The Pessimist

I obviously don’t see the whole picture because my view is filtered through the media. I get most of my US news from the Daily Show and the CBC.
But the dying days of the campaign have revolved around the Republicans trying to paint Obama as the second-coming of Karl Marx.

Calling Obama a “socialist” is the equivalent of calling

• the Pope an atheist
• Mother Teresa a terrorist
• Sadam Hussein a populist
• Joseph Stalin a humanitarian

Do people actually believe this, or is this just campaign desperation?
Interviews at US rallies (John Oliver of the Daily Show talked to Palin and Obama supporters) invariably show followers of one stripe convinced and terrified that if the other guy gets elected, then the first thing to happen will be the total destruction of the United States.
Come on people … really?

Is this just clever editing? Or is this what people really believe? When Jay Leno does “Jay Walking", he invariably shows people who don’t know:

• who is the current vice president
• what country is on their northern border
• who were US allies in WWII
• who “we” fought in the Civil War
• who is the president of Russia

These segments leave the impression that Americans are morons. Jay hints that some editing goes into the process, but how many average Joes does he talk to before he finds the 5 dolts featured? I hope 95 people got the answers right, but I fear that these really may have been the first 5 people he approached.

Back to the campaign … is it really a choice between my candidate and total annihilation? Isn’t the choice really between two candidates who are both upstanding citizens, patriots, heavily vetted, proven, intelligent, honourable individuals. You may prefer one over the other because of certain policy minutiae, or just personal attributes, but the other candidate should also be perfectly acceptable. Why must the campaigns pretend that one is the only hope and the other is Satan incarnate?

Are Americans so stupid that they are actually manipulated by this hyperbolic rhetoric? I guess tomorrow we’ll find out.