I thought I might take a moment to reflect on Presidents past, specifically George W. Bush and how he compares to Barack Obama. It’s obviously no secret that I dislike the direction Obama is taking the country, but one thing you may not know is that not all anti-Obamunists were pro-Bush. In fact, there is a vast number of us who felt just as bad over the past 8 years as we are feeling now: completely controlled by unrelenting dogmatic philosophies on how everyone should live. With Obama, we teeter on the brink of becoming a socialist nation. With Bush, the threat was a church-state. Why do we have to keep electing such polarizing idealogues? Where are the fiscally conservative, socially liberal candidates? Where are the people who can think and reason critically?
I live in an area where being white makes me the minority. It’s difficult then to let anyone know that I am an Obama detractor. Immediately, I am simply a “racist” in the eyes of his supporters. It boils my blood that someone would assume that I look past all of Obama’s policies and land on the color of his skin as his “flaw.” When Bush was president, I lived in a different area where not liking him made me either a “terrorist supporting liberal” or a “satanist.” Of course, you can see where I am going with this. I am none of these things that people assume, but the Presidents we elect seem to give the people carte blanche to make such assumptions. It’s simply not healthy for half the country to always be ready with such an angry, thoughtless attack.
Whenever I can actually have a civil conversation with someone about my politics, they are often surprised to find out that I am not an Obama supporter. After the first few incredulous exchanges, I can eventually start explaining the problems I have with socialism. When I get to the part about how to solve problems without government intervention, I start getting nods. “Oh yeah,” they say, “that’s more of how I feel about it too.” So many people do not realize that they are centrists until you get them to say it out loud. Generally, until that point, they haven’t seen far enough down the road to understand the consequences of what is taking place.
Too often our “problems” are boiled down to “rich versus poor” or “black versus white” or “religion versus non-religion” or (under Bush) “good versus evil.” I believe that generally people want to do the right thing. It’s just that no two people are ever going to agree on how to do it. Is it sad that there are poor people? Yes, absolutely. Should you legislate the “rich” (I put that term in quotes because as of late it means families with $250,000 whereas in my eyes you aren’t rich until you’re well into the millions) to pay for the poor? Absolutely not. Redistribution of wealth is not a right of the federal government. Is it unethical for “rich” people to sit on the sidelines while the poor flounder? Maybe. But do you know how many “rich” people already give large amounts of money to various charities? Do you have a tally of all the humanitarianism in which each “rich” person takes part every year? Most pragmatically, have you thought about how many jobs that “rich” person has created with his or her wealth? People don’t care about those kinds of questions because the leader tells them they don’t have to.
My point is that the pendulum is swinging too far. Extremism may seem admirable, but in practice it only alienates and divides. Bush and Obama are no different in this regard. Abstract away the details of their respective agendas, and you have the same figurehead destined to help rip the country apart. Hopefully, eventually, the pendulum will lose momentum and land somewhere in the middle, bringing us a leader that can actually unite and not just campaign.
