I am proud of US! (pun intended)

Barack Obama is now the president elect of the United States. This is the third election in a row that made me cry, but this time it was with relief and a bit of pride in my fellow Americans.

Some of you may know that I am a US Army veteran. As such, I am intensely patriotic and I believe whole-heartedly that America is an amazing place with unlimited potential. I have been very sorry in the recent past to see so many Americans being apathetic, lazy, or just downright stupid or willfully ignorant. I spend a whole lot of time around people whose only hobby is watching re-runs of bad sitcoms. I have to admit, I had lost faith in Americans and in the beautiful promise of democracy, that people can and should and desire to govern themselves. (Yes, I know the United States is technically a republic, but let's save the civics lesson for another day.) I truly believe that is our right, privilege, and responsibility to vote, and to be informed when we do so. I believe we are all entitled to our opinions, our tastes, our quirks, and everything else that makes us who we are. We are guaranteed life, liberty, and the right to pursue our own happiness; it says so right there in the document to govern all other documents, our Constitution.

We are so fortunate to be citizens of this country. It is the least we can do, the least we can give back, to make sure the people we choose to do most of our thinking for us will be the ones we really want doing it. And yet, for years, voter apathy has been one of the biggest problems facing any candidate for political office. People treat their own government like the weather or the will of God--everybody wants to whine about it, but nobody wants to do anything about it.

So tonight I am proud--extremely proud--of my fellow Americans. I am proud of us for getting our lazy butts off the couch and going out to vote, for whomever we chose. I am proud of busy people who spent hours out of their day just waiting to vote, regardless of what else they wanted or needed to do today. I am proud of us for voting for a man on the basis of his character and his policies, rather than on the color of his skin. I was so worried that many, many people would turn out to be closet racists--people who would tell the pollsters whatever they felt like saying, but in the privacy of the polling booth, would let race dictate their final choice. I am proud also of my sisters who supported Hillary Clinton, and were too smart to be fooled by the idiot Sarah Palin, whose resemblance to Mrs. Clinton begins and ends with being born female.

I am so proud of us tonight, all of us Americans, for showing the rest of the world how peaceful change and revolution can be an ordinary, regular part of life. The tools are provided for us in the Constitution; the power is within us.

Keep it up, America.

I don't normally post on politics, but . . .

In the first place, I believe our First Amendment rights are the most important ones that we, as citizens of a free and democratic country, can possess. Most importantly, our freedom of speech and the press is absolutely essential to our lives as free people. After all, how can we, as voters and citizens and tax-payers, make any decisions about whom to vote for or how our country is to be run or how our money is to be spent, if we don't know all the facts?

I don't make many political comments, either in my writing or in person, because frankly I am ashamed of my inability to keep up with all the news. When I was young and impressionable, I dated a guy who poked holes in any political or economic idea I managed to formulate, which forever after made me not want to open my mouth on the subject. (I later came to realize that was his failing, not mine. ) Today I read an article that completely vindicates me. As I was reading it, I kept saying to myself, "See! I knew it all along!"

This article is by JT Benjamin. It was originally published (as far as I know) on the Erotica Readers and Writers Association website.

Here is a teaser:

I took a long drink of my Samuel Adams Honey Porter and said, “You know what Sarah Palin is? She’s a bimbo . . . .She’s like one of those spokesmodels you see at car shows who’s just supposed to stand there and look pretty and draw in the potential customers and extol the virtues of the vehicle going around on the turntable. In this case, of course, the vehicle’s a Model T Ford. . . ."

Here is the complete text.

This is an excellent article. It makes several good points that had occurred to me, but that I had not seen mentioned anywhere else in the media. I won't say any thing else about it, until you have had a chance to read it for yourself. But be warned, heretofore I will not be keeping my opinions to myself!