Rants and Raves- Monthly Opinions and Editorials
APRIL 2008
Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editor or Rainbow Community Writing Project as a whole, but are solely those of the contributor.
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"How Can Patriotic Americans NOT Support Obama"
Have you, as a McCain or Clinton supporter or even an undecided or lapsed voter, done any research into Senator Obama's views, comments and methodoligies? Do you know, for instance that he wants to end lobbyist control of the United States government and give it back to the people of this country? In other words, he wants to take power away from the few "kingmakers" in this society like Karl Rove and Mark Penn and make sure that the American people know "everything" about who makes our decisions in Washington, how much they cost and what all the options are... for a change. How could this possibly be seen as a bad thing? For far too long our society has been complacent and apathetic toward the democratic process (I know, I was one of them) and we are very close to losing all control to the spin masters and extremists in conservative politics who "play to the death."
Case in point has to be "Bush's War" and the ideology used to rally support around it by convincing the American people that they were at risk from Saddam Hussein. As most of now realize, yes Saddam was a tyrant and a terrible leader, but he had nothing to do with 9/11 and never possessed the WMD's that the Bush Administration used to sell us "the war." Now five years later, this country has suffered 4000 plus casualties, is weaker militarily, poorer by billions, even trillions of dollars spent on waging what has become a civil war in someone else's country because of someone's personal agenda and a huge does of "Spin". Did we not learn ANYTHING in Vietnam? If you don't believe this, you should watch the Frontline special of the same name, "Bush's War" on PBS online and open your eyes to the facts.
Some of Obama's other plainly obvious managerial skills lie in the way he has galvanized the over 1 million supporters in his campaign, raising millions of dollars, mobilizing them to call, canvas and raise money by leaps and bounds over the other candidates. Several political science experts have recently been quoted as saying, "if you want to see what kind of presidency a candidate will have, take a look at how they run their campaign." Who would not want what Obama brings to the table in this regard? And who in their right mind would disenfranchise the hords of young people that his candidacy has brough to the forefront. For years, pundits have discounted the voices of the young (i.e.18-29 year old range) as flighty and undependable...well, not this time. This time there are scads of high school seniors and college students who hear in Obama's words what we all heard in John and Robert Kennedy's and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's; passion. They hear plain talk that they can understand, they hear sensible answers to powerful questions of social and political justice and equality, they hear his commitment to ending this farce of a war, his commitment against the stubborness of placating our enemies and alienating our allies and the commitment to reinstate this country as a world leader once again.
How can anyone who loves this country as much as I do, not want this man to do everything in his power to make all of this a reality? Why is it so hard for some people to believe in the impropable in this day and age? Do we all think we are too smart for that? Well, if that were the case how could we have possibly been bamboozled by "W" into putting him back in office for four more years? I think it's time to stop listening to pundits and spin doctors and start listening to our gut instincts about who and what embodies the definition of democracy for a change.
By Riley James, Author and Editor of Rainbow Community Writing Project
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