The 2004 election is over and my guy won. In fact most of the guys (and gals) I voted for are in. But in the wake of post-election pontificating I discover a disconnect between me and the electorate. Why? Because according to the pundits, Bush was elected primarily by people on the moral issues....the gay marriage thing, the anti-abortion thing, the born-again Christian thing. I voted for him DESPITE those points. If you have to choose between dem & repub, I choose repub because I favor lower taxes and less government involvement in most of life's aspects. I can't say I'm a libertarian because part of the libertarian platform is to eliminate taxes and public schools. That's a little off the deep end for me. I can't understand the repub position on abortion. They want less govt everywhere but there (and in the military)...abortion is the place the govt should be LEAST likely to influence. And gay marriage. What is the issue there anyway? I think by now most rational people could accept that some people are born gay. End of story. So what is the harm in allowing them to partake of the tradition that celebrates love and commitment? There's a lot of fear there I'm thinking. So when I hear people say "Christian Evangelicals" put Bush back in the white house, I'm uncomfortable. Sure I voted for him but don't lump me in with that group. Reminds me of when Clinton was in office, they said women put him there. That was offensive to me because I didn't vote for the guy & I didn't want people thinking that because I have 2 X chromosomes I automatically voted for a sociopathic philanderer. But now I don't want people thinking that because I voted for Bush I'm a Christian Evangelical.
Yesterday when I came out from grocery shopping I found a note stuck on my car from some angry person that said "F*** Dubya" (with the word spelled out instead of ***....I'm too civilized to use that language even when blogging & noone is even reading it.) They were offended by my Bush stickers. We all endured 8 years of Clinton, the other side will have to learn to accept this president.
So do you wonder why I voted for Bush even though I'm not with him on some of these other issues? Here's why: 1. lower taxes. I have 4 kids to put thru college, I need the cash. I'm a better spender of money I've earned than the govt. 2. gun control. Not that I'm heavily armed but I think history teaches us that ultimately we have to be able to protect ourselves & our families from...from...no, not common criminals, but from the govt! Does that sound radical? If the colonists weren't armed they never could have staged the American revolution. They wanted the govt off their backs. The nazis disarmed the populace & then proceeded to commit genocide. You think those brownshirts would have entered people's homes if they risked getting their heads blown off? The communists in china disarmed the populace after taking power in 1949. That set the stage for the thugs who carried out the cultural revolution, raiding homes, destroying property, throwing innocent people in prison (for years), commiting murder, all at the behest of the govt, or at least in complicity with the govt. If people were armed....well, you get my point. You might say that could never happen in America. I'm not so sure. And what if there was some sort of attack (again) by foreigners on our soil? John Kerry says his first thought when he realized we were under attack was "where's my gun?" What if the govt took his gun away & he was cornered somewhere? I hate to be so pessemistic but things change.
It was so hard for me to understand, when I was in high school, how the holocaust could have happened only 40 years before. I thought surely nothing so savage could happen again. But in 1994 we had Rwanda. Then Bosnia. Who knows what's going on in the Sudan? And if the Islamists get their hands on a nuclear weapon, what happens to Israel, or to the U.S.? Man's inhumanity to man continues, unabated. So to get back to Bush, he's not afraid to lead us into the heart of the battle, to try to root out the bad guys. Personally I hope he's making inroads with Saudi Arabia because that's where the indoctrination seems to be. I think we're in Iraq because the powers that be realized, hey, we need another democracy (besides Israel) in the middle east, so who can we justify taking out? Maybe they knew there were no WMDs, maybe that was just the justification for the means to the end. The public is too stupid, or too ignorant, or something, to accept the long range plan to get democracy going in that part of the world so that future generations would produce leaders that don't send their kids off to blow themselves up. This is making me depressed but I had to vent.
