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Deep Thoughts

Election rambles

It’s hard not being sucked into this when you live in the US. It’s everywhere. TV, internet, sings, phone calls. You name it. I’m of course talking about the presidential race. Ideally, I would like to go to sleep and wake up when everything’s over. Let me know who won, and that’s it.

For us living in this country, we’ve been exposed to this circus for over a year now. I’m tired of it. If someone could make it stop, that would be great. Right now, if possible.

Living in California, I just feel like it doesn’t matter. This whole election will be decided in the Midwest swing states like Ohio anyway. Not only can’t I vote, I also live in a state that no candidate cares about enough to even visit (I can see why the voter turnout here is low compared to other places in the world).

I honestly believed that, up until these past few days, that McCain might actually had this thing in the bag. Palin was super hyped and was boosting the party poll numbers and no amount of idiocy out of McCains mouth seemed to hurt him at all. But in the past few days, there have been some major blunders out of McCain’s camp that makes both him and his running mate look like total fools. My friend Jonas pointed this out as well in his blogpost earlier today, so I guess this is being picked up by people outside the country as well.

Now, I know that you and I might know and understand this, but the question is, will the people deciding the outcome of this election care, or is this just the kind of back and forth noise that all campaigns suffer from?

I’m not a person that believes that Obama will walk on water or anything. Having the advantage of living both in and outside the US however, I would like to think that I have a little more perspective on certain issues than the average person, and believe that the world might be ready for a more open minded leader of this country. Someone that won’t come off as a bully. Someone that hopefully cares enough to realize that atempting a dialog with other countries might actually lead to something positive and cause less resentment towards us, rather than dictating rules or breaking existing treaties. Hard as it is to fathom, this behavior is bound to piss people off in the long run. Or rather, piss even more people off very quickly.

I know I’m speaking in very broad terms and I’m not in any way addressing specific issues. All I’m trying to say is that the image we’re projecting on the world is hurting us and it needs to change before we reach a tipping point and can’t go back to fix it.

Oh, how naïve I am.

But for all it’s worth, all of this makes for great comedy. Make sure to check out both the Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Both shows are great at poking fun of the news coverage on the race as well as mundane daily happenings…

Ok, I’ll crawl back into my hole now.