My good friend Tricia sent my Facebook account a "gift" -- a "McCain '08" button. "Based on your post," she said, referring to this one ... If I were to have accepted it, everyone who visits the page would see that I was a McCain supporter.
Thing is, though, I'm not.***
It's a symptom of the binary thinking that most political people fall into -- and I'm not saying Tricia is guilty of this -- that, because one does not support candidate A, one must support candidate B.
And yet, in this case, I can't say that I'm a McCain supporter. I can say that I think he's more qualified ... I can say that, on the whole, I'm more sympathetic with the smaller government philosophy that used to guide the GOP ... I can say that I'd love to see every single vocal Obama supporter suffer through four more years of not having the White House ... but I cannot say that I'd put a McCain/Palin sign in my front yard, or a button on my Facebook page.
I have one, too -- I've got a big, ol' yard sign, sitting in my garage right now, for a non-political project I'm working on ... I wouldn't dream of putting it outside.
Yet, I might be voting for him. I might not. I vacillate, depending on the hour of the day. So ask me now, and I'm not voting for him. Ask me in an hour and I'm voting for Bob Barr. An hour later, I'm not voting for president at all.
***
The boomerang: I'm starting to learn how many anti-Bush folks felt over the past eight years, as I watch the press carry its chosen candidate to the finish line. I look around at the many gaffes of Joe Biden -- he's going to be a fun VP, I think -- and wish someone would call the Democrats on it. I see the smarm just oozing off Obama, and I wonder if I'm the only one, and if I'm not, I wonder why he's going to win anyway.
It's not easy when you see "the other side" as being not just wrong, but tragically so. It's a trap that I'm trying not to fall into, because it's dangerous and defeating. But I get it now. I understand it. Hopefully I'll learn from it.
Still to come: class warfare.
2 comments:
So you're sitting on the fence holding your Nader sign?
I'm still trying to understand how "the media" is electing Obama, when their power, influence and profit have been on the decline for at least 10 years, they couldn't swing the last two presidential elections and an ever-expanding universe of credible alternatives exist.
You're at least making me feel better about only have to decide between Bob Barr and saving a dot of ink for something more important than symbolic protest -- birthday cards, for example.
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