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• Sunday, August 17, 2008 02:21 AM

  I'm scared

  Obama looked thoughtful and intelligent, like a kindly professor. I.e., he looked like a 'weak' egghead. McCain came on like gangbusters with rah-rah crap like guaranteeing he'll get Bin Laden if he has to chase him to the gates of hell and all that prisoner-of-war stuff that one simply can't sneer at (well, except, with qualms, in the privacy of one's own TV-viewing den). He played to the audience ... and I cringed.

  Evidently having The Answers in a complex world is the way to go. Being thoughtful just don't cut it.

  What I do hope is that that ridiculous 'Christian' venue is not representative. The country is pro-choice. Occasional nuts savage the clinics, but mobs of citizens don't. ('Mobs' of people use them.) Ditto gay people - who could have a problem with that nice Ellen anyway. Gay people are the new Jews, or something - get comfortable with them as entertainers ... TV works both ways, promoting 'tolerance' as well as giving pandering opportunities to dangerous caricatures like McCain.

  Ya know, maybe I'm being paranoid, but I thought the evening was a genteel lynching...

  And will the election be the same thing? Will the mindless yahoos outnumber the thoughtful people in the polling booths? I can't contemplate that question without shuddering.

  And yet, and yet... The country is pro-choice. Nobody I know gives a flying anything about religion.

  But then I'm not American! Merely an observer (and victim of whatever you Americans decide to do with the world).

  (In my country, a Christian - and no quote marks - politician brought us universal health care. He seemed to think that was righteous. I bet those fat cats at the Saddleback monstrosity think that's EVIL socialism.)

  (Christianity - and I ain't one - requires a lot of thought and sacrifice...think Jesus in a megachurch and feel your brain implode.) (I thought Obama got in a good zinger at that well-fed smug preacher-man with the "rich" business - isn't there some famous Jesus saying about rich men that, with any luck, will play itself in viewers' minds...)

  Um, and I thought Obama's remarks about Clarence Thomas were kinda throwing a brother under the bus to score points with whitey. (Do not interpret that as a pro-Thomas remark - I despise the man.) Whereas McCain's obvious, horrible pandering on the same Supreme Court question is the kind of thing that REALLY scores points, alas.

  I got up in the middle of the night to write this, cuz I was too disturbed to sleep...

  —wychwood Read wychwood's other letters
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