There's a couple things I want to address in this post....
First off...last night on C-Span I watched some of a round-table discussion that featured a group of women in Wisconsin being asked questions concerning the election by some white research guy with white hair (yes, they all do seem to look like that). The group of women included a few white stay-at-home moms who were concerned about moral issues (several were (surprise surprise) CHRISTIANS!!! and i'm not just assuming that...they mentioned it themselves), an undecided 20-something yr old who voted for Bush in 2000 but isn't too thrilled with him anymore, a hispanic nursing student, a wise-sounding democratic 40-something yr-old (who just had that look of calm cyncism that is typical of those type of women), a black vocational counselor who is worried about jobs, a totally fed-up Generation-X'er with a spikey boy-cut and some other women who I can't seem to remember. It seemed like these women were picked by casting agents to attend this discussion. The things that were said by these women during this discussion were mostly typical. It was interesting, though, to find out that pretty much all of them were skeptical of Kerry regarding the tax issues...and I don't really blame them. By the end of the discussion, I was annoyed with the people I expected I would be annoyed with...those pesky Christian stay-at-home moms (note: I don't dislike all Christian stay-at-home moms, but these women didn't do much to sway any stereotypes). It saddens me a little to think that these women are actually raising children and teaching them right and wrong. This one woman, Rebecca, erked me the most...especially when she spoke about stem-cell research (which, for me, is a major issue). She talked about money shouldn't be put into it now since it isn't expected to make a difference for another hundred years...and that we should focus on curing diseases like breast cancer. First...stem-cell research can help cure cancer as they can be used to test medicines (www.nih.org). Second...breast cancer isn't going to be cured in a day. They have been doing research for years and years and years. Research takes time...and if we procrastinate on stem-cell research now, then we're just putting off possible cures for the future. Rebecca, how would you like to have Polio? Cause it's quite possible you could have suffered from it had scientists procrastinated in finding a cure for that!
An overall frustration I have been feeling during this election has do with terrorism. People are proud of Bush because America hasn't been attacked since 9/11, and based on that, they believe the War on Terrorism is going well and will probably be over soon. Kerry is criticized because he is realistic and seems to understand that terrorism is not just an American problem, but a global problem and that it's not something that can be wiped out with a swift action alone. It seems to me that many Americans are just unaware of how important a role America plays in the world and that our actions not only effect us, but also everyone else in the world...which brings me to my next topic:
One of Great Britain's leading liberal newspapers, The Guardian, has begun a pro-Kerry letter-writing campaign aimed at swing (I assume) voters in Ohio. Now, not surprisingly, there's a firestorm of criticism surrounding this. Some people are outraged that the Brits are butting in our election affairs ("'Hey England, Scotland and Wales, mind your own business. We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidential election,' was one of the e-mail reactions to the campaign." ~ cnn.com). On one hand, I agree that this letter-writing thing is a little weird, but at the same time, I can see why they would want to even do it in the first place. Americans are viewed, by some in the international community, as closed-minded and completely devoid of interest in the effect this whole war thing has had on an international scale (for example, I would really love to know what the rate of global terrorist attacks post-Iraq War has been compared to before, I feel like it's probably substatially higher, but that just might be a self-fullfilling prophecy on my part). What's wrong with wanting to give Americans a personal view of what things look like from an international point of view? Also, why is it OK for us to go to, say, Afghanistan, and tell them they should be democratic, yet British people aren't allowed to write some letters to us about how they think our citizens should vote? What bad could come out of it anyway? These voters get a letter and it inspires them to do some more research? Oh no! Research is a terrible thing...right Rebecca?
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