let that be your last battlefield
Here is a sort of quiz. In each case try and idintify if the position is that of Obama or Mccain. (rugular readers here have probvably figured out even before reading as single point that there is a punchline at the end. Dont give it away too soon? Ok?)
- Supports emberotic stem cell research
- Wants to reduce the number of abortions preformed by preventing the need to have one.
- Defined mariage as being between a man and a woman
- Thinks the issue of gay mariage should be left to the states
- Voted againt a constitutional adnment banning gay mariage
- Wants to strength the legal protection under civial unions to bring it up to par with the legal protection of mariage.
- Wants to seperate the issue of gay civial rights from the word ‘mariage’
- Co sponcered a senate bill that would require people placed on the sex offender regestary to regester their internet idinty to the FBI
- Believes that it is the parents responsibality to know what their children are expose to on the internet
- Has denounced fundementalist christian leaders as intolerant
- Has campaigned along side anti-gay fundementalist christians.
It should be noted that I had a rather hard time fleshing out this list. Neither canidate has been all that voval on any kind of sex issues. I would have liked to have included statements about the ‘war on porn’ or some anti-obscenity pledge to ‘clean up the public airwaves’ or something like that. But its just not a part of this election cycle. Gas prices, global warming, imigration, universal health care, and taxes all are getting the major bulk of public dialog.
All recent polling on relitive importance of each issue always has sexual rights as the bottom of the list. Thats when its on the list at all. The public is just burnt out. Decades of having sexual related issues being critical has just left people numb. And both Obama and McCain have left this issue on the back burner.
And that statement shoudl give away the punchline to the list. Obama and McCain are doing the same thing. The items on the list are not true for EITHER Obama or McCain. They are true for BOTH Obama and McCain. In each case, the list item is a policy or position that has been done by both canidates.
More and more people are waking up to the fact that every politician is virtualy idintical to any other. The website Political Compass has an intresting chart of where politicans stand. The grouping is a lot closer together than the retoric of ‘all democrats are extremest far far left’ and ‘all republicans are extremest far far right’ would itherwise indicate.
The division between parties is mostly artificial. In a way it reminds me of the way that gang violence is actualy incouraged inside of prisions. As long as the cripts and and the bloods are fighting againt each other, they wont be fighting the guards. So an issue that any outsider would see as ridiculiously minor is instead changed into a topic that is worth fighting and dying for. Politics is no difrent. They even have the same colors. Red vs Blue.
In this presidental election, I could vote for a carrear politician US Senator who rose to faim by writing a best selling book, with a more liberial voting record than anyone else in their party, has flipfloped on their opinion of the Iraq war, voted for expaning federal wiretaping, has fell for the retoric of global warming, have gone againt president Bush to call for reducing global nuclear weapons but suports nuclear techonology for domestic energy policy, who pledges to bring change to washington without ever defining what exactly change is, and whos status as a US citizen and theirfore his elegibility to even be president in the first place is questionabal ….. or ….. I could vote for a carrear politician US Senator who rose to faim by writing a best selling book, with a more liberial voting record than anyone else in their party, has flipfloped on their opinion of the Iraq war, voted for expaning federal wiretaping, has fell for the retoric of global warming, have gone againt president Bush to call for reducing global nuclear weapons but suports nuclear techonology for domestic energy policy, who pledges to bring change to washington without ever defining what exactly change is, and whos status as a US citizen and theirfore his elegibility to even be president in the first place is questionabal.
George carlin said it best. “This country was bought and sold and paid for a long time ago. The shit they shuffle around every four years doesn’t mean a fuckin’ thing.”