Thursday, July 03, 2008

The 'common man'

Ok, so this is going to sound snooty, even elitist, but just work with me here and let me explain.

As I sat in McDonalds today, across from the Belle Tire where my truck was being worked on, I couldn't help but overhear (no I wasn't eavesdropping, these people don't understand "inside voices") a conversation between one McDonalds worker and a manager.

worker: "Are you going to vote in the fall?"
mgr: "No"
worker: "Have you ever voted?"
mgr: "No"
worker: "Wouldn't you vote for Hillary if she was VP?"
mgr: "Of course I would, she's a woman and I know she'd be good"
worker: "But you're not going to vote for Obama?"
mgr: "No, he stole the election from Hillary. She should have gotten it because she has experience and he just came in and stole it by lying to everyone about how good he'd be"
worker: "lying?"
mgr: "He just lies. He lies about everything. Medical care for everyone, stole that from Hillary."
worker: "What about McCain, don't you want to vote against McCain, he's just an old white guy and hates black people and mexicans anyway, I'd think you'd want to vote for Obama just for that"
mgr: "Nah, I don't care, it doesn't matter to me anyway, no matter who it is, they're going to screw everyone anyway"

It should be noted that the manager was a black woman, probably in her low 30's and the worker a young, white male, probably high teens, early 20's.

Seems like the worker had no clue, the manager at least acknowledges that politicians tend to hose everything up, no matter their good intentions.

But what got me was that the worker couldn't come up with anything of any logic as part of his argument for her to vote for him, other than McCain hates blacks/mexicans. I'm not sure how John McCain feels about minorities, but I certainly doubt highly that he hates them. Considering he may have cost himself the presidency based upon his stance on immigration (we'll see) last year, I don't think he hates mexicans. And he and his wife have adopted a daughter from Bangladesh. While that's not a black person, in the traditional definition of one, she certainly is a person of color, and I have to say that shows some level of tolerance, or at least a lack of hatred toward persons of color. So, perhaps it's Mr. McCain that needs to set up a website to debunk the lies and rumors about him, rather than Obama, since it certainly seems like those have grabbed a hold of the consciousness of common man moreso than the "Obama is a muslim" rumors.

It also seems to support my theory that if you don't know WTF you're talking about or WTF the candidates stand for, you shouldn't f-ing bother to vote. All these "vote or die" campaigns make me crazy. Why in the WORLD would we want some ignorant idiot, who doesn't bother to educate themselves about the facts, to vote on the leader of the free world. I'm not saying that folks shouldn't be allowed to vote, I'm just saying that there shouldn't be campaigns out there telling everyone that they should cast their votes no matter how enlightened they are about the candidates positions. That only leads to votes like "well I'm voting for Obama because he's black" or "I'm voting for McCain because Obama is black"....or the "I voted for Hillary because she's a woman"...jesus, I'm sure that's what the founding fathers envisioned when they pictured their country in 200 years.

Or not....

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