It’s rare that I mention politics here these days. But so many of my friends are getting such a hard-on for Obama that I just have to state my opinion: Obama isn’t saying anything. He seems like a really neat guy, somebody who would make a great mayor or senator (duh) or friendly-rich-guy. He’d probably be an awesome uncle. I just can’t get excited over someone who doesn’t really have any political history and doesn’t really seem to have an opinion on how the federal government ought to be run.
All of his speeches are motivational, emotionally-driven pep talks about how we need change and unity and all that great stuff. Uh, yeah. No shit. We need all that. How are you going to give us all that stuff?
Aside from the obvious traits that aren’t supposed to matter (and truly don’t, to me anyway), I just don’t see how he’s all that different from most other popular Democrats. Sure there’s an issue here or there, like net neutrality or corporate immunity for domestic spying, that he’s cast a “good” vote on, but the rest of his literature and positioning gives general warm-fuzzy responses to issues without saying exactly what he thinks we ought to do about them.
This election cycle is extremely boring. It’s clear that on almost every issue or candidate or party, the country is pretty equally divided. This suggests to me that these issues shouldn’t matter. Most of the “issues” shouldn’t be issues at all, at least not in the sense that the federal government should be trying to resolve them. Most of these things shouldn’t be criteria for choosing who’s the CEO of our aging corporation. But our idea of what we will allow the federal government to control has been slowly perverted over the centuries to where these things, instead of being handled by states and municipalities, are part of the big scoreboard we use to determine which shifty jerk we’re going to allow to screw up our country next.
Ok, so I didn’t really say anything here either. Call me a hypocrite, I don’t care: I’m not running for President. Those of you who know me better probably have a good idea of who I want to be President, and can probably infer from that why it’s pointless for me to stump for him.
The overall response to Ron Paul is both awesome and puzzling. That he even got the number of votes he did is comforting. Almost everyone I know has said something to the effect of “Well, I agree with him on pretty much all the issues, except for x & y.” Well? That sounds pretty fucking good to me. I’m fairly certain that most of my friends could probably only find 1 or 2 issues on which they agree with Hillary. And since Obama doesn’t appear to have a position on many issues, how is he the better choice?
For the first time, I realize that there is very little about which I agree with most of the Republican candidates. I still think most of the platform is a good idea, but that doesn’t matter at all since nobody appears to be honoring it. Except for Ron Paul. And if you support Ron Paul, you’re a nut, because he’s a creationist and a Christian, and once knew a guy who was kinda racist. Well, I’m neither a creationist, nor a Christian, and it’s pretty obvious to me that Ron Paul’s opinions on federal policy suggest (correctly, I might add) that it doesn’t fucking matter what you believe. Religion doesn’t belong in politics.
And don’t start down a debate path with me to try to prove Ron Paul’s a racist. It just isn’t true, and if you think otherwise you’re being dishonest with yourself and everyone else. Look, I know he’s not the perfect candidate. But to me, he seems to be the only one who has stepped back and said, “Ok… How should the US federal government handle these things?” and come up with some logical answers. There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate, at least not in the USA we’ve become.
My hope is that his sort of thinking will stick around, and that next time there will be somebody a little younger with fewer meaningless but politically damaging blemishes to take over and gradually show the country, and the world, what a real government based on the Constitution ought to do to keep us as free and happy as we were originally intended to be.
