My Senator, My Vote: Part 1
Hope you'll be able to catch the first of my two-part documentary series on the BBC World Service today. On air at 0906GMT, 1206GMT, 1906GMT and 0006GMT -- and available online after broadcast here.
In Part 1, I'm in Chicago, talking to two voters, one pro-Obama, one anti-Obama -- and bringing them together to see if either can change the other's mind.
Next week's programme comes from Arizona, where I do the same with a pro-McCain and an anti-McCain voter.
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Hello Robin
Have just listened on World Service. Excellent. I think you got to the nub, Not Iraq; not the economy; not experience; not race; not age; not religion; not abortion; not family values. The underlying common factor was fear. The difference was how to respond to that fear.
The only question I felt was missing was - Why do you think people want to attack you?
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Would it be fair to say there is an 'irrational fear' of terrorism in America?
In the same year of 9/11, terrorism is overshadowed by other causes of death.
Examples:
Heart Disease ....700,000
Cancer................550,000
Accidents............101,000
Flu/pneumonia......62,000
Suicides.................27,000
Terrorism.................3,000
Americans were 5 times more likely to be murdered by a fellow American than be killed through a terrorism act.
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Eileen is one pathetically miserable excuse for an American. If America is about anything it's about knowing that if you want to be free, you must be prepared to fight and maybe die to get it and then to defend it. That is how America was born, how it grew to what it is, and it is the lesson history has taught every generation since. Eileen seems to have ice water in her veins and fog in her brain. She is typical of the hippie generation, the spoiled brats who grew up in the 1960s who were handed the world on a silver platter and thought they had a birthright to it without any sacrifice. How lucky she is to have tens of millions of Americans like Mark who are ready, willing, and able to fight her battle to keep her freedom for her. But she would tie their hands. Ironically, it was the weak Presidents who brought us to war. Kennedy was so weak he almost brought all human life on earth to an end. Eileen said she admired Lincoln. Perhaps she should have been reminded that Lincoln's election cause America to go to war with itself, the most terrible war it ever fought and that Lincoln was an advocate of the war to preserve the union. He could have turned his back on war but he never gave it even one second's consideration. Eileen should go back to school and relearn history from scratch. It's her kind that will put us all in danger. Ironically, Barack Obama doesn't strike me as anything remotely like a pacifist. He want to pull America's troops out of Iraq because he wants to send them to Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda on that front. That will likely happen no matter which one wins.
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Mark says, as a validating point,
"I would like for my leader to think deep deep in the back of his mind, what does a fellow citizen of the United States of America want me to accomplish, rather than what does a citizen in another country around the world want."
Case in point being, the way John McCain is ready to jump for Georgia? That's what they want, us there. What do we want? To handle what is already on our plate.
War, I think an important thing to note is, wars are harder fought and better supported when the war and or people on either side are behind it, hold a good reason for it, and believe in it.
Marcus, whats the purpose rattling of insults?
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Hi Robin:
It is true, my senator and my vote...
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To sum up everything that is wrong with America into one quote ... I found it.
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
I wish he were a buddhist, and would be born again soon ... and were exactly the same.
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There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1889) French social philosopher.
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What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
Simone Weil (1910-1943) French Philosopher
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Robin Lustig, thanks for your even-handed and open-minded approach to the elections and for not letting your personal stance, whatever it might be, get in the way of your reporting.
This kind of journalism is unfortunately becoming increasingly rare at the BBC. It's refreshing to see someone still prepared to report on the issues without tweaking them to his own ideological satisfaction through omission and distortion of facts.
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Pharbin77
You live in a fantasy land of the 19th century. In today's world, without Petrol, there is no wheat or any other kind of food. The day of de Toqueville when ox drawn plows, scythes, and horse drawn carts for bringing food to market were adequate to feed people are long in the past.
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