I spent an entertaining night over at my family’s house, with a mix of shitty fast food, coffee, politics and the show Freaks and Geeks.
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but my family and most of their friends are all Republicans, whereas I am …not. Usually we just Don’t Talk About It. But last night a family friend stopped by and of course the subject of voting came up, and then my family got to unleash their list of arguments against Obama that follows almost exactly along the lines of all the retarded chain mail attacks out there.
So we’re a military family, given that some of my family served in Vietnam and my uncle was deployed to Iraq for about a year back in 2004. I can definitely understand their support for McCain and I don’t believe he would do a terrible job as president. There are so many checks and balances in place that all of the “exciting” new ideas proposed will probably never make it into policy.
The older you get, the longer the world isn’t blown up by “evil” presidents, the more cynical you get, at least in my case.
Not so with my Republican family. Their biggest fears are terrorists and high taxes. They are convinced that Obama receives large contributions from former and current terrorists, that he was put through school by those same people and is a pawn in a game that will lead to us all living under Muslim law. They think that Obama will lead to higher taxes for their business and they’ll be forced to shut it down and their employees will be forever out of work. Also, he was born in Kenya and isn’t a real American.
Luckily, they don’t think he’s the antichrist. That’s just ridiculous, of course.
So after my mom printed up the latest email about how Obama’s main advisors are entangled in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac fiasco, I showed them Snopes.com and Politifact.com. My mom read it and said, “thanks for showing this to me”. And then we watched Freaks and Geeks for the rest of the night.
Added Note
I do know that not all Republicans are like this. Why, some of my best friends are Republicans! 
I just find it amusing to live in the stereotype.
I was a big fan of The McCain, as I called him, back in 2000 when he didn’t win the nomination. I think he’s a very upstanding citizen and has done a lot to encourage bipartisanship. But as I’ve seen him pandering to the right, as I’ve seen that although Republicans had pretty good control of our government following 9/11, I didn’t see a lot of positives come out of it. It’s incredibly hard to blame everything on politics, but I find it amusing that, even then, taxes were too high and nobody was satisfied.
I remember the days of Bill Clinton and how my family complaaaaaained about him (mostly due to reasoning similar to above) and nobody was satisfied. I see a common thread here, and so knowing that nobody’s going to be happy anyway, I’ll just throw my cards in with Obama.
If Hillary had won, I would be on the fence and would probably be voting for McCain – it’s possible he wouldn’t have chosen someone as odious as Palin if she was running. I didn’t like Hillary because I’m not quite comfortable with her associations with drug companies. Plus, she’s just annoying and sounds so patronizing.
I’m just sick of people being so easily swayed by their fears. I hate that some politicians seem to play up terrorism so that people are afraid to NOT vote for them. We don’t need voters motivated by lies. I totally support anyone’s decision to vote for McCain based on his experience and proposed fiscal policy. I see too many people around me talking about everything else.
