As many of you may know, I was not a fan of the Bush administration, I was not a fan of the systematic pulling back of constitutional rights, and the institutional promotion of bigotry and hatred that came down from on high, and I was, and still am not a fan of the two senseless illegal wars we are fighting over seas. So far, the Obama administration has promoted diplomacy and dialogue between nations, as opposed to the Bush administration's provocation, and heavy handedness on similar issues. Our current president has given back hope to the promise of science helping to make our world a better one to live in, been actively pursuing ways to better the economic situation, and been making amends to peoples and nations the Bush administration burned bridges with. Obama has also made an effort to bring an end to the war in Iraq, setting a timetable for withdrawal of combat troops.
These efforts for peace and prosperity have been met by the right with dangerous rhetoric encouraging citizens to arm themselves, prepare for revolution, protest taxes, and one particular talking head even asked for President Obama to light him on fire, rather than do the things he was doing. This nonsensical raving of lunatics, one would hope, would be limited to a fringe group of far right fanatics that no one in their right mind would pay any attention to. Unfortunately, most of these inflammatory statements are coming from respected members of the mainstream Republican community, and here's where the problem lies...
During the Bush years, there were many rotten things said about Bush and his cronies, much of it deserved, some of it not. The bulk, however, of the more militant and ridiculous things coming from the left came from fringe elements, not the mainstream. Most Democrats and liberals brushed the majority of the nonsense aside, and tried to stay on point with factual and logical issues that deserved to be challenged. (say torture, spying on Americans, refusing rights to prisoners, wasteful government spending, tax cuts for the rich making the burden of the middle class worse, so on...)
In any case, it comes down to this: During the last eight years, our country has gotten a little off course. The economy is in shambles, and it seems the only people not struggling are the richest of the rich who George W Bush saw fit to give tax cuts and in the mean time the other 90 percent of us are struggling. Our unemployment rate is the highest it's been since 1983 (Ronald Reagan, the guy who started this mess was president then by the way) We are involved in two pointless and bloody wars that are showing no signs of a real 'victory' anywhere in sight. Our public school systems are crumbling. Something has to be done about it. President Obama is. This is not to say that I agree with everything that is being done, but at least it's better than cutting taxes for the rich, investing billions in killing machines, tearing down civil liberties, and putting more emphasis on faith than science. Hopefully four years from now we'll be better off than we are today, and hopefully we can come together to make this nation and this world a better place to live than what we've been given.
