That's good to hear. Did you support Clinton? I'm just curious because a lot of people on the right were bent on undermining him from day one.
I voted for Clinton.
The same could be said about people on the left and Bush. Of course, being an American means being free to criticise your government if you believe that they are acting inappropriately.
Yes, I should have said that better: by giving my support to the president I mean I will view the job he is doing through the lens of an American rather than a member of this or that party (I have always registered independent by the way.)
That's cool. That's what I do too. That's why I was angry with Bush; because of how much he hurt America.
In any case, the situation was already bad during the Clinton admininstration, and it became much worse during the Bush administration - and the seeds for that had sprouted well before the invasion of Iraq I should add. Seeing all the conspiracies brewing at my university (in a very liberal part of the country) is in part why I found myself in the position of a reluctant defender of Bush - not a role that I particularly relished. In any case, I am convinced there is a psychological illness going on here.
Conspiracies? What sort of thing do you mean? Organized political opposition to Bush? Who is suffering from this psychological illness? Did you think the Right was suffering from it during the Clinton administration? The left during Bush II, or both?
Unfortunately, as I indicated in my previous post I'm afraid Obama, in part because of his past associations with Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, etc., is not well-positioned to break this cycle - especially if his presidency is marked by significant challeges which seems very likely. I think a McCain presidency along with a Democratic congress would be the best realistic hope to halt the descending cycle of madness. Of course, even better would be a Democratic presidency with a Republican congress but that out of the realm of possibility.
Do you mean that the Right will be so freaked out by his associations with these people, tenuous, ginned up, or taken out of context as they were, that it will be impossible to unify the country? I suppose that will depend on how much some people want to remain in opposition, and how much the Right continues to bombard people with these images and out-of-context video clips. Andrew Sullivan has said that America's fundamental divide can be traced to the Vietnam war. We drew up into two camps at that time, and that fault line has largely remained to this day. Obama is the first presidential candidate who is a post-Vietnam figure. He could perhaps bridge that gap. It's really ironic, and frankly tragic that the Right has dragged the Vietnam war back into the picture with this blowing up of Obama's trivial association with a Vietnam era radical.