Vote For Your Self-Esteem

Recently, I was talking with a friend of mine about the Presidential race, among other political topics; and during this conversation I finally realized what the true essence of the Barack Obama Presidential campaign is, and why it's so inherently offensive to me. In the past, both on this site and off, I have relished the all-too-frequent opportunity to chastise America's Airport Security policies post-9/11. After terrorists took advantage of our airports and airlines to successfully execute the worst terrorist attack in American History, our response was to make people feel safer without making them, in any real way, actually safer. Instead of doing security checks into people with suspect backgrounds or questionable behaviors, we take away your toothpaste and make sure the name on your ID (which surely couldn't be faked....) matches the one on your ticket. In other words, if ever a moron tries to execute a terror attack on the United States of America - we will catch his dumbass!!

But I digress.

Besides, as noted above, I'm not here to bitch about how, as a general rule, over 60% of the test runs conducted by the FBI manage to successfully smuggle various illegal items past the TSA; no, I want to talk about the great Lord Messiah Obamarama. You see, I realized that I so viscerally dislike his campaign because it is, essentially, operating along the exact same lines as all of those faux security measures we enacted after 9/11. In other words, the great godsend of Hope n' Change is, like its airport security counterpart, designed, not with an eye towards common sense or logical policy, but with the acknowledged goal of making you feel better about yourself (and, in the case of Obama, politics). The analogy further holds when we consider that, in both cases, the long-term effects are most definitely bad for your country.

I mean, just look at his major campaign slogans; 'Hope' and 'Change'. Both of them promote the idea that Obama is a good candidate primarily because his Presidency will, well, make you happier and more proud of yourself. Basically, he wants you to vote for him because it will improve your self-esteem.

Awesome. That means that, with a President Barack Obama, we're going to get the chance to take the biggest educational problem of the last thirty years, the emphasis on children's self-esteem over their actual academic progress, and see if it can fail catastrophically as a governing strategy too!

Damn. I'm just.... so. frickin. excited.

Alas, folks, that's exactly what the Obama campaign has become to people across this country, a means of emotional expression that they have never quite had before. It's a campaign where the young and idealistic can encounter someone as naive and idealistic about the real world as their own sheltered selves. It's where the ageing hippies of the 60s can finally see a candidate who seems to believe that peace, love, and a few trips on LSD can change the world for the better. It's where....well, you get the idea

This is not to say that Obama doesn't have policy proposals; its just that, unfortunately, such things take a distant backseat to the emotional crap we mentioned above when it comes to the Obama campaign. Indeed, if you need more proof, just ask an Obama supporter why you should vote for him; you'll probably get an answer along the lines of how Obama is going to usher in a new era of 'Post-racial' politics, or 'Post-partisanship,' or 'a renewed faith in ourselves,' or, above all, a 'New Era of Politics.'

Now, even if we are to put aside for a moment the fact that there is nothing at all in Obama's record that would indicate to us that he is capable of such things, and assume that all of these things should be the ultimate goal of the next President of the United States; one is compelled to point out that, while sounding nice, such things are nearly impossible to translate into genuine strategies of governance - which is what Obama would have to do should he, in fact, become President.

But hey, who am I kidding? All of those things sound good, right? And I'll bet they make you feel good too, huh?