Change

Change

I woke up this morning and had a very frightening thought. I only mention this because I don’t usually think before my first espresso. What was the thought; am I turning into a racist? Scary.

Politicians and Change

Now, before you answer for me, let me give you some background. The question arose because of the forthcoming Presidential election in the United States and the theoretical, hypothetical, question of who would vote for if I could. I confess, I can’t vote, I am not able to vote, but I am interested, not just in the sense of curious, but interested in the very real sense of being a citizen of a world which, rightly or wrongly, is heavily influenced by the country of which Barack Obama or John McCain is about to become the President. In their, Americans’ terms, the Leader of the Free World (which is actually just to the south of Surbiton). So it interests me.

Loose Change

Change. It is such a lovely word. Obama uses it. It is his his motto, his, trademark, his brand. But I think John McCain represents Change, in ways that Obama does not. What can you say? Okay, let’s say it, politicians sometimes tell fibs, but McCain, McCain is the man that I have waited for for years, he is a politician with a small p, a brave man, a true man of courage, a man who represents honour writ large. Writ, indeed, so large that he was prepared to risk his life in a very real sense and suffer certain pain and torture in order to meet the requirements of the US Navy’s code of honour. Change, real change, excellent change: a new man, someone who is a politician, but also has honour. A politician who does and says as thinks and who does not think according to the lines that his party sets but thinks independently; a man, his own man, an independent man.

A politician with honour. Look around the world, check it out, where is the other one? Who would you choose? Putin? Berlosconi?

Obama

Obama does not for me represent change, despite his branding, in the same way. Obama seems to be more of a Politician to me. I don’t know him, I have never met him, but he seems to me to be more amenable to changes, in particular changes of principle and in principles. One example that for me sticks out is the assertion during his long running dispute with Hilary Clinton that he would accept public funds, and therefore a cap on his spending, for the election battle with John McCain. That he did not comply with. Astute, politically clever, flexible? Yes, but not McCain honourable. Change? Dick Cheney is related to him. So, no change there.

I Vote For Obama

You may not be interested, but I would vote for him, because I think he represents CHANGE. Why? Because he is a member of a group of people that have been systematically discriminated against and oppressed. I guess you may have noticed that. He is CHANGE with letters written 40 feet high. He is the man that can and, in my opinion, should, make Martin Luther King’s dream come true. When he gave that speech, and said to the world that he had a dream, a black man could not sit in the same bus or on the same park bench as a white man. Now the United States is charged with the responsibility of making history; either history in the smaller sense of appointing a man who is honest as a politician or History as in the sense of epoch making.

Obama means CHANGE, not because of the man he is but because of what he represents. He represents what John Kennedy could have achieved had Oswald’s bullet cut him down. He is the successor to that which Clinton might have achieved, if he had not emasculated his Presidency.

He is CHANGE, real deep and fundamental CHANGE, just because of his skin colour and he is not just another rich white guy. He represents healing to the world, a chance to bring a better future not just for the United States but for all, and in particular all people who have been discriminated against and oppressed.

In Honour of Martin Luther King

So, yes, if I could vote I would vote for Obama,because the fact that a black man is a contender in the toughest race in the world is not enough, he has to win it, because making a black man the President of the United States will be the first step in bringing a fundamental change to the world and the rest is not up to Obama , but up to us, for all that for which Martin Luther King, another courageous and honourable man, lived and died.