Maybe I should have foreseen massive resistance to the election of the first black President in history, but I never thought people would be advocating impeachment before he's even taken office.
Two things about this bother me more than anything else:
1) Impeachment is a serious thing. It should not be thrown about or used to enforce "family values," lest it degenerate into something that the Congress is loathe to touch when it is actually needed. I don't think we would be seeing this had McCain been elected. Yes, we would see protest and anger, but not calls for legal impeachment.
2) This man is our President-Elect in a time that is perhaps the darkest in America's history since WWII or the Great Depression. Obama hasn't even had a chance to do anything yet, and I think that when he is tested, he will show the world that he is the President that America needs.
The World wants Barack Obama to win this Tuesday. By "The World," of course, I mean the citizens of other countries who can't vote in the upcoming US elections. Don't believe me? US News and World Report says reported that
If the foreign diplomats in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly late last month could [vote], they'd go for Sen. Barack Obama.
BBC News's poll of 22,500 people in 22 countries confirmed that Obama is "favoured by a four-to-one margin." The Guardian, in association with eight other newspapers, including Le Monde (France), Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan), La Presse (Canada), and Reforma (Mexico), corroborates these results. Gallup polls conducted in 73 countries have shown a 3-1 margin of support for Obama. I think the evidence speaks for itself, but at the risk of being redundant I shall say again that the World wants Barack Obama to win.
Why do they want him to win? What is so different about Americans that we are don't have these huge polling margins for Obama? Perhaps we see something, a darker side to Obama, or a lighter side to McCain, that the rest of the world doesn't see. Perhaps the polls were rigged by communists. Plausible theories, all. However, I think that these polls reflect a fundamental difference in values between American and the rest of the world. We've seen this kind of split before - on climate change, on the International Crminal Court, on Iraq, on the United Nations, ad infinitum - but we have never seen it on a "domestic" issue.
We've never seen the world so interested in a domestic American issue before because the President of the United States has never been the position it is now - the election of a President is now an international issue because of the power weilded by the office-holder. The President apparently has the authority to violate national sovereignty, dismiss members of international border councils, and break US soldiers out of international jails. The title "the President of the United States" is barely adequate nowadays, as it implies both parity with the heads of state of other nations and a limitation of power to American soil - neither is true.
Yes, you can call the occupant of the office of the President "the Leader of the Free World," as they have been since the Cold War, and it's true that the President weilded an immense amount of international clout in the '50s through the '90s, but in the post-9/11, post-Bush world where "the US sneezes and the rest of the world catches cold," the rest of the world is just as invested, and perhaps more so, as America is in this election.
P.S. Sometime I want to do a big post or a series of posts analyzing this campaign. Maybe I'll get to it after Tuesday.
P.P.S. Tomorrow I'll be doing another post exchange with Kelsey over at Plastic Manzikert. It's something different, but I think it's really quite interesting, so do tell me what you think, all three of you.
P.P.P.S. This post was inspired by a very good article by Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer (UK) about Barack Obama and his rather surprising campaign. I encourage you to read it, not just because it's damned good, but because it gives another perspective on the American race for the White House. Speaking of new perspectives, if you haven't already, check out the Onion's coverage of "The War for the White House," it's very entertaining and truthy.
Taking from the rich and giving to the poor is an idea, part of the Robin Hood folk myth, that has been ingrained in our culture. We love to root for the "good guy" - Robin Hood - while we revile the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborn. And that is as it should be. However, we can change the terms just a little bit - make Robin the government that raises taxes on the rich to help the poor and make the Sheriff and Guy the politicians (I swore to myself I wouldn't use any modern names in this first bit) who want to keep the money where it is, and suddenly Robin isn't the good guy anymore.
Effectively, Robin Hood is redistributing wealth to the bottom 90% of Nottingham. This redistribution is exactly the kind of thing that Republicans have been slamming Barack Obama for even suggesting in attack ads for the past few weeks. Ever since I saw the first ad, I have been disgusted by them.
Redistribution of wealth is not a bad thing. It would allow us to ensure that in our society everyone has a decent standard of living because, let's face it, not everyone in America has a decent standard of living.
I know this is political heresy and I will never be able to run for office in this country after saying it, but those people who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" to become part of the higher echelons of society should be taxed to allow others to attempt to pull themselves up. The fact is that 99.9999999% people who live in poverty aren't living in poverty for lack of a will to work hard or to get a job, they just cannot, under current economic and social conditions, make enough to propel themselves out of poverty. That needs to change.
America needs to tax it's more well-off citizens to provide universal health care, daycare for children, etc. Civic virtue plays a role here. Those better-off should help those not-so-well-off because it is their moral duty to do so, not because it benefits them economically (oh no, did I just invoke morals? I thought only Republicans had those!).
Many people assume that the poor are taken care by not-for-profit organizations and volunteers. Unfortunately, there are nowhere near enough volunteers and nowhere near enough money in non-profits to fix the huge problem of the class-gap between the very rich (who just seem to be getting richer) and the very poor (who just seem to be getting poorer) in America today. Volunteerism doesn't cut it. The government should stop using non-profits as its scapegoats, step up, and take responsibility for its own citizens.
A government's first responsibility is to provide for and protect its people. We are currently failing the most fundamental mandate of any just government. America could do with a little redistribution of wealth, and since money is power, if we redistribute the wealth back to the masses, if we take from the rich and give to the poor, then we, the people, get back the power.
And that's exactly what the rich and powerful are afraid of.
Although I'm a bit late to the party, I just wanted to mention that yesterday there was a hugeObama rally (link quotes sign as saying "We Need Change." It actually read "Change We Need") on Johnson Field on the University of New Mexico campus. By huge I mean 45,000 to 80,000 people huge. That's almost a sixth of Albuquerque right there - an amazing feat for any event (Apparently this was the largest political rally ever in New Mexico, according to KOB-TV).
I was at the Obama rally as a volunteer, one of about 500 registering people to volunteer, assisting with the event, and generally doing anything we were told. What struck me about the Obama campaign was its amazing organization and the way everything ran so smoothly with only a few days notice and preparation.
I am incredibly proud of this movement because this is truly a "grassroots" campaign. We had volunteers of every age, every ethnicity, and just about every income level out there, working together for something they all believed in. The raw energy of it was astounding.
I think that this campaign, if it successful, will do something more than simply "bring change to Washington;" I hope that this campaign will change the way campaigns are run. We have the opportunity here to move away from a negative, top-down approach to political campaigns, and move towards positive, engaging, volunteer-supported, volunteer-driven, bottom-up campaigns that include everyone, not just "VIPs" or the party elite. For too many years politics has been the domain of a privileged few. Even the jargon of politics served to exclude people from the process. Now, though, we can go back to the roots of mass democracy, something envisioned by James Madison way back at the founding of the United States.
No one believed Madison that democratic-republicanism could be practiced with a large group of people over a large territory. We can now, once and for ever, prove that Madison was right; we can practice real democracy, democracy where the most important thing is a single person with a single vote. I'm not saying that party organization doesn't have its place, I'm saying that campaigns and parties should derive their powers from the same source that the government derives its powers: the people.
I realize this sounds as if I'm saying "go out and vote for Obama! He's the only guy who really wants to listen to the people!" And yeah...that's pretty much what I'm saying, I'm not going to deny it.
P.S. I've got pictures and a video of most of Obama's speech from last night that I will post as soon as I get it off the SD card.
First of all, let me just tell you that I burst out laughing when I heard that Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of the evangelical, pro-life beauty pageant contestant and former mayor of a town of 9,000 GOP VP-candidate Sarah Palin, is pregnant (check out the AHS Foliage post on that subject). I find this funny for many reasons, not the least of which is my mental image of soon-to-be-grandma (and lifetime NRA member) Sarah Palin marching Bristol's boyfriend down the wedding chapel aisle at shotgun point.
(indexed.blogspot.com)
To me, this kind of thing is representative of the double standard endemic of the"Grand Old Party." I find it amusing that a candidate lauded for her appeal to evangelical voters should become mired in a scandal such as this so quickly. If Palin can't keep her own daughter from going and getter herself pregnant, I shudder to think of her national plans. The Republican Party is such a disgrace (thanks due in no small part to the President) that many people are saying it would actually be a good thing if John McCain cut the convention to a stripped-down ritual of acceptance speechs for, at most, himself and Palin (the governor, not the pregnant one).
However, this whole "Trooper-gate" and "Pregnant-gate" stuff is really pretty meaningless when you actually consider where Palin stands on the issues. She wasn't chosen just because she was a woman, and no matter how long you listen to the "news" that will never be true. It helps, sure, it makes the Republicans look like they're "in-touch" with America, but really, Sarah Palin is the GOP VP candidate because she's more conservative than John McCain on almost every single issue. She scares me. She scares me like Dick Cheney scares me. That's bad. If John McCain dies in office, we will have her as the president of the United States. I cannot abide the thought of an ultra-conservative evangelical with enough power under her thumb to make the rest of the world "go away." No. So no matter how much of this trivial stuff comes up, we must remember who she is underneath all the makeup and fluff; who she is on the issues. That person, the Sarah Palin of the Issues, is scary.
(I also think this brings up a question that needs answering: now that we are apparently comfortable with nominating women for the highest posts in the land, what if one of them gets pregnant and is off on maternity leave when the phone rings at 3 AM? I know it might seem a bit sexist, but I'm being realistic here. What if?)
Anyway, I also wanted to mention the plight of journalists and activists in St. Paul, MN. Apparently the police presence there is so large and heavy-handed that on this, the first day of the Republican National Convention (and not even a real day, at that), we have had at least 6 shows of force and unlawful arrests of journalists and activists, including DemocracyNow! host Amy Goodman. This is ridiculous. It is a disgrace to this country that we cannot allow peaceful dissent and fair reporting of the news and of police shows of force. The American people and the press are meant to act as a balancing system against the government, and we cannot simply lie down for them to do as they wish, when they wish.
I wonder why there were no reported "Anarchist groups" protesting or reporting at the Democratic Convention?
The full text of DemocracyNow!'s press release is below, as is the YouTube video of Amy Goodman's arrest.
Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC
ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ
Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfully detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman's crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.
Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).
Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.
During the demonstration in which they were arrested law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. Several dozen others were also arrested during this action.
Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism's top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar is a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists from the nation's leading independent news outlet.
Democracy Now! is a nationally syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.
