Why YOU Must VOTE for ME

As the hours race toward their date with destiny on November 2nd, I wanted to register my own appeal to the shout that has been rising from all quarters, the one urging all who are of age to REGISTER!! and VOTE!!. It's doubly important that I lobby as many as I can to exercise this civic duty- I am a legal United States resident, but until I become a citizen I cannot vote. And I won't be eligible to even apply for citizenship for at least another two years. Consequently, I see and take in all that is happening around me with an ever-rising sense of anxiety, but am unable to do anything about it. However, like the New York Times this Sunday, I must throw my hat (useless through it may be) into the ring for John Kerry (The New York Times endorsed Kerry in an editorial in the "Week in Review" section). George Bush may be a fun guy, a lively addition to parties and such, but he is in no way equipped for the role that the Fates have handed him. I have been injesting a steady diet of words from all sources, learning of the millions that he has spent on abstinence training as a superior alternative to birth control. I have read of his efforts to try to reinstate the ban on abortion. I have read of his installation of rabidly fundamentalist individuals to important government posts, and the resulting effect that these appointments have had on the freedoms women and minorities have taken for granted.
But nowhere, at no time, have I been more shocked, dismayed and downright frightened, as I was last night, as I read Ron Suskind's supremely illuminatory piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George Bush". Mr. Suskind appears to have rendered a portrait of a man who, entirely unsuited to the rigors and analytic exercise required by a post as huge as the Presidency of the United States, resorts to a kind of obstinate sense of rightness, in self-defense. In that rightness, he has found his center, and the confidence that should have come with greater experience in managing large organizations, or more familiarity with the mechanics of the American political system. George Bush's confidence now comes, it seems, from the rightness of his cause- a "crusade", as he has often termed it, that is just and divinely ordained.
In this article, I felt I finally understood why this past year, these past years under Bush, felt so wrong. The separation of Church and State was created for a reason. They can coexist but not live under the same roof, for they are founded on principles that are worlds apart. To break it down, the State caters to the head, the Church, to the heart. How many times have you acted impulsively, gone with your heart, despite the desperate urgings of your head? How dearly did you pay to recover? A Republican and former Bush advisor, Bruce Bartlett, explains the phenomenon: "This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with facts. He truly believes he's on a mission from God."
I am a child of the Third World who has survived an army mutiny and an attempted coup by Islamic fundmentalists. The rhetoric is beginning to sound disturbingly familiar. But I am helpless to do a damn thing.
You must therefore vote. Make sure that you are registered. Seek out the truth with a singleminded fervor. Don't let a jaunty manner or slick speech fool you. Measure what these men are about.
For myself, I watched the debates. I have read and read. And I will be pulling that psychic lever for John Kerry come that early November Day. I am relying on you, gentle reader, to actually carry the work out on my behalf.

euphoria