A Note on the Conventions

Since I am a moderate, and not affiliated with either political party, I wanted to dedicate time to watching both conventions, or at least the speeches that interested me. I wanted to hear, for instance, what Rudy Giuliani had to say and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden and John McCain and Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.

So I listened to Biden’s speech and heard important comments about the path of ruin that so many years under a neo-conservative regime has brought us. I heard him outline programs for getting America out of debt and getting our working people back to work. I heard him praise John McCain’s military service, but say that when it comes to common Americans, McCain just “doesn’t get it”.

So tonight I started to watch Rudy Guiliani’s speech, and what did I hear? The importance of continuing to fight in a war that the majority of American people don’t want, in a country where the citizens and government have clearly stated that they DON’T WANT US. I had to stop watching the speech when Giuliani started mocking Obama’s role in Chicago as a community organizer, getting the same kind of snyde, snickering response from the crowd that the word “France” got from the simple-minded several years ago.

So I fast-forwarded to Sarah Palin. Just like the rest of America, I don’t know much about her. I mean, in my opinion, being Mayor of Wasilla and first-term governor of Alaska doesn’t qualify one for the second-highest job in the land. I grew up in Chugiak, which is about halfway between Wasilla and Anchorage, and let me tell you – if Chugiak is the middle of nowhere, Wasilla is somewhere in the suburbs of nowhere.

So what did I hear from sexy librarian Palin? Well, to start, an endless litany of how great her husband and five kids were.

Then I heard the snideness and snickering start. This is one thing that simply drives me nuts about the neo-conservative run Republican party. They can’t seem to make an argument about issues, just snide one-liners about their opponents. Then came the typical cracks about how Democrats, unlike the REAL AMERICANS, the Republicans, don’t know anything about what it’s like to live in a small town. Because as we all know, small town people are the TRUE heart and soul of America, right? We in the cities… well, we’re just… something else. She spoke of the virtue of the small-town working class, and how important these laborers are to American economy. That is, until the Republican Congress and George W. Bush managed to outsource all of their jobs. She neglected to mention that, or make any mention of how they planned to get these jobs back INTO the small towns that they’ve bled dry. A quick side-note here… Honolulu, Hi where Barak Obama was born currently has a population slightly higher than Anchorage, Alaska… and let me tell you folks, Anchorage is a SMALL town. I imagine that Honolulu seemed even smaller for a black kid of mixed heritage. Scranton, PA, where Biden was born on the other hand, currently has less than a hundred thousand people. A small town by anyone’s lights. Not as small as Wasilla, granted, but it would be hard to be smaller than Wasilla and find a place on the map. Bill Clinton came from Hope, Arkansas, which has just over ten thousand people now. Still freaking SMALL. I, un-American city dweller that I am, spent the first eight years of my life in Altus, Arkansas, which now has a population of about 800 souls. Oh, and John McCain? Hard to say – he was born on a Naval Air Base outside Panama. So can we cut the crap about how great people from small towns are, folks? The people from small towns have the same hopes and dreams, successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses as everyone else, just about different things.

Then Sarah Palin started the same kind of snide, backhanded crap about “community organizers” (sneer where appropriate) that Giuliani was pulling, and I had to turn her speech off. One of her jabs was that being mayor of a small town was similar to being a community organizer, but with “actual responsibilities”.

Okay, Ms. Palin… since you, going from being mayor of a small town to being governor of the state with the third smallest population in the country obviously have no idea about the troubles of people in cities… where most A M E R I C A N S live, I might add… please allow me to educate you.

Community organizers work hard to try to bring peace between opposing factions and gangs in communities. I guess that you wouldn’t know how important this is since you’ve never lived in a place where you’re afraid to walk down the streets at night. And I am NOT mocking you when I say that, Ms. Palin. Remember – I KNOW Wasilla, Alaska. Remember also that I grew up in Chugiak, which has about the same population and demographic as Wasilla. We felt safe at night. When I moved to Anchorage, I started to get some idea of the troubles of cities (albeit very small cities), although most of the reason that you felt unsafe there was drunks – of which Anchorage seems to have a disproportionately high population.

They also coordinate activities for neighborhood kids to try to keep them out of trouble, out of gangs and off drugs.

They also work as liaison between often uncaring and unreachable city governments (and the police officers that represent them) and the people of the cities who frequently feel left behind by these people.

The work that community organizers do is important, Ms. Palin, and eventually perhaps, you’ll come to realize that any job that tries to help America’s troubled youth is a GOOD job and not something to be mocked and ridiculed.

It also made me a little ill to hear the Republicans talk glowingly about John McCain, who they worked so hard to tear down in 2000. And no, you don’t get to distance yourselves from this crap because I saw a lot of the same nonsense during the primary.

When are you republicans going to learn that, in the words of Barak Obama, it’s time to start building America up instead of tearing each other down? John McCain’s campaign manager was quoted as saying that they didn’t even have to attack Barak Obama on the issues – negative personal ads would be sufficient. Shame on you.

On McCain, by the way? I was a big McCain supporter until recently, when he took what the New Republic phrased his “sudden lurch to the right”. I said through the entire primary that if Hillary Clinton was nominated for the dems I would likely vote for McCain.

Then McCain decided that he wanted to go after the insane neo-con vote, by talking about the importance of information gathered through torture (which he authored a bill amendment trying to STOP two years ago), how important it is to make Bush’s two tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans that’s starving our economy permanent (he voted against both of them), and embracing the religious right (who, in 2000, he called “agents of intolerance”). If the Republicans had nominated McCain in 2000 instead of Bush, I would have gladly voted for McCain over Gore – and I think that America would be an immensely better place now.

So what does Sarah Palin stand for? The overturning of Roe vs. Wade. You know, two years ago, I would have thought that was impossible. But with the supreme court already working on abortion, and President McCain appointing a supreme court justice or two, I could easily see this happening now and it scares me. No stem cell research. Cure for cancer? Forget it. Cure for Alzheimer’s? Not on their watch, pal. Cures for Parkinson’s and God only knows how many other dreadful diseases? Not in my lifetime. Oh, and let’s not forget the mess in Iraq. Both she and Guiliani talked about “victory” in Iraq without actually talking about what “victory” might be. WHAT IS VICTORY IN IRAQ? Returning them to only half the level of chaos that they had before we invaded? Her son is shipping out for Iraq soon. I hope that he gets posted to a tough combat position, not some back-line office job, and I hope and pray that he returns safely. This mess is draining billions of dollars per month from already crippled economy and has now cost us almost 5000 young Americans. Hasn’t your party killed enough young Americans, Miss Palin? Haven’t they funneled enough money out of our economy and into “Oiliburton”?

And to those of you who can’t be bothered to even try listening to the speeches because they’re just “politics as usual”, you get whatever you deserve in the next election. If you can’t bother to be educated, then politics as usual will continue for the foreseeable future. Yeah. It’s hard to be educated. But trust me – it’s the only way that we can end it.

Peace.

Hopefully.

Eventually.

Vote Obama.

Randal