the recent political thoughts of v.
Although it is not particularly apparent from this journal, the election preoccupies quite a bit of my thinking these days. The disaster that is Sarah Palin, I must admit, was initially part of the reason: when McCain first announced that she would be his running mate, I would find myself scouring all of the major media outlets and favourite destinations in the blogosphere at any possible moment for yet another embarrassing revelation (and, for a politician with so thin a record, she has a disproportionately large number of them).
Twisted fascination for this new fixture on the political scene has since faded into abject horror. What an absolute lack of judgement McCain demonstrated in selecting a vice presidential candidate who has yet to demonstrate, five weeks into the campaign, that she so much as cares about the pressing issues of the country and the world. I can accept that it is impossible to grasp the finer aspects of the Georgia-Russia conflict within a month's time, but any reasonably well-read individual -- and surely it is not too East Coast Elitist of me to expect that the highest executive of a state to be a reasonably well-read individual? -- should be able to hold a mildly informed conversation about it. As in, you know, Russia's actions may have been unjustified, but they certainly were not unprovoked if one knew even the basics of the history of the Caucasus from picking up a newspaper every once in a while. (Sorry, I recognise this is old news, but, as a student of international relations, I am having difficulty letting go, especially since I wrote a paper last year in part pertaining to political conflicts in the Caucasus and required, at most, ten minutes of reading to figure out the fundamentals of That Russia-Georgia-South Ossetia Thing.) And, oh! The financial crisis and bailout plan are all about health care and job creation, of course! And I cannot even reasonably begin to string together a relevant and coherent answer, so let me launch into one of my rehearsed stump speeches for you, never mind that it is logically contradictory to call for government to get out of the way while claiming the need for greater regulatory oversight!
A McCain-Palin administration would be a repeat of the worst executive and policy excesses of the last eight years, combining an ignorance about the state of national and international affairs with a contempt for those who might question or criticise them, and that is something that nobody in this country and beyond can afford. This will be the first election in which I will be voting, and you can be quite confident that I will be casting my Pennsylvania absentee ballot for Barack Obama.
Signing off, V.M. Bell
Twisted fascination for this new fixture on the political scene has since faded into abject horror. What an absolute lack of judgement McCain demonstrated in selecting a vice presidential candidate who has yet to demonstrate, five weeks into the campaign, that she so much as cares about the pressing issues of the country and the world. I can accept that it is impossible to grasp the finer aspects of the Georgia-Russia conflict within a month's time, but any reasonably well-read individual -- and surely it is not too East Coast Elitist of me to expect that the highest executive of a state to be a reasonably well-read individual? -- should be able to hold a mildly informed conversation about it. As in, you know, Russia's actions may have been unjustified, but they certainly were not unprovoked if one knew even the basics of the history of the Caucasus from picking up a newspaper every once in a while. (Sorry, I recognise this is old news, but, as a student of international relations, I am having difficulty letting go, especially since I wrote a paper last year in part pertaining to political conflicts in the Caucasus and required, at most, ten minutes of reading to figure out the fundamentals of That Russia-Georgia-South Ossetia Thing.) And, oh! The financial crisis and bailout plan are all about health care and job creation, of course! And I cannot even reasonably begin to string together a relevant and coherent answer, so let me launch into one of my rehearsed stump speeches for you, never mind that it is logically contradictory to call for government to get out of the way while claiming the need for greater regulatory oversight!
A McCain-Palin administration would be a repeat of the worst executive and policy excesses of the last eight years, combining an ignorance about the state of national and international affairs with a contempt for those who might question or criticise them, and that is something that nobody in this country and beyond can afford. This will be the first election in which I will be voting, and you can be quite confident that I will be casting my Pennsylvania absentee ballot for Barack Obama.
Signing off, V.M. Bell