We are all packed into the entryway at quarter to seven, waiting at the door as eagerly as the trick-or-treaters from just a few nights before. Soon the gate will open and we will each stampede to a booth, frantically and secretly connecting line to line with the thick black pen. As we wait, the PTA arranges their baked goods on a folding table. The cupcakes and cookies are spangled with both red and blue; there is no campaigning in this place. The pins and buttons are hidden, bumper stickers prohibited, and jackets zipped tight over the t-shirts we have been touting for weeks.
But it is clear who is on the tip of everybody's tongue. The whispers amongst us resound just as loudly as the televised chants of the night before:
O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma.We are an Obama nation.
Before noon, the newscasters are already making predictions. These counties did this, those counties did that, this candidate should have done that in those states. By mid-afternoon they are having an orgy of colors, splattering red and blue on everything from digital green screens to ice skating rinks. The topic of government is still absent from our conversation, as it has been largely for the past two years.
We are an Obama nation and we want Change with a capital C. The mudslinging is finally over and tonight celebrations will abound. But in the morning, where will we turn our intensely focused attention? If we try to continue the conversations of recent months, winners and losers alike will be at a loss of words. There is nobody left to slander. There are no records to lie about, no statistics to make up, no funds to be raised.
Instead, we will really have to take our own message of Change to heart.
We are an Obama nation and we need to Change our focus. Let us start by discussing the future rather than the past. The evil Bush is dead. In January we will send him away and tell him never to look back. He is powerless now, so we shouldn't allow him to dominate our discussions as we did at every rally, in every commercial, during every debate. Let's talk about the future and how we can work together to solve our problems.
The Obama nation must demand this Change.
We are an Obama nation and we need to Change our economy. Let us stop pretending that we are entering depression just because somebody lowered taxes. Let us admit that there is a larger problem here. History shows that larger governmental intervention in the economy only causes problems. Our economy will always have sudden, violent fluctiations and bubbles unless we Change the way our country works.
The system is flawed. Our federal reserve is inflating our currency without restraint so that the government may benefit and maintain its rapid pace of growth.
We may start by gradually returning Americans to the gold standard. For millenia, monetary systems like the gold standard encouraged deflation rather than inflation of currency. Ever since the government abandonded the gold standard, inflation has ruled. The practical impilcations of these two economic trends contrast starkly. Under deflation, the prices of goods decrease with time, allowing a higher standard of living for everybody. This encourages the rapid advancement of technology and countrywide prosperity for rich and poor. Under inflation, the prices of goods increase with time, always staying slightly ahead of wages, which struggle to keep up. What this means for Americans needs no explaining: we have been living it for decades.
Recently, politicians have pinned our current economic troubles on the evils of the free market. There is only one problem with this theory: we have not lived in a free market for decades. Republicans and Democrats alike have lead us further and further down this road of big government and now present us with false choices: shall we make the government bigger the way the Republicans want it or the way the Democrats do?
This generation, the Obama nation, must for once demand a real Change.
We are an Obama nation and we must Change our foreign policy. Our problems in Iraq have dominated discussion in the past two years, but again this has been a false choice. Iraq is ending soon. One side admits this fact, one side attempts to mask it. Both have known for months that the war in Iraq will end within one year.
The real Change we must seek is a far more general one. At this moment American troops are stationed in over 130 countries around the world. Over 75,000 are stationed in Germany alone. The government must stop trying to control the planet. We need to return to our own roots and take all of our troops home. Perhaps the government could use the hundreds of billions of annual savings to gracefully phase out social security (which, by either party's admission, is on it's way out the door). We must no longer be fooled into thinking that our security depends on the government tramping around the world and meddling in the affairs of others.
This generation, the Obama nation, must demand this Change.
We are an Obama nation and we must Change the government. We have listened now, for two years, to criticisms of the evil Bush. It is time that one of his greatest evil doings be taken to task by a generation of revolutionaries and the candidate they elected.
Every president since the beginning of the twentieth century has used signing statements to practically nullify legislation passed by congress, or at least pieces of it that he dislikes. George Bush has been one of the worst abusers. When a president signs a bill into law, he often accompanies it with a signing statement which states his intent to ignore certain pieces of the legislation. We must bring this to an end. We must limit the powers of the president to what they once were and restore our system of checks and balances.
This generation, the Obama nation, must demand this fundamental Change.
The Obama nation has many great things to look forward to. This new government will be more open and honest and it will deny lobbyists the chance to affect unfair influence. It will Change the course of global warming and will spurr a revolution in green technology. It will reform immigration. Most importantly, this new government has a better chance than any before it to energize and revitalize a forgotten class of people--people who have started at the bottom of our economic and educational food chains. Our new leader was once one of these people.
We are an Obama nation now.
Our time has come for real Change, Change we can believe in. It is not up to Barack Obama to Change this country, it is up to his nation. It is up to us to demand these real Changes, not the artificial Changes that we have been force-fed our entire lives. It is up to this Obama nation to look towards the future rather than dwell on the past. It is up to us, the Obama nation, to educate ourselves to the greatest extent on the affairs of the government so that we may decide for ourselves whether we approve of its actions.
Most importantly, it is up to us to question ourselves and our own conventional thoughts. A new president and a new government bring the hope of a new age, an age of Change. Many things will Change without us raising as much as a finger or casting as much as one more vote. But we ourselves will not and can not Change if we do not take the initiative to do so. If we do not take that initiative, we will fall vicitim to the whims of policies we do not support and a country we do not control. Tonight, we have proven to ourselves that we can take at least one step towards such a movement, but it must not end here. We must continue to listen and watch. We must continue to discuss and debate. We must continue to stand up for what we want, what we believe in, and what we truly know is right.
Our generation, the Obama nation, must Change.
This is an actual poster I saw:
And these are actual bumper stickers:
It's amazing what one little blog can accomplish in a few short months!
Let me begin in reverse, by reiterating my position on mudslinging. It is not needed. It doesn't even matter if it is true. All politicians do bad things. Barack Obama has done them and John McCain has certainly done them (though I can't find many bad things done by John McCain that compare to Obama). We should discuss issues and policy (government), not rumors, theories, and mistakes from the past.
I voted "present" 133 times in less than three years because....JOHN MCCAIN IS GEORGE BUSH WITH A MASK ON!
The editorial points out the shaky environmental leadership from John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts senators. Although both scored a 93% voting-record rating from the League of Conservation Voters, they are far from environmental role-models.