The Closing Argument

Over on Coffee Bean's thrilling blog, An Uneducated Housewife's Guide to Politics, the magnificent Mom has just a few hours to go before the fruits of her labors are realised.

She's certainly made me stop and think about all sorts of things. I've done a complete 180 on where I started, all those months ago.

On her blog, you can read her fine contributor's comments to this final question:

Closing Statements!!! Tell us all why we should get behind YOUR candidate in the comments!

This is my response to that.

It's a bit melodramatic, perhaps, but I've got a cracking headache, I've had a lousy day and if I hear one more person shout 'Socialism!' or 'Redistribution of Wealth!' or anything - and I mean ANY F'ing THING - in high-pitched, 'only-dogs-can-hear-it' Spanish to me, I swear I will crack out the chainsaw and start redistributing limbs.

My Response:

For me, the election is simple. John McCain is a great man and had some of (his own) great policies. However, in embracing the far right, he's embraced the entity that has led us in the wrong direction for the last eight years.

America is embroiled in a messy war overseas, buried in the greatest economic crisis since the depression, despised and mocked overseas, even more of a target for terrorism than before 9/11 and if the reason we've not been attacked again is thanks to anything, it's to bills that have removed our constitutional rights and freedoms and spat on everything the Declaration of Independence stood for.

Obama isn't a saint, or a messiah, or even the best of the two candidates on offer. However, he represents the best of the two PARTIES on offer. Because whether you lean too far to the right or too far to the left, the same thing happens. The system collapses.

Republicans fear socialism. Rational people fear the extreme form of unregulated wage-slavery that is the opposite of that.

I will support Obama because I want the freedom to make my own way in life and be independent. The Republicans currently offer MORE restrictive social policies and continued economic policies that will basically turn us all into 'sharecroppers' for foreign corporations who own the lion's share of an America the Republican government has bankrupted.

At my son's baptism, this weekend, this question KEPT popping up in my head:

• Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

That's not just a Christian philosophy. That's a humanist philosophy. An AMERICAN philosophy (even though it's from the Anglican book of common prayer.)

I honestly don't think the current Republican party represents justice (Patriot Act, Gitmo bay) it CERTAINLY doesn't represent peace (war in Iraq, bombing raids in so-called friendly countries like Pakistan) and all they've done over the course of the last eight years is stomp on human dignity.

I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of the 'screw everybody else, I'm the only one that matters' philosophy.

I'm sick of the stupidity of giving tax breaks to the ridiculously wealthy in the belief that it'll 'create jobs' or 'trickle down.'

I'm sick of the social conservatives pretending to believe in the constitution and then censoring us and forcing their beliefs on us to change America into 'their vision' of what is moral.

I just want to be left alone, to earn my own living, to have the security to buy a house and own a car and not have to worry about whether I can pay the bills EVERY week.

It USED to be that such a philosophy was embraced by the Republicans and if you read my blog, you'll see I fully supported McCain when he started his campaign because I believed he stood for change.

But he doesn't any more. The Republican party is a pathetic shell of what it once was and what it claims to represent.

I support Obama because I want to drag America back to being the land of the free, where everybody has an equal shot but NOT at the expense of those we tread underfoot.

I want justice, peace and human dignity and currently, only Obama can offer that.

I hope America makes the right choice tomorrow.

p.s. Can I just give a BIG shout out to Coffee Bean, whose blog has been entertaining, educational and just wonderful fun over the past few months. I think I need an election break - but I can't wait for next time. (Meghan McCain vs. Sarah Palin, 2018.)

Thanks, Coffee Bean. You're a STAR.