Obama for America!
Posted by Shaun Altman Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:05:02 GMT
I don't generally write political posts. I do a lot of business in the metaverse, and my general feeling is that business and politics should be separate enterprises. Following what was, in my view, one of the most important elections in American history though, I felt compelled to sit down and analyze some of my own thoughts on the topic. In an unusual departure, I'd like to share some of these thoughts with you, but please keep in mind that I talk with you today as a person, and as an American citizen. The views below are mine, and do not represent official views of, nor endorsements on behalf of the Metaverse Investment Fund.
The 2008 fight for the White House was long and fiercely contended, with serious campaigning spanning some 21-22 months. It was a much different campaign this time around though, in that the nominations brought a genuine choice between two truly great candidates. This is in stark contrast to recent history, where all we could really pick from as Americans was the lesser of two evils.
Now its no secret that I'm a registered Democrat. I'm not a subscriber to most of the extreme partisan ideologies though, and often find myself somewhere near the center. Its also no secret that I'm EXTREMELY anti-Bush, so this may come as a bit of a surprise to some, but I think we could have done a lot worse than Senator John McCain.
Having served as a wartime officer, Senator McCain knows a thing or two about wars, and we currently find ourselves embroiled in a couple of those. Unlike George Bush, he knows quite a bit about freedom and liberty, having fought for it. He knows a lot about human rights too, having personally been a victim of unspeakable acts of torture, and would have no doubt led admirably on global human rights issues as well as wartime conduct issues. He's also served our nation as a member of the United States Congress since 1982, and would have brought a wide breadth of leadership experience to the oval office.
Yes, as much as it bugs some of my friends on the extreme left to hear, we could have indeed done a lot worse than Senator McCain, had the election gone another way. In fact, we've been doing a lot worse through nearly a decade of the hands-down worst leadership that this nation has ever chosen to endure. The Senator from Arizona is an amazing guy in a lot of ways, with a rich history of national service. He didn't end up with my support in the end, but that wasn't because I have the kind of partisan hatred for him that has been so widely demonstrated recently, and it wasn't because I felt he'd have made a poor leader.
On the other hand, we had Senator and now President-Elect Barack Obama, another great choice for President, who we know absolutely nothing about. ...huh?!
That's right folks, as a nation, we've just decided to head to Vegas and roll the dice. Anyone who says that they have any clue whatsoever regarding how President Obama will actually govern is a liar. He's completely untried and untested in the capacity of the office that he's about to occupy. That doesn't make him a bad choice though. In fact, in the political and economic climate that we currently find ourselves in, both as a nation and as a world, I feel that it makes him a very interesting and indeed compelling choice for President of the United States.
I didn't choose to give my support to President Obama because of any kind of track record in the United States Senate which would lead me to conclude that he's the safer bet to lead us through these troublesome times. In fact, at the end of the day, we're probably taking a MUCH bigger risk with President Obama than we would have with Senator McCain, simply because our new president is such an unknown quantity. When it came right down to it, I did my best to weigh this risk, and decided to take a gamble. Like many of you, I took a chance on change.
President Obama speaks passionately about a number of issues that are important to me right now. I believe that it is exactly this passion that has a chance to bring us through a rather bleak today and into a brighter tomorrow. So, I took a chance on change.
One of the biggest problems that we face as a society today is our own polarization. The partisan politics of the extreme left and the extreme right rule the day. This only serves to drive us farther apart as Americans, with wedge issue after wedge issue distracting us from the things that are most important. This is THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUE we face, in my view. If we can manage to break the cycle of being so vehemently Democrat and Republican... if we can choose to come together around the things which unite us as Americans rather than spewing the hatred that divides us as the partisan extremists which so many of us have become... the rest will suddenly become a WHOLE lot simpler.
Let me give you a recent example from my own life of why this is such an important issue. Very close to the election, some news reports led me to be concerned that Obama may have adjusted his tax strategy at the last minute, which led me to take another look at Senator McCain. I struck up a conversation about this with a good friend, and fellow Obama supporter, in an attempt to gain some additional perspective. His most memorable response was to tell me to fuck off and stop whining. That's right, as far as my good friend was concerned, if I were to support Senator McCain in this election, I could fuck off and should stop whining.
Now I don't bring this up to cast a negative light on the man, who by the way remains my good friend. I bring it up to illustrate that the extreme political polarization of recent history serves only to turn friends and countrymen against each other. I'm sure many of you can think of similar personal, regional and national examples.
I could cite a lot more myself, but I'll leave it at this: We'll never get anywhere as a country when we start from polarized extremes such as "look, its either my way or fuck off, whiner", and these extremes are all too prevalent. We're a deeply divided nation, and we're in much need of healing.
I realize that this is general, and I could spend a lot of time drilling down from here into specifics. I don't really want to write a book tonight though, and looking up the page, I seem to be getting close already. :) So, suffice it to say, our division and lack of coherent national vision as a people were the main driving factors which led me to take a chance on a vision of change rather than to fall back on a proven leader.
President Obama talks a great game. He speaks of a United States, rather than red and blue states. He speaks of unity, peace, a return to international credibility, community and infrastructure building on a national level, cultivating a culture of involvement and national service, and more. He talks a good enough game to convince me to to take a chance on change.
Never in my lifetime has our nation been in such a bad situation on so many levels. We're in the aftermath of nearly a decade of an extremist, arch-religious, ultra-conservative political machine walking all over our constitution, walking all over us and walking all over the world as a whole. These wounds will not be easy to heal, and its going to take all of us to pull it off.
Its definitely not the time to bury our heads in the sand and live in fear of our situation though, because by contrast, never in my lifetime has there been a national environment that is so ripe for change and true progress. While the odds against meaningful societal changes are always long, for a variety of reasons, there's never been a better environment to take the chance.
Unlike a lot of my friends in the Democratic party however, I'm not celebrating tonight. I'm not celebrating because so far, we've only done the easy part. We've elected a president. We've come together as a nation, and we've picked. That was easy, it just took a few hours.
Now that we've taken what I believe history will define as one of our biggest national risks to date, its time for the hard part, which is giving that risk the best possible chance and the best possible environment to perform and pay off. President Obama has a great vision, but he can't pull off the kind of change that we sent him to the White House to deliver alone. If we REALLY want the kind of change we voted for on November 4th, its going to take each and every one of us participating to pull it off. We can't go home from the polls and leave our brave new leader in the trenches alone.
So I'm not celebrating tonight, because I recognize that the road ahead is long and hard. Instead, I choose tonight to be cautiously optimistic. I believe that the voice of the nation on November 4th testified to its desire for true change and real reform. Now its time to do the hard work. Its time to stand up and fight for the changes that we desire. We're at a major turning point as a nation, where its time to hop off of the 1990's gravy train and embrace a national culture of civic responsibility.
I believe that we can do this together. To quote one American hero, who would also like very much to see us all come together, America IS worth fighting for, and I think that as a country we recognize that. I'm ready to stand behind our new President, and join together with my friends from everywhere on the political spectrum, to build a better America for we the people - for all of us. I hope that you are too. I believe that we have the right man at the right time to lead us on this journey, and I'll leave you with that thought tonight. I remain cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to come out of our Democratic and Republican trenches to face these challenges as Americans. I believe that if we're willing to try though, then yes... yes we can! :)
I realize that a lot of people have become convinced that Obama is the great savior of the American soul, the redeemer of our sins of the past decade(s)/centuries, depending on who you talk to, and some even believe that he is this big centrist (appointment of ultraliberal Rahm Emmanuel as chief of staff, and having a record of voting for every tax raising, regulation increasing, and gun seizing piece of legislation as an Ill. state legislator and as US senator that he could get his hands on, notwithstanding).
I myself am certainly no supporter of Bush in most things he's done. His disregard of the sanctity of the US Constitution I found deeply offensive, and his willingness to follow the Cheney/big oil/neocon party line has helped to further the continuing bankruptcy of the country.
I distrust democrats more than republicans, however, for one simple reason: republicans have never treated me and other law abiding gun owners like myself as threats to national security like democrats have and continue to do.
Even after the Heller case convincingly told the left that the 2nd amendment recognises our preexisting, natural, human right to keep and bear arms, to defend ourselves and our families, Obama continues to state he believes that gun control laws to restrict peoples access to firearms is legitimate provided statutory cover can be created to declare the targeted persons as threats or criminals of some sort.
Furthermore, Obama and fellow liberals are trying to blame our capitalist system for the current economic morass, when the real culprit was their own attempts to legislate into existence home ownership for high-risk residents of poor neighborhoods who had neither the means, credit record, or ability to pay off mortgages, nor a history of showing habits of making payments on such liabilities. The massive amounts of poisonous mortgages fraudulently dumped on the mortgage securities market, by Fanniemae and Freddiemac, at the behest of congressional democrats, were the core cause of the poisoning of the entire mortgage securities industry.
The current mess is EXACTLY what you get when you try to use government to interfere in the free market, JUST as the current mess in SL is exactly what you get when the de facto state, i.e. Linden Lab, actively interferes in and bans various key economic sectors of the emerging virtual world economy of SL.
Such people however cannot be confused by the facts. Their minds are made up (just as they are made up that Obama is not actually a Kenyan born non-citizen who was improperly elected, because that would contradict the will of Oprah).
American HAS come together. We did so after 9/11 when 3000 Americans were unjustly murdered in their workplaces and while peacefully travelling. The world prior to 9/11 did NOT like Bush's stance that the US was NOT the worlds policeman and was NOT in the business of nationbuilding. 9/11 made America say, "ok, you want policing and nationbuilding? You are going to get it, American style, not the way YOU want it, but the way America wants it."
Unfortunately SOME Americans do not seem to think that America, for Americans, a sovereign nation defending itself, is worth standing for and fighting for. They have been mistakenly led to believe that internationalism, multilateralism, 'global villages' etc are inherently good, more important than America and what it stands for. They think that people like Kim, Ahkmadenijad, Chavez, and other tyrants retain moral equivalency, that islamofascists propaganda that the worlds ills are Americas fault are valid arguments. Domestically they believe various leftist propaganda like the Black Liberation Theology of Reverend Wright and Obama that says its all Americas fault, that we damaged our reputation and image by our actions, and that our reputation is not actually just smeared by the continued propaganda of the international leftists and islamofascists infiltrating and subjugating European and latin american cultures.
Whenever democrats get elected, folks like you Shaun always appeal for everybody to unite and move forward together. Tell me, have you ever responded to similar appeals when the Bushes or Reagan was elected? You certainly should know how I feel when dems consider me a threat to national security for my gun ownership, I am sure you feel somewhat the same way when some right wingers talk negatively about homosexuality.
The difference is that you made it through 8 years of neoconservative government in a culture that now is more accepting of homosexuality than ever before. No gay persons were shot in their homes by government stormtroopers, or burned to death because they refused to surrender to machine gun armed swat teams sent to collect a mere $5.00 tax.
My good libertarian friend, Claire Wolfe, said in 1992 after the Clinton White House sent Janet Reno to butcher children and their families in their homes in Texas, "It's too late to work within the system, and too early to start shooting the bastards."
It is convenient to talk about right wing repression, but the facts are that historically democrats are far more likely to use jackbooted government thugs on citizens, and give those thugs a pass when they kill innocents, than republicans do.
The US is no longer one nation undivided. There are Americans, and Globalists. The elections of the past two decades have clearly demonstrated this is a fact, the two halves of this country cannot agree on anything of significance. We are no longer one country. We are two peoples living under one fascist government that changes its flavor of fascism every 4-8 years depending on how effectively the media convinces its brainwashed viewers they were wronged.
You want me to be convinced otherwise, you and the democrats are going to have to prove it to me first. As Barry Goldwater said, "Get your hands out of my wallet, out of my house, and off my back." I can guarantee you that leftists like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and many others in congress see this as a historic opportunity to push forward an ultra-left agenda to eliminate those of us who continue to resist their left wing agenda and retain the ability to do so in an armed state if necessary. I can guarantee you that of the first ten bills before congress this year, two will be gun control laws, two will be tax hikes, and two or three will be regulatory increases on businesses of all kinds.
Bush gos down as having the worst record of any American President in history- mainly due to his shame of starting the war in Iraq and also for supervising the worst financial disaster since the great depression.
In bushes Decade the US has dotingly, lovingly worshipped the wrong god- the god of economic Index, has sacrificed the dollar on the alter of globalisation, and now all American citizens will suffer the consequences for generations.
I think that if Obama is to be a great American president, he will need to transform US Law so that capitalism serves society and not the other way around. They will no longer tolerate high unemployment, high crime levels and a drug and gun culture that is so repugnant an affliction.
Was wondering what you guys thought? Given the staggering US trade deficit, national debt, and the Fed growing dollars on trees and hurling them around from Bernankes helecopter- which currency will replace the dollar as the worlds standard currency? The Euro, the Yen- or perhaps the Chinease currency (whatever that is?) in our lifetime?