This presidential election is sadly overshadowing everything else happening in my life right now.  While I plan to go out and enjoy the fall foliage while it is still at its peak, I wonder if these last few days before the election will mark the last time I’ll ever be able to enjoy an autumn season in a relatively free country again.

It’s often hard to take the predictions of doomsday and the end of the world seriously, regardless of who’s making it, and I’m sure Obama supporters think those of us who oppose him are overreacting with our dire warnings of utter catastrophe and disaster, should he be elected.

I just saw a movie though called Empire of the Sun (starring an adolescent Christian Bale), and what struck me about the movie was just how quickly everything had changed for one little boy.  One day he was living the good life in a peaceful and affluent town, and then quite literally the next day everything changed, as the Japanese invaded and turned his world upside down.  Now all the rights he had previously enjoyed as a British National disappeared into thin air, and he ultimately ended up in an internment camp, where he would reside for the entire duration of World War 2.

It can happen that quickly, without warning.  And yet, even while it’s happening, we still can’t believe it.  But it’s that lack of belief that will ultimately doom us, the overconfidence in thinking our rights just can’t be taken away from us that easily, the idea that even if we make a bad choice for a President, it won’t be so bad that our nation as we know it would come to an end.

And that’s the problem.  What I cannot stand more than anything is having to deal with people’s utter refusal to listen to reason.  It brings out the absolute worst in me.  They are so blind in their hatred and so unforgivably ignorant that they are willing to back a horse that they in truth know very, very little about.  A horse that may in fact be a trojan horse.

Just how is it that a guy with a resume as thin as air beats someone like Hillary, who despite her turbulent past is a seasoned politician and has a record for being a centrist and appealing to a broader base of voters?

How does a guy who breaks his campaign promise to use public financing and instead collects over half a billion dollars in campaign funds (refusing to disclose who’s been donating to him) not raise any red flags with his supporters or the media?

How is it that a politician from Chicago who has associated with and befriended some of the most extreme radical figures in America (denouncing their past acts only during an election season, and never before) not cause some of his supporters to be just a little bit uneasy?

How is it that Obama can talk about a “civilian national security force” without voters seeing visions of the Gestapo marching the streets?

How is it that he can evoke adoration and idolization amongst his followers, even while they would all be hard pressed to name any significant accomplishment he’s made prior to running for President?

How does the prospect of a one party system with a possibly filibuster-proof senate and a White House placed in the hands of a man with a mysterious past and an alarmingly extreme voting record not at least give voters pause?

Why do his supporters continue to believe he will cut taxes despite him having no record of cutting taxes before, and especially now that he’s already reneged on several key campaign promises and changed some of his platform positions?  How can he still be considered trustworthy?

We have gone seven years without a terrorist attack, and it wasn’t by sheer luck.  Do Obama’s supporters really believe we’ll continue to be safe as long as Obama doesn’t antagonize the terrorists and play favorites with Israel so much?  Have we so soon forgotten what Iran did with Jimmy Carter?  Will his supporters turn a blind eye to Russia’s own enthusiastic hope in his election, even while they set their murderous eyes on satellite states like Georgia and Poland, or to Iran licking its chops at the prospect of overrunning Iraq should our troops leave prematurely?  Can we really be expected to believe Iran will suddenly cease its nuclear ambitions and calls for Israel’s destruction so long as Obama treats them nicely, or worse, pursues a policy of appeasement?

How can Obama, who hides his belief in reparations for black Americans by using phrases such as “economic justice,” and who has enthusiastically thrown his support behind the machinery of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae be trusted to handle the financial crisis effectively and without bias?

How can we turn a blind eye to what happened to Joe the Plumber, who saw his privacy and rights as a citizen violated because he asked a question?  How can we not believe that this wouldn’t happen on a much larger scale should Obama become President?

I know there is a lot to dislike about McCain, but there is one thing that should never be in doubt: he truly loves his country.  Whether his ideas are wrong or not, there can be no mistake that they are borne out of his sense of patriotism and his desire for America to continue growing and thriving as the greatest nation on Earth.

As for Obama, just the opposite could be said of him.  I do not believe at all that he loves America.  Instead, what he loves is the idea of what he thinks America should BE.  He sees this nation now as being inherently evil, and believes himself to be the man who can mold and shape it into an image more befitting his own political ideology and belief system, one that is steeped deeply in the anti-American sentiments expressed by so many his mentors (including Reverend Wright), no matter how much he might deny it.  While McCain wants America to continue being America, Barack Obama instead wants it to become Europe, complete with a nanny state that coddles its citizenship, yet at the price of eroding some of our most basic and cherished individual rights.  What we might gain in free health care, we will most assuredly lose in freedom.  As government increases, liberty decreases.  This has been the lesson of history, and behooves us to always remember it.

So I am making one final plea to those intending to vote for Obama; one final appeal to your sense of reason.  Do not vote for this man.  I speak as one who is a dyed in the wool conservative, yet one who could have lived with Hillary Clinton being President.  The most powerful elements of the Democratic Party subverted the will of its voters and nominated someone whom they could project their own hidden agenda onto, a man whose past we still know very little about.  You must see this.

And as much as you might loathe McCain, he is the devil we know, and I would prefer the devil we know over the devil we don’t know any day of the week.

But alas, I suspect I’m writing all this in vain, knowing you will not be persuaded, and indeed I count myself an absolute failure here, in that I have never been able to convince anyone of anything, no matter how hard I try.  But the wool has been pulled over your eyes, and you will not see.  You will pull the lever with your mind clouded with hatred for Bush and all things Republican, or perhaps because you believed the campaign slogan of “hope and change” and your heart always skips a beat at the sound of Obama’s baritone voice.  Having tossed in your lot with the great unknown, you will go about your life’s routines, blissfully unaware of the “Japanese” that may even now be lying in wait in the trenches, biding their time.

God help us all.

Tags: america, autumn, barack hussein obama, barack obama, campaign, christian, Christian Bale, conservative, country, disaster, doom, doomsday, fall foliage, freedom, georgia, God, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, Israel, jimmy carter, joe the plumber, john mccain, political ideology, president, presidential campaign, presidential election, Russia, vote, voters, voting
Categories: Politics and Poker
 
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