tim | Lest we forget.

Seven years ago, about 3000 people died in a terrorist attack in the United States. Ever since, at least 87,000 civilians have died in Iraq in a war that the US started as a misguided attempt at retaliation or a cleverly calculated use of pretext. The war has met with little domestic protest, and in 2004, those who thought it was at least a little bit important to stop it failed to gather enough of a majority to elect a president who cared at least a little about ending the killing.

But let us put aside our past failures. This year, we have a chance to redeem ourselves. It would be wrong to say that anyone has absolute confidence that Barack Obama can or will end the war, but he is at least unbeholden to the corporate interests that keep the war going. And thus, we have no reason to believe he won't make a good-faith effort to stop the killing.

This is an area of moral certainty. If you're American, are you going to do everything you can to elect a leader who will shift our resources away from killing foreigners and back to healing our sick, employing our unemployed, cleaning our environment? Or are you going to assume that history is something that other people make and politics is other people's problem?

This is not the year for namby-pamby platitudes about how you should support whichever candidate makes you feel the warmest and fuzziest inside. If you're American, and you're not giving your time to talk to your fellow Americans about why they should support Barack Obama, then -- in a far inferior tack, but one suitable for those with crippling social anxiety or without physical energy -- you can at least write a check. If you can't write a check, and can't talk to people, then [nondenominational-deity] bless you. I'm guessing that's not so for most people reading this.

If you were going to tell me I should leave my politics out of this day, then don't. Leaving my politics out of it means leaving my politics out of it so that there's more room for your politics to fit into it.

To those of you who are eligible to vote in the United States: Nonvoters, McCain voters, I'm not asking you to defend yourselves and so I don't need to hear your defenses. Please, just go sit in the corner for a while and think about why you hate your country so much.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I would almost prefer him to be evil.

Let me explain.

Actually, let me first make clear that I will be voting for Obama, am encouraging others to do so, and really hope that he is our next president.

However, watching this election cycle has made me aware of how much I am creeped out by charismatic idealists. I don't know if I can blame him for the charisma. And hey, I can appreciate it. The idealism... I guess I worry that idealists, confronted with political realities, are a bit likely to be loose cannons. Or ineffectual. He's impressive. I don't know if he has the skills to do the job. Then again, the bar is awfully low and I'm sure he will be a big improvement.

Discussing this the other day, K's comment was that there are apparently three stages politicians go through -

1. This must all be some dreadful misunderstanding, and we can sit down and work it out.

2. Everyone's evil!

1. I am evil.

(To which I replied that even before the current administration I was pretty sure I preferred evil to incompetent... though of course this administration has been working on unity there.)

I don't think he's naive enough to think "we can sit down and work it out". Community organizers know that imbalances of power are not the results of dreadful misunderstandings, but of people with power acting dreadful to people without it in order to keep their power. And that's really the only political reality there is, isn't it?

But yeah, it's a sad world where we expect idealists to be more likely to be something else in disguise than to be authentic. And that's also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy; people rise to the heights that others expect of them, usually.

My issue is not that I don't think he's a real idealist. It's that I'm afraid he's too much of one.

I don't think he could have managed a campaign so well if he was too much of a real idealist. But maybe that's just me.

Well, I don't know, I figure that I'm kind of cynical despite being only 27 and not having seen much political reality face-to-face, so he can't be a complete idealist with the age and experience he has.

Is such an idealist that he'll be impractical? (Like Carter, a bit?)

I would almost prefer him to be evil.

I don't mind politicians in general being evil. That's why we have the current system of government and not totalitarianism (right?). But there aren't enough checks on presidential power right now. This is a sad state of affairs, and I would like to see some (preferably non-evil, but I'll live with power-jealous) congress-people (or judges or what-not) step up, say "It's not fair! I was here first!" and do something about it.

As for which is worse, evil or incompetent? I suppose the latter, because I can at least grasp the motivation for evil people.

Lest we forget.

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