Why Am I an Obama Supporter

I plan on voting in this next election. Although I've had the right to vote since 1986, I have exercised my right to not vote. In general, I dislike politicians. Besides my life not much being changed by whomever is in office (both locally and nationally), I have a deep suspicion of people who are so hungry for power. I know that I can probably do as good a job as most politicians do, but that still doesn't inspire me to run for office. I don't understand the motivation to be a politician--I just don't.

As far as my own political beliefs, I'm really quite in the middle, overall. There are some things I firmly believe in that are historically "Republican" and some that are historically "Democratic." What I don't believe in is extremism--either on the right or the left. I think people that are way right-wing or way left-wing are just wrong. And there is no party that matches my views, no candidate. That remains true today.

On the right, you have people that are sheep--they listen to leaders who are trying to advance their own agendas and they don't question what they are hearing. They accept it when Rush Limbaugh tells them that Alaskan pipelines are good because pipelines give the animals that live in Alaska a warm place to snuggle up to (no, really). They believe when their religious leader tells them that some parts of the Old Testament need to be obeyed 100% without question (man shouldn't lay with man) and others can be ignored (stone the wife if she cheats) and that's all in line with what God says. This type of blind following holds true to all people I've met who profess far right-wing views.

On the left, you have some fairly whacked out ideas as well. Conspiracy theories abound. The government is seen as some evil that needs to be tossed down in favor of some unspecified perfect society that somehow doesn't need governing. The common theme with everyone I've personally met with these leftist views is that these people universally, and sometimes I think unconsciously feel they are smarter than others AND that they are somehow better human beings for it.

Of course, these generalizations aren't true across the board, but they are true for the people i have met.

Long story short, it is for all these reasons that I have not bothered voting. And then we come to George W. Bush. I never voted for Bush. But I didn't vote to not put him in office. Even if I did in '04, wouldn't have mattered. I was never "for" the war in Iraq. I had a long "discussion" with a friend of mine who was in the first war in Iraq how that war was not justified. We were justified in kicking the Iraqis out of Kuwait, but the rest of the "war" was just gratuitous, unnecessary and a failure. Because really, what was accomplished by it?

The second War in Iraq just as unjustified.

And then the Patriot Act. WTF? How can we call ourselves Americans if we suspend some of the fundamental reasons that make us America? George Mason refused to sign the Constitution unless it included the Bill of Rights. Its something that every single American benefits from (more than they even realize) and yet we just gave one big piece of that up without a fight. Frightening.

If we all read about an election in a small African country where the president was moved into office even though the majority of voters voted for someone else, and the area of the country where the president's brother ruled bent the rules to push him into office--well, we'd all be convince the election was rigged or tainted. Well, it happened here in the US.

Wiretapping Americans without anything other than the need to say that the government needs to listen in? Problematic.

We've stopped being America, and that needs to stop.

Of the two candidates, John McCain seems to be the more centrist one. Obama seems like one of the "extremists" I dislike. However, this is only the way things seem. The real question is what compromises the two candidates will make to get elected. McCain will compromise to the right, Obama to compromise to the center.

In the end, the choice is clear. The politics of the last 8 years, as influenced by the neo-cons, or an attempt at something, anything different. I choose the latter. I choose Obama.