreign issues, doesn't even know what a Vice-President's job actually is, and either does not understand what "Freedom of the Press" means or chooses to ignore it, then he or she is totally unqualified to be in that office. Period.
Thankfully, it seems that most Americans are feeling the same way, and even a lot of Republicans think that Palin is hurting them badly. So the thing I can't understand is why some of her supporters come from the walks of life that they do. Palin claims to be an average, struggling hockey mom, but considering that she splurges at least hundreds of thousands of dollars on her wardrobe, and has a huge staff to juggle her family... well, saying that she's even remotely like the average American is kind of like saying that I have something in common with Jay-Z. Finally, I believe it's been said that there's a special place in Hell for a woman who refuses to help another woman -- so where does that put Sarah Palin, someone who regards rape victims with total contempt? She not only forces women in Alaska to pay out of pocket for rape kits that would convict their attackers, but rather than allow women to abort pregnancies from those assaults, she would rather "counsel" them. I can't picture that sitting too well with a 13 year-old girl who'd been raped by her dad, can you?
Before I go, I'd like to address one thing that I do disagree with McCain personally on, namely his low-blows against Barack Obama and his rather McCarthyist tactics. The last time I checked, guilt by association is unconstitutional in America, and slander is against the law. So frankly, calling the guy a Marxist and possible terrorist sympathizer, particularly with very little proof, only panders to the sort of people that McCain has traditionally sided against -- namely, neo-cons and bigots. So it's pretty rich that McCain will accuse Obama of saying anything to try to get elected. And by the way, why is it that a lot of the people who attack Obama for being left-wing, call themselves Christians? By all accounts, Jesus was a socialist.
I've got to be careful how I close this, because after all I tried like hell to get Stephen Harper booted in our own election last month, and it didn't work. So I'll keep this simple: I hope that after this election, America can finally clean up its act, and restore its reputation for being a free, united, and proud country, as opposed to polarized, oppressive, arrogant, and embarrassing. Enough said.
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