I’ve been bad. It’s been way too long since my last blog.
I had a physics teacher in high school who was possibly one of the only teachers I ever truly looked up to. It wasn’t because of the subject he taught (Physics, barf), it was because of his passion for things. And one of his strongest passions was John F. Kennedy. He had lived in Canada for, as far as I know, all of his life. And yet someone like JFK still affected his life in such a way that, 40 years later, he’s telling all his students about him. JFK was so influential that even though he was 6 years old when JFK was shot, the incident is still fresh in his mind.
The more I think about that and the more I think about how people must have felt about that man back in the 60s, the more I feel that Barack Obama is my JFK. Our JFK. And the more I wish to God that the same thing doesn’t happen to him. To me, Obama embodies everything that this country needs. I don’t agree with him on every point, but I can’t deny that I’m being swept up in the message of his campaign. Never has such a person seemed so inspiring to me. Up until last year, I practically never read the newspaper or frequented news sites. I read the New Yorker and that’s about it. But since this election has started, I’ve become more and more interested. Not just in politics, but in the direction our country is going. It’s depressing sometimes to sit down and read about the truly despicable things our country has done overseas and to look out the window and see what it isn’t doing within its own borders. I used to have such an apathetic view on this, but for once in my conscious life, I can see a bright future out of all this. Not right away, but eventually.
And now, 3 weeks before the election, the media starts showing how utterly barbaric some McCain supporters are being. Shouting “Kill him”? Suggesting he’s a terrorist? How can people be so STUPID? They laugh when Joe Biden chokes back a sob when talking about his dead family. They suggest that Obama somehow being linked with the WORD Muslim makes him a terrorist. They gulp down every lie they’re told and are barely able to recite it back to the dumbstruck reporters interviewing them.
But I almost can’t blame them. These people are so stupid that they’ll believe whatever their long held political organization tells them. Whatever Fox news tells them. Whatever Rush Limbaugh tells them. It reminds me of the question Mr. Scott posed last class. Isn’t the most important thing a teacher can teach someone is how to keep an open mind? These people are so willing to believe one thing, one side, that everything else becomes inconsequential. Common sense flies out the window, common DECENCY flies out the window. And you get these people who are saying a President Obama would turn us all into communists, socialists, Muslims (as if that word embodies everything wrong in the world), or smoking craters in the ground.
When travelling overseas, these types of comments are what follow Americans and make them, or more specifically, me, ashamed to be American. There were times in Canada that I felt this way, especially since my time there coincided with Bush’s second term, the war in Iraq, and the laughable election of Governor Schwarzenegger in my home state. I went to school with hundreds of Muslims. There were even Iraqis in some of my classes. How could I look them in the eyes? When my mom visited Turkey, a country where 99% of the people are Muslim, it was suggested that she wear a Canadian flag on her belongings and refer to herself as Canadian. But people don’t even need to be told that anymore. It’s just assumed. No, I’m Canadian, I’m English, I’m an Australian without the accent –ANYTHING but American.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to feel proud to be American, no matter where I go. And to do that, there needs to be an America to be proud of. I love America. It’s my home and it always will be. In Canada, I was the only American in every class I had, from 8th grade till senior year. And during that time I had to single handedly defend my country and just about every negative action that was brought up. Wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you. But I tried.
Barack Obama is the first step in what will be a lot of steps out of the cellar America is stuck in. If someone who embodies everything I hope for in the future of my country is taken away from me, not by a vote or a scandal, but by a bullet, I don’t know what I would do.
I don’t think I could take it.
