It can happen

Although I agree with some who have written how disillusioned they are with politics, I still believe there is hope-- even though some appear to see hope as a word that gets in the way of progress-- their progress, of course. They will be right if we all sit on our hands and do nothing. They will be right if we continue to allow deceit and lies to work. It does not have to be that way. Change can happen but how?

First it can happen because we vote for leaders based on character and their correct stand on issues that benefit the majority of people and the world. It can happen if we don't let ourselves be swayed immediately by every little thing and research out any accusations or claims. It can happen if we look at how leaders run the campaign intended to convince us to vote for them and realize it's how they will run the government if they gain power. It can happen if we volunteer, donate, and keep an eye on what all leaders (in either party) do after they get elected.

The kind of campaign someone runs says a lot about their character and how they will be as president. Obama has run one based on organizing the people, by getting small donors motivated, by doing ground work. Yes, he has charisma and gives good speeches (so did Bill Clinton), but it's more than that. It's his even temperament (usually-- nobody is a saint). It's how he thinks before he speaks. It's his background of living many places, of working in his local community as an organizer. It's how he doesn't allow himself to be thrown off message by trivial points and how he does respond to attacks as soon as he can. It's hard when those attacks come days ahead of an election and the lies continue to receive more traction than any retractions by those who put out the er mistakes...

Hillary Clinton's campaign has been the opposite. She uses her femaleness and then denies it matters in a leader. She hedges when someone asks if she believes Obama is a Muslim. She calls him some kind of pipe dream, talks dismissively as him being someone who hasn't been in Washington long enough to know how things run (does the fact that she does know bode well for real change or more of the same?). She and her campaign claim, and the newspapers jump on, that all his supporters are wide eyed, naive, ready to faint, and star struck. She claims widespread experience based on being married to a president and 7 years as a senator. She is now saying she was a factor in negotiating peace treaties around the world including Northern Ireland. [link: How those who did negotiate that peace feel about her claim]

She and her female supporters act as though misogyny has been as bad as slavery and the bigotry against a whole race based on color of skin. I am sorry, ladies, but there is no comparison between inequality and slavery; but neither are a reason to vote for someone for the highest office in this land. Hillary says again and again that it's time for women to get theirs. How dare she or any woman act as though a woman deserves the presidency because of what has happened to women in the past-- least of all Hillary Clinton! She is a woman who went to Harvard, who has had a privileged life, two high level careers, and she is owed something more?

Are women empathizing with her because she put up with a cheating husband? Is she somehow getting character points for that? There are women, who for economic reasons, stay in relationships that are not healthy but that was clearly not the case of Hillary Clinton. Continuing her marriage even when she knew Bill was cheating on her was within what I would call freedom of choice. Unlike some, I don't condemn her for staying; nor like others do I put a crown on her head for it. Did she continue because of love, a martyr's complex, did they secretly have an arranged marriage, or was he her path to power? Only she and maybe he know.

I have written about both of these candidates in my blog: Why not Billary and Barack Obama. In December when I wrote the one about Obama, I really thought that I could vote for Hillary if she got the nomination. After the campaign she has been running, my thinking has changed. (If anyone wants to read more of my ideas on this campaign, the candidates, check under the label politics.)

I understand that some far left Democrats won't like Obama because he's talking about working together to get things done (imagine that-- even corporations and foreign dictators), about getting past the partisan fighting (I imagine he's wondering how well that'll work after the last two weeks), about going forward without seeking revenge for the last 7 years, and about putting the best people into his cabinet even if they come from the opposition party. From what I can tell, for a lot of people, Hillary is all about payback. Revenge is a losing game. The only way to win is by looking ahead.

In my mind, ahead is a man like Barack Hussein Obama (that name is nothing to run from. It reflects a diverse background. It doesn't make someone Tom Cruise because their middle name is Tom). But he is not the man to vote for because he's half black. I don't believe, terrible as slavery and the ensuing bigotry has been (and still is), that blacks are owed our highest elected office either. Gender and color of skin are neither one a good reason to vote for (or against) someone. To his credit, Obama has not been running on his race (nor running from it). I support him not because of it but because I believe he is the right man for the job-- through temperament, his learning experiences, even some of his mistakes, his way of working with people, and through his goals.

It will be a shame if he loses because some are voting for a woman based on sympathy or identification because they are women and it's their turn-- whatever the heck that means. If it's based on her supposed great experience in governing perhaps it's time women do some research. Others have --[link: Chicago Tribune and Hillary's experience claims].

Admittedly, I wasn't a big fan of Hillary Clinton before this campaign began but I didn't see her as negatively as many claimed. I hadn't seen the side of her that I have now. In this campaign, I have watched her use lies, distort facts and say it all with a smile like a cherub, bobbing her head up and down, and expecting the women in her audience to cheer-- sickeningly (to me) a lot of them do. Why? Because she's one of them? Don't kid yourself.

Could she actually be laying the groundwork to see Obama lose if she can't get the nomination? What else can you make out of her saying (paraphrased) McCain has the experience, she has experience, and Obama has a speech he made in 2002? What was the reason for adding McCain to that mix except if she can't get it, she wants McCain to be president for the next four years. What kind of person does that? Someone who only cares about themselves and not the country, that's who.

In Clinton's speeches, she repeats how Obama has done nothing since he got to Washington and she says it all snidely. She waves her hands in the air and satirically puts down anyone who has agreed with anything Obama is saying. What I am seeing in Hillary is the flip side of Bush. It's ironic that when Democrats have it one of their own, they don't recognize it. This is the Hillary we will have once the election is over-- if she can really beat McCain.

Some specifics:[link: Did Clinton win Ohio on a lie?] This is just one of the pieces that looked into one of the last minute issues that may have turned some recent primaries. Out came a memo that looked like Obama says one thing in public and another in private. It now appears the man behind releasing the now acknowledged to be untrue memo (Obama didn't say any of it) may have been an associate of Mark Penn (Hillary's campaign manager) from the past. He had the connections to do it and the reason as he's a vocal Hillary supporter. It doesn't matter now that it was a lie and denied by the Canadian embassy because it came out so close to the election there was no time to prove or disprove it. Rovian tactics for sure.

And there has been those lies, repeated so much by the media that people believe them, that Obama has done nothing since he got to Washington four years ago. [link: Obama's bills]. Yes, these are not all bills he himself wrote or sponsored, but they have his name on them and for a freshman [link: Star Power vs Reality in the Senate], Obama has not sat in Washington and done nothing. He has a record from his years in state politics in Illinois. The people favoring him are not latte drinking and unrealistic. For a lot of us, I think it's not so much that he's the great hope but that he's the only hope for seeing real change. He is the only one talking about working together, about how the people have to do it, about changing the way it's been done for a new way.

This campaign for me has been so bad that when November comes, if Clinton is the candidate against McCain, I have decided to write in a name. I will vote but I will not vote for 4 more years of Bush deception and dirty tricks which either of those two (experienced in the ways of Washington) will deliver-- proven by their actions not their words.

I am very afraid that we get the government we deserve. The one we earn by being too lazy to look up the facts for ourselves. Polls tell us that people are swayed by every little thing that comes along because they never got grounded to begin.

Hillary's 3 AM ad evidently did persuade people that she was the one in a late night emergency. There are only two ways I can see that you could take that ad. In the first possibility it is saying a woman is the one to count on for wise, quick judgment in an emergency not any man. It's also a concerned mother overlooking the children, not a father. What that makes me wonder is who was the father of women who think that way, who were their brothers, their lovers, their husbands, their sons? It sure wasn't the kind of men I have had in my life. Maybe it was in Hillary's world. Is that a reason to assume it's true of all men? Is it a reason to vote for that woman? Think what that ad really says. Is this a war between women and men that never got settled? In the minds of many women is she not only campaigning against Republicans but also against men?

The other possibility for the 3 AM ad was to instill fear. Sleeping children, a worried mother and Hillary on the job. The whole thing was totally phony including Clinton answering it with her hair done and in a pantsuit. But it worked and so we will see more like it, I guess. Be scared. Be very scared and now with Bush no longer able to keep you safe only Hillary or McCain can do it. That's what she has just said and a segment of the American populace bought it.

Americans say they don't like those kind of tactics, but ads like it have always worked with enough voters to keep it coming back. It did with the Lyndon Johnson ad that showed a little girl playing with a mushroom cloud in the background intended to scare voters away from voting for Barry Goldwater.

Yep, this was another rant. and it wasn't even all of what I've been thinking. I am going to try and leave politics for awhile as it's doing nothing for my anxiety level. There are other things to think about in the world. Positive, beautiful things and it's what we as individuals have to do. Do what we can, donate, volunteer, make sure we know the facts, but then make our own life good because it's through our energy of love and goodness that the world actually does change. Hate, fear and revenge will change nothing positive. One thing I have learned in 64 years (and the first elections I remember hearing about were Stevenson against Eisenhower) is we can't make any election go as we want. The question is instead-- what can we do about our own, individual lives?

(The canyon slot photo above is taken off the main trail in the Romero Canyon area. Some years ago, when I first saw it, the pool beneath that huge cliff was at least waist deep. After a big flood, it became totally sanded in and only the creek came through for a year or so, but slowly the pool is being deepened. It is happening grain of sand by grain of sand.

When you walk where the pool was, it's maybe knee deep at the most but tricky as the sand is like quicksand being soft and sucks you in, holding onto your foot to trip you. It did exactly that to me last year up at Sabino Canyon. The photo makes a good metaphor and reminder for how we can make a difference. It isn't easy, there are pitfalls, it does not happen all at once, but it can happen.)