The strangeness of it all

Sunday night I was driving home through the quiet road that runs through Corrales and after the second time seeing this (forgive me but my sensibilities do not allow for embedding the image here), in my opinion the most disturbing political sign ever seen, and I thought about how strange this year's presidential campaign is.

In the beginning, when John McCain gained traction in the primaries, I thought about the fact that I didn't even vote for him for senator, instead voting for John Kyl twice. Of course, it didn't matter then. There was no way that John McCain was going to lose his senate seat in Arizona. Not a chance. I'm not the type of person who wanted to vote against someone so I thought more about the work John McCain has done and even though I don't agree with everything he's done, so what? It's not me voting as a senator or representing anyone. How could I agree with everything? The key thing was that for me, nothing he's done has really been objectionable. Some of the 'across the aisle' things are annoying, especially campaign finance reform. However, in the end he has been a dedicated and honorable public servant.

In this campaign, John McCain and his chosen running mate have been subjected to the worst of smear tactics. Anything that could be used against them has. McCain has been treated as if senility is settling in and so-called feminists have willingly set back the clock on their purported cause to attack Sarah Palin. And all of this at the behest of a politician. That's it, not a savior, not a saint, not someone who's ever really even helped anyone but himself.

That's what got me about the sign. I've read something that described the way that some blindly support this politician. The conclusion warned about the consequences of such blind support for like candidates, running on nothing more than the empty rhetoric of 'change'. Nothing sticks to this candidate. Associations with the most corrupt of society, switches in campaign promises, lack of specifics, irrelevance in stated experience. There's an incredibly long list, a list that should disqualify anyone from the office sought. It just doesn't seem to matter in this case.

Is this the way our country is going? Politics a contest of personality, regardless of judgement? The sense of entitlement that is out there today, just talk to people and it comes out. It's uncomfortable to sit with a group of people who don't believe in personal responsibility disparage those who do. These politicians have done a phenomenal job recently dividing this country. And what will happen? 'Fairness' in taxation is nothing more than a veiled stab at class warfare. In the end everyone will just be more miserable and a strange new society will emerge. How's that for pessimism? A month of nonstop democrat advertising and the apparent coming of legislative and executive government by them does that.