There’s not much more I can say that hasn’t already been covered in the speeches between John McCain or President-elect Barack Obama, but I feel there’s definitely a few reasons why Americans came out in droves today to vote in favor of the democrats.
It doesn’t shock me that this country voted for a black president tonight, not in the least. We’re a country founded by groups of insurgents, radicals, and those seeking drastic change because we felt King George was an asshole. Coincidence that the first time we liberated ourselves from a terrible leader, his first name was George too? I’ll let you decide.
The Declaration of Independence can be summed up, quite succinctly, with the following phrase: “Fuck you.”
All of moments throughout history that Obama alluded to in his speech can be summed up in a similar fashion. People, citizens, individuals, regardless of how they were viewed by the government or constitutions, banded together and decided that the status quo was not in their best interest. This snowballs, gains momentum, and eventually ends with the same “Fuck you” (You, in this case, meaning the government or whoever is in the position of political power at the time).
Some people, myself included, were worried about the outcome of the election tonight. As I watched more and more, though, I began to realize that I was not alone. Up until this election I had never voted in the past, even though I had the opportunity to on multiple occasions (once for president and other times for a variety of offices). I realized, through the shit storm that America has recently endured: the mortgage crisis, the unemployment rates, a seemingly endless war that’s tearing apart our economy, a financial bailout because the clowns on Wall Street became too greedy, a government force feeding us lies of terrorist threats and amber alerts, bigotry masked as patriotism, and just the overall attitude that somehow, everything was still fine. For me, it convalesced into this perfect mix of outrage, hope, fear, and exhilaration and when I opened my eyes to all of it I thought “Fuck them.”
- Fuck them for starting a war over oil.
- Fuck them for not being able to admit they were wrong.
- Fuck them for trying to convince us they were the paladins of morality.
- Fuck them for making America the most hated country in the world these past eight years.
- Fuck them for leaving New Orleans to drown.
- Fuck them for lying about damn near everything, from Global Warming to the Debt Crisis.
- Fuck them for their hatred of what they refuse to understand (see: Proposition 8 )
- Fuck them for anything I may have forgotten… It’s late.
It’s easy to see why the Republicans have lost so much footing not only in the most important House on the block, but also in the Senate. Some are corrupt, some are hypocrites, some are puppets of a corporate powerhouse, and some are from Alaska. We gave them a chance, for eight years, and they botched it almost beyond repair.
I’m happy to see that Americans, when walking into the voting booths earlier, realized all of this to some greater or lesser degree and used it as a basis for their decision. Sure, red states will stay red and blue states stay blue, but the battlegrounds really stepped up to the plate and made their voices heard. I’m especially proud of Virginia, a newly blue state that hasn’t voted Democrat in close to 40 years.
I’m glad things turned out the way they did, because my Plan B was Canada.
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