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Calm down America
5 October 2004 - Los Angeles Times

Why do the two major parties’ adherents continue to insist that this is the most important election in modern history, when the first debate has made it even clearer that it is not? It’s unfortunate that the partisans on both sides of the campaign are using this assertion to encourage emotion over logic, intolerance over rationality.

Over something as petty as their preference of president, people are getting fired, carrying grudges against family, getting arrested, tearing down and spitting on campaign signs, getting in fistfights, and - in the case of Knoxville, TN - shooting the windows out of campaign offices. People are allowing rabble-rousers to get their blood boiling rather than educating themselves on the candidates’ positions. All of this for what? More of the same no matter which pro-war, pro-big government, Skull-and-Bones member Yale graduate gets elected? The first debate underscored the fact that the foreign policy positions of President Bush and Senator Kerry are exactly the same - both felt before Iraq that intervention was needed, and both feel even before Iraq is over that intervention is going to be needed in North Korea and Iran in the near future. We won’t see much difference in the upcoming debates on domestic policy, either - both will pander to the same voting blocks and try to outdo each other in spending taxpayer money the fastest.

So calm down America, and if you’re going to vote, do it with your brain instead of your rage, and have the common decency to allow your neighbor the luxury of having his own opinion, like he does for you.

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