"Peace is not a militaristic process...

...and it's certainly not a political process."












I kept my mouth shut fairly tight during the last presidential election for several reasons. I'm a fairly liberal person, but that doesn't make me a democrat, and it's never made me an Obama supporter. However, essentially all my friends label themselves as "liberal" or "democrat" and seemed to believe that Obama was going to play some sort of saviorial role in the dawning of a New America. Any time i so much as began to question that viewpoint, I felt like I was going to be burned at the stake for blasphemy. So I stopped talking about my opinion on it. I saw people cry tears of joy over the fact that Obama got elected and rolled my eyes as it happened. I watched his election on television the night that it was announced and thought, "My god, Americans are in a glorious uproar over a dude that is going to be just like any other president!" I didn't believe his assertions. Gay rights? Really? What has he done to further gay rights? He designated a lame day of Gay Awareness or something ridiculous like that. And the war? Please. Watch the first 20 seconds of the video and we can all easily see what a blatant "turnaround" he's had in his viewpoint on war. (Let us recall the joy of his supporters when he received a Nobel Peace Prize at the beginning of his presidency!). If you would have taken of your rose-colored glasses and quit listening to Fox, CNN, and NPR during the elections and dug a little deeper into some lesser-known news organizations, you could have seen all of this coming.

I wish I could say "I told you so," but the fact of the matter is that I didn't actually tell anybody so -- because I lost my gall and quit voicing my opinion on Obama during the presidential campaign! I stuck out like a sore thumb in the midst of all my liberal friends, professors, and classmates whenever I'd bring up any point that shed Obama in a bad light. So I stopped talking about it because it made me uncomfortable to argue against the views of those who were close to me. Shame on me!

Hey man, the other guy wasn't any better. I'm not saying anyone should have voted for McCain; he's a douchebag. When it came down between McCain and Obama, I went to the polls and voted for Obama because I decided he was the lesser of two evils. SHAME ON ME AGAIN! I still voted for evil! And now my country is paying for it with the blood of more soldiers and the absence of rights for our homosexual brethren and sistren.

We all know this. But our country is broken. Our political process is broken, and this "two-party" system is killing democracy as we know it. Do we really think that revolution will not occur? That the current system is sustainable? When I spoke of revolution 5 years ago, people scoffed. Now it is easily a rapidly-approaching reality and I hear people speak of it more freely in normal conversations. Everyone is mad. Republicans are mad because they've hated Obama from day 1. Democrats are mad because their purported saviour has made such a floundering fool of himself that the entire party looks ridiculous.

If you aren't mad... then you aren't listening.