Vote Democratic because . . .

In November I intend to vote to put a Democratic candidate into office as the President of the United States. Either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would make fine Chief Executives, though my preference is for Obama, largely because his election would show to the world that as a nation Americans consider themselves to be part of the global community. I believe that this is a far more important and realistic aim that that offered by the opposing party.

Listening to the Republican candidate I hear nothing but the sounds of fear and alarm. The Republicans constantly seek to remind Americans of how they must regard the rest of the world with suspicion, and that only aggressive and preemptive warlike behavior can bring the American people any degree of safety. Then they further remind the American people that they will never truly be safe, that they must constantly be in a state of readiness for war. That they continuously have to arm themselves, and that they should be prepared to react violently to address the slightest perceived slight. Otherwise, “they” might get “us” first.

I’m not buying it. To paraphrase another great American, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. A fearful nation is a dangerous one. The American public is aggressively fed a steady diet of fear, anxiety, and panic. The networks, newspapers, and magazines are replete with alarms of imminent disaster. Be it terrorists, environmental collapse, asteroids, nuclear-armed rogue states, or bioengineering disasters Americans are subjected to a screaming barrage of apocalyptic news. Even household germs are waiting to devour our families.

Yet, life goes on. Why do so many surrender themselves to blind fear and chronic anxiety rather than get on with the ordinary day-to-day task of getting along?

Well, because the task of ordinary living is largely boring. It’s painfully routine. Terror and warfare makes our lives so much more interesting. And it’s easier to wage war than to deal with such things as global warming, poverty, and universal health insurance.

I do think that blind panic led to Columbine. And the invasion of Iraq. And gang-related murders. And road rage. And the marginalization of the poor. I believe that all acts of violence and anti-social government policies find their ultimate support and justification in a largely unfounded but aggressively fostered sense of public fear.

The time has come to elect a president who will govern a sane and rational nation at peace, not a nation sustained by some paranoid fantasy requiring Americans, as both a people and individually, to react violently to the world around us. The time has come for a president who will not seek to profit by fostering a false sense of anxiety in the American public.

There is no war other than the one we create. The war on terrorism? A total fiction. It’s true. There are no Mujaheddine awaiting offshore in fastboats, prepared to run wild through the streets of our cities throwing burkhas over our women and cutting out the tongues of blasphemers. Such an absurd fantasy serves primarily to divert our attention from the fact that the global industrialists are robbing us blind, draining the blood and resources of this nation while the national infrastructure falls apart from neglect, while more and more Americans are falling into poverty, losing jobs, health insurance, and their homes while more obscenely rich individuals make it onto Forbe’s list of world billionaires.

But I digress. Fight for peace. Hell, do the right thing. Vote Obama.