If people really thought about what a particular party or candidate stands for, I'm sure that most would agree and disagree with people from both sides of the isle. It is for this reason that I consider myself a political independent. I refuse to just side with a party because I grew up in a home where my parents voted Democratic or Republican. As an individual citizen/person/human being, that just doesn't make sense.
No matter how strong my religious convictions, I recognize that we live in a Democracy and not a Theocracy. Therefore, although religion may influence my train of thought, I recognize that Theocracy and Democracy exists on different plateaus. As a result, I realize that there are some social realities that dwell in a Democracy that Theocracy, from a governmental standpoint, cannot change. So voting with religion in mind can sometimes be in vain (I should note that I make this statement with much gravity, and that it may not be coming off in the manner that I intend it to).
Furthermore, I realize that no matter how great my upbringing, or how well intentioned my parents are/were, I am a separate entity from them. That means that I shouldn't just don the mantle of their selected political party, but that I should rather decide which party/candidate best suits me.
It is non-independent thinking that has, from my vantage point, trivialized and cheapened the voting power of large social groups, like the African-American demographic. Democratic candidates are so expecting of the Black vote that they often appear as their friend prior to election, while rarely implementing any political change that would benefit the group later on.
Why is this important? Well, although I have vehemently tried to stay away from politics in my blogging up to this point, I cannot ignore a report that was just released by the University of Maryland.
If you read through the report (it is quite long), you'll note that the majority of people used in the study clearly haven't been paying attention to what is being said, by the Bush administration post-war, about the war in Iraq and about fallacies in pre-war intelligence. (If you don't read the whole report, I think that you should at least take a gander at some of the graphs and their explanations.)
Now, in my opinion, the report seems to paint the picture that Bush now recognizes his mistakes, and is now telling the truth about the Iraq War. Indeed, maybe there is some truth in that. However, if people would continue to listen, Bush has repeatedly said, while on the campaign trail, that "if (he) knew then what (he) knows now about Iraq (and their weapons program, etc.), that (he) would not change his approach and (the USA) would have still gone to war."
Almost 1000 American lives later, thousands and thousands of Iraqi (bothThis is despite the supposed 20/20 hindsight knowledge that there is no significant evidence Iraq had any Weapons of Mass Distruction, and that there is no solid evidence of a link between al-qaeda and Iraq (according to the 9/11 Commission Report).
civilian and "insurgent") lives later, and $200 Billion later (with gas prices
soaring worldwide to boot), that man wouldn't have changed anything?
And that's the man that about 50% of America still wants to re-elect.
The question lingers, "why would almost half of the country still want to re-elect someone who would have still gone to war over false pretenses?"
My response would be blind support, without questioning current statements and correlating them to past actions, as a reason for such re-election statistics (I'd surely have to include the insidious disease of political apathy as a cause also).
I just wish that people would actually do a little research of their own before they cast a vote, for whomever, with their "eyes wide shut."
-Maelstrom
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