POLITICS 3

Alright, imma gonna call it. I am pretty sure this is the way it is going to go.

What people say aloud to others and what people think inside are often very different things. What they would like to do and what they actually do are often very different things. Good intentions are often overcome by fear.

When facing a decision in a climate of fear and doubt -- troubled times, war, the threat of economic collapse, businesses closing, jobs slashes, home foreclosures -- people say they want and need change. BUT, what they will most often do is default to what they know, even if it is the very thing that caused the problem. A known bad is better than an unknown that MIGHT BE WORSE. It's like a battered woman going back to her spouse. She excuses, and rationalizes, hopes it won't happen again even though she knows it will, because she is afraid to change and her situation, as awful as it is,is at least predictable. Humans crave predictability; it is a comfort when so much seems out of control, even if the predictability is a bad sort. People who are already worried and beaten down and weakened often simply do not have the strength to find a way out of the maze.

So that is why I think America will elect yet another old white guy in a blue blazer and red tie, and a moose-shooting woman with a pregnant teenager and a special-needs infant, both of whom surely could benefit from more of her attention. Sarah Palin's God's wisdom supersedes that obvious idea, huh?

Sometimes, things have to hit absolute rock-bottom before there is revolutionary thinking. Maybe it takes the horror of each and every American losing a job, losing a child to a useless and endless oil war, losing a home to an unscrupulous lender, losing a friend to an act of terrorism, losing life savings to a crumbling market, losing hope in any kind of future for themselves or their children. When there is little left to lose,eyes are opened. There is a kind of clarity and focus that comes only from the need to survive, primal and strong. Some will give up, but some will say NO MORE, and hopefully there will be enough of the latter to rebuild and restructure in light of a changed world.

I hope I am wrong in my election prediction. I will vote for Obama/Biden because although they are politicians as much as any of them, I think they offer at least the hope of change, change I am ready to face now.

When you go to vote, and you should if you can, spend a few minutes thinking before you pull the lever, check the boxes, or push the chads. You are not just affecting your world, you are affecting THE world. I know sometimes it doesn't seem like that, but it is. Ask anyone living outside of the United States, they will tell you.

Remember what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: "RIGHT HERE, FEAR!" Or something to that effect.