Maybe I'm nuts or unhinged or maybe I'm not. Perhaps its stress or the nerves acting up. I need to lay off watching the news and politics. Though something tells me I'm not gonna shake off this feeling I keep getting. Maybe some of you have felt this weird sense of dread too.
Essentially at times, I feel as if I'm being held hostage. I get this sense of dread and this is accompanied by a feeling of dismay towards my fellow human beings. This feeling tends to occur when I hear McCain leading here or there with some segment of the population. Actually, not just good news about McCain, but in conservatives or Republicans in general.
Recently we've all been hearing the news about that McCain ad that basically implies that Obama is the anti-Christ. Heck, probably have seen it too, I know I have. "No, they can't be this gullible," I said to myself, as my eyes poured over that clip. But then, a sinister spark goes off in the crevices of my feeble mind, and a cloud of cynicism takes over. "Yes, Johnny, they are" it says to me quietly, repeating the mantra. I'll get a flash of images in my mind, Jesus Camp kinda stuff, and then that pang in my stomach.
That unease always confirms it somehow in me. Maybe I'm off base here, and a bunch of you know doubt (and perhaps correctly) will point out that we will win. There's that change thing going on, and folks are supposedly pissed at the GOP. Yet, watching the latest poll numbers, I asked myself this one question:
"If the country is really fed up with Bush and his kind, why wasn' Barack's lead lager to begin with?"
Now, McCain is either behind or ahead by a couple of digits. I start to get that hostage feeling again. Here we are, a group of forward thinking people and yet we actually face the possibility of having to living under a government that is completely backwards to logic. And why? Because we progressives are essentially held hostage by a large group of regressive superstitious gullible idiots who believe what their emails tell them.
Ok, perhaps superstitious was a wee bit going to far. I've come across those who are religious who are also very liberal. But I think you can gather as to whom I am talking about. And this really gets me, because it isn't just the religious right. Working class folks who ought to know better could be pulling the lever for John Airbus McCain!
Why...as someone who wants a cleaner Earth and more investment in jobs or equal rights for even my GLBT friends or heck even programs to help the poor, why I ask you must I live under a government that would espouse the opposite? In 2000 I voted for Gore, and my vote was essentially spat upon by the Supreme Court. 2004 was simply a repeat, but with a different sent of bastards.
Democracy, yes, we must live with what the voters choose. The people have a right to elect their folks to make up government. Yet 2000 wasn't Democracy in the end. And 2004 and perhaps now we have a half ass version, except instead of a group of judges, it will be blinded voters! Blinded by ignorance, blinded by hate, and blinded by their wacky perceptions that if they vote the GOP way they'll be part of the club.
When I was a Republican, thoughts like that crossed my mind, and the same for many others. "I'm gonna be rich someday, why screw myself with taxes" or some other nonsense that economic conservatives always thought. Its almost similar with other groups who vote "R". I've met mothers who have kids in Iraq or some other place, and actually feel that voting for the man from AZ is supporting their boys! Personally, if my kids were in Iraq, the opposite would be true, bring 'em home would be in my heart.
You want an America you can be proud of. You want a country that has a clean environment. A country that you don't need a college degree to put food on the table for your family and provide for what they need. The list goes on and on. Yet, despite (in spite)of our wishes to make this a better place, we have this wall. I want to call it the stupidity wall, but its worse than that.
Tomorrow I am taking my mother to the hospital for some tests. She's been having further complications since her heart attack. My mother has no insurance, and cannot afford it. She has to take time off of work to go all the way to Stroger Hospital way in the city, because to go near here in the 'burbs would financially kill her. That feeling in my gut returns, because of that wall, that wall of voters essentially preventing my mother from getting proper health coverage.
Don't get me wrong, I love democracy. Yet, and forgive me if I sound elitist here, I think some folks are too damn stupid to vote. Ok, I said it, and surprisingly no guilt. But frankly, my mind and heart and soul are tired of being afraid. I fear for my family and friends not from some supposed terrorist attack, but from the uncertainties in life that we could attempt to alleviate. Yet, ironically enough, it is fear that is feeding that wall. Civil rights, jobs, universal health, education, all held up by the wall waiting to be shot at by another Republican administration.
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