Okay, so He's not That Bad, Really...

Alright, so I've gone back and read my previous posts about Barack Obama...

They may have been a little harsh.

I'm not actually that much against the guy. Other than his obviously over-eager position on health-care, I'm not really offended by any of his proposed policies of which I'm aware. I'm a little uneasy with the immediate timetable for withdrawl in Iraq, but then again, I can't really say I'm head-up about staying in, either.

The things I love about the man most, however are his speeches. He's easily the best orator I've seen in my lifetime.

And his base platform is dead-on. We need a change in politics; we need somebody to come in and fix the mess left by the previous adminstration. Seriously, if the giant mess that is the political scene these days were any different, or even if somebody besides McCain were running against him, I may very well have been on here proclaiming his virtues. I know I would have if any of the other Republican nominees had beaten McCain out (except perhaps Giuliani).

What really infuriates me is the way that the right demonizes the guy. Calling him a socialist is obviously a stretch, calling him unpatriotic is borderline stupid, and calling him a muslim is infantile (not that I have anything against Muslims). Saying that Barack Obama is a covert fundamentalist Muslim terrorist is exactly the kind of Rush Limbaugh-esqe, McCarthyist witch-hunting that is not just innane and irrational, but detrimental to democracy.

Seriously, people. Whatever happened to rational thought? I mean, I'm personally going to vote for McCain, but that doesn't mean that I can't see a lot of good in Obama, does it? Just because I support McCain doesn't mean I have to come up with vast, insane logic why Obama is the devil does it? Whatever happened to the polite disagreement?

It's this kind of no-holds-barred political warmongering that has so polluted our collective system that a progressive candidate like Barack evokes such wild rhetoric from me as the undigested beef analogy (see "Barack Obama is a n00b").

Cue the inevitable comments about how I'm a wishy-washy, fence-riding flip-flopper. Sigh.