7 - Besieged

… The Political Version.

Part One


I just can’t do it. There is no way I’m going to vote for Obama. I’ve heard nothing but rhetoric, questionable relations, and negative press about the man. I’ll agree with his assessment that we need change, but the kind of change he seems capable of isn’t change at all. (No I do not believe we’ll be headed directly into a socialist Muslim caliph state - the country is already being given away consistently in a quieter manner.)

You can call my vote wasted if you like. There’s no way I’m going to vote for McCain either. On the positive press, I don’t agree with the more “moral” issues the members of the Republican Party supposedly stand for. On the negative press, I don’t think McCain is the sort of leader I want representing my country to the world. No, I don’t want a beatnik flower child begging for peaceful relations, but after eight years of quick draw McGraw I’m hesitant to put my vote in for more of the same.

I don’t have confidence in either party. Mom’s been trying to convert me into a republican; she’s sent several thought provoking essays written by independent people not running for office that really made me think. I saw a similar pro-republican message linked in :iconkata:’s journal, and it made some very good points against the democratic party. I’ve read quite a few news articles detailing why a vote for one or the other is a vote spent unwisely, and I find lately that if only the candidates themselves could be so eloquent to their own causes, I’d believe in the system again, respect the politicians again … have some hope again.

But the economy and the subsequent bailout simply reinforced the image I already have. Each side blaming the other, ready to bail out big business, while the rest of us watch more of our retirement and living options vanish into thin air. We’re not protected anymore, and I wonder if we ever have been.

“The problem, as his friend Dodge said, was “the utter inability of congressmen to understand why anyone should urge a bill from which no one could selfishly secure an advantage.” … “Mornings on Horseback” by David McCullough, writing about Teddy Roosevelt’s father campaigning in congress for a bill in which soldiers could send part of their pay home to their families during the civil war.


Why then do I insist upon voting for a third party if it never does any good? I think the answer as simple as the fact that our last few elections have divided steadily closer fifty-fifty. You either stand with one or you stand with the other, and the cherished beliefs of one side must be the laughingstock trademarks of the opponent. I know that things do not necessarily work better in England, where there are more than two parties to choose from in political matters. But I do believe a third choice could be a good thing if we could get away from our internal “us versus them”.

“That political parties were an evil that could bring the ruination of republican government was doctrine that he, with others, had long accepted and espoused. “There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other,” Adams had observed to a correspondent while at Amsterdam, … The “turbulent maneuvers” of factions, he now wrote privately, could “tie the hands and destroy the influence” of every honest man with a desire to serve the public good. There was “division of sentiments over everything,” he told his son-in-law William Smith. “How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of parts!” David McCullough - “John Adams”.


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