Every day, without exception, social and the mainstream media offer up reasons for voting against Barack Obama or Mitt Romney; the same reasons over and over and over and over again. God! It is so tedious and inane most of the time that it leaves me with the same disgusted shiver I get when I hear someone drag their fingernails down a blackboard.
Most of them are tweeted or posted by people who have never looked beyond their political bias at simple things like facts, political records and the real details being promised by both party platforms. Indeed, some of the most strident comments come from people who haven’t got a clue what is being offered by either party. They never allow objective analysis of the country’s economic or foreign affairs situation to get in the way of what they tweet or even what they believe.
Obama is black and cool, therefore he should be president. Romney is conservative and has nice hair; therefore it is he who should be president. The country would be no worse served if both names were simply put in a hat and one drawn to become president.
The rhetoric and hyperbole has has gone beyond partisanship and become blind fanaticism in many cases.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Barack Obama but these aren’t them even though they are the most often offered up by Twitter:
- He wasn’t born in the United States and is not an American
- He is a Muslim agent of Iran
- He is secretly gay and has had gay affairs while in the White House
- He’s stupid
There are also plenty of reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney but none of these are any of them even though they are offered up daily but those who support the President.
- He is wealthy and earned his money by raiding companies and firing people
- He wants to give more money to the rich at the expense of the middle class
- He has initiated a war on women
- He’s a racist
What a crock this stuff is. None of it is true for either candidate and none of it is relevant to deciding for whom to vote. It is noise and invective that is designed to bolster weak and prejudiced opinions that have no factual basis or to distract the opposition from exposing the weakness of the candidate they support and, quite frankly, there are more than enough weaknesses to go around.
Barack Obama is an intelligent, well-intentioned person who has simply failed to deliver on the promises he made in the 2008 campaign. The American economy is a disaster that can no longer be blamed on the previous administration, recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have underscored the weakness of his foreign policy and the country has become more divided and angry under his administration than under any that went before it.
Unemployment is too high, America’s credit rating has been downgraded again, and the national deficit has increased by $6 trillion in four years compared to the $4 trillion over the eight years of the Bush administration. In other words, it is accelerating.
Mitt Romney is an intelligent, well-intentioned person who stumbles from one gaff to the next. He is caught between the radicals and the pragmatic within his party and hasn’t figured out quite what to do about it. His approach to leadership is timid and weak. He lacks vision. Consequently, his policy initiatives also lack clear direction or consistency which becomes clear every time he opens his mouth. His economic policies are as rooted in the failed ‘trickle down’ theories of the past as Obama’s are rooted in some fuzzy concept of redistribution of wealth.
Neither candidate is Satan but neither is very good. It’s amazing to me that a few billion dollars in campaign funding can’t produce better than what either the Democratic or Republican parties have offered to the American people this year.
I’m conservative and I make no apologies for it but I am not an idiot nor am I so partisan that I would rather sink and drown because I voted a failed conservative ticket than voting for a liberal ticket that actually made sense. The problem in this election is that neither platform makes much sense nor is either candidate offering much hope for the next four years.
The Obama Administration is a record of failure and lack of direction and is offering a continuation of the policies that created that failure. The Romney platform is a confused mish mash of economic and social policies that are out of date and will simply continue the downward slide of a great nation.
Neither party is addressing the real issues facing the United States today.
More than 26 million Americans go to bed hungry or without knowing where their next meal will come from. Half of them are children. Where is the candidate who has a plan to deal with that level of poverty in America, let alone even thought about it?
More than 23 million Americans are unemployed. That is 2/3 of the population of Canada. Where is the plan to stimulate economic growth to produce jobs and not the low income and part-time jobs that have been produced over the past three years but real jobs; jobs that can sustain families?
Where is the commitment to reform taxation so that all pay their fair share? Both candidates are promising to tinker with taxation again but it will only add more complexity to the already 22,000 tax regulations that exist at the expense of one or another group of voters over another. It isn’t tax reform; it’s the same political pandering that has been going on for decades.
Where is the focused and comprehensive approach to foreign policy that goes beyond dreaming about past glories and continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again at the expense of American prestige and the lives of American citizens? How much longer will the leadership of the United States continue to pour billions of borrowed dollars into countries that have no respect for America and wish it harm? Where is the candidate who recognizes the failure of that stupidity?
The American people were promised change you can believe in during the 2008 election. What they got was more of the same confused leadership that bounced from issue to issue without much thought or direction and obstructionism from the opposite party at the expense of the people.
The simple fact is that American politics are now more about elections than governing. More effort, money, time and energy is spent getting candidates elected than in having elected candidates do their jobs. The President of the United States has spent more time traveling to and from campaign events this past week than in leading his people through the chaos of the latest radical Islamic uprisings.
For his part, Mitt Romney has criticized to varying degrees (depending on the latest news commentary) the actions of the President but always from some campaign event and never with any hard-core, specific alternatives offered.
It’s small wonder that those who would harm America don’t take the country seriously. They see a weak, confused leadership regardless of who gets elected. They see a super power that conducts itself like an adolescent with a huge military at best or standing like deer caught in the headlights at worst.
More than a decade has passed since 9/11 and all that has changed is that Americans are subject to more intense security at their airports than is seen in many American embassies and consulates around the world.
All of that makes me wonder why so many people spend so much energy and are so aggressive in trying to prop up one or the other candidates for president. It seems to me that the nation would be better served by Americans, regardless of political affiliation, coming together and demanding better from the two main parties rather than supporting one of them as they are now.
And I do mean demanding.
How? What if they held a campaign rally and nobody showed up to cheer and chant? What if they asked for campaign funding support and nobody wrote a check?
What if they held an election and nobody showed up to vote?
What indeed! Revolutions don’t always have to involve guns and guillotines. Sometimes the most revolutionary acts are a simple refusal to continue to play the game or to be pawns in the games being played by others.
Every time someone supports their candidate by calling supporters of the other candidate a liar, a racist, a fascist, a homophobe or any one of a hundred other ridiculous and inaccurate labels that I’ve seen on social media over the past week, they support the game and perpetuate the downward slide.
Every time marauding gangs of virulent supporters try to shout down or overpower legitimate criticism of their preferred candidate rather than engaging in a reasoned and informed discussion, they only support the further decline of their government leadership.
It’s like cheering for cancer rather than working to save the patient.
Imagine what would happen at both campaign headquarters if Twitter and Facebook suddenly went silent about the election. Imagine what would happen if people just stopped talking about the candidates and refused to publicly take sides.
Imagine what would happen if Americans refused to tell pollsters how they were going to vote or the mainstream media who they were supporting. Imagine what would happen if Americans simply refused to play the game anymore and stood silently until the political class took its head out of its ass and finally came to its senses.
Imagine what would happen if nobody showed up to vote because they were so disgusted by the alternatives being offered to them they refused to participate or be treated like morons as they are to a great extent now.
Imagine what would happen if people suddenly realized that freedom of speech include the freedom to say nothing at all.
It won’t happen, of course, but just imagine how much power there would be in that for the people compared to how little power is in all this absurd bickering, accusation and noise. Silence isn’t just golden…..
......it often has far more power than noise ever will.
© 2012 Maggie's Bear
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