Undecided no more -- Cathy checks in

Cathy sends along this more considered response:

NO LONGER UNDECIDED

There are many factors that helped me with my election dilemma; you prodding me do delve deeper into issues among them. It is in that context that I realized how past history should play a big part in that decision, at least it did for me. I’m not sure if I can explain it well but I’ll give it a try. We were discussing pre-history and the early colonial days in one of my history classes, talking about the liberal versus the conservative view when I realized that Bush stood for everything, or mostly everything that I am against. (Believe it or not I never voted for him the first time around.)
Anyway, we were talking about survival of the fittest, being the strongest and leavers and takers. Being the fittest meaning the ability to adapt to a changing environment, strength meaning the least adaptable, one sided and very rigid; this is the point were I felt like I walked into a brick wall. I suddenly saw President Bush as the strongest not the fittest and as a taker not a leaver; at the rate he’s going he will take everything and leave nothing for future generations. For example, the deficit and the environment as well as our dependency on oil are long term problems to which he is only interested in short term fixes, if he’s interested at all.
Then there is the problem of Iraq, I believed from the very beginning it wasn’t a great idea; I even argued with my husband about how it would be another Vietnam. There was a part of me though that thought, “well okay he’s the President and he’s privy to information I will never see nor do I want to have access to all of the national security information”. But I remembered learning how Kennedy used the fear of Russian nuclear superiority against Eisenhower’s Vice President Nixon when they opposed each other in the 1960 presidential race. Nixon was aware those statements were untrue, the United States was actually far ahead of the Russians but he couldn’t use that information because it was obtained through secret spy flights over the USSR.
Of course all these thoughts are going through my mind while I’m trying to focus on my class, but it was as if a great weight had been lifted and I suddenly saw things a lot clearer. I’ve felt for a long time that the gap between the poor and the rich has been getting ever larger with much of the tax burden falling on the ever shrinking middle class. Reading about the labor strikes of the late 1800’s and the smugness of the owner’s and how they had control of many in the government both local and federal, I again felt like I hit a brick wall. Bush isn’t really trying to help the middle class or the poor, he says he is but what he is really doing is helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
There are many things over the past week that I’ve looked at differently; I’m still not convinced Kerry has the conviction or the character that can make a difference, but I do know that we cannot allow George Bush to stay in office for another 4 years.