A Very Unsettling Election

The last few weeks have been more than a bit odd. I've never been so disturbed by an election in my life and many are saying the same. As for elections that have a life changing impact at the individual level, this one also falls into that category. The only other one that had a personal impact in my adult life was the transition from South African's De Klerk to Mandela in 1994. De Klerk was the last State President of apartheid-era South Africa. It resonated and became personal for me because I lived there.....more than once.

And then there was Thatcher. I couldn't get enough of analyzing Thatcher during my stint (s) in the UK, and yet, the US is home soil, home soil that often disappoints. With Palin in the picture, its more than disappointing - its a national embarrassment.

A Silicon Valley friend who is CEO of a Web 2.0 start-up often mocks me because of my outbound love, particularly for Europe which I have written about often. Somehow that love is deemed not nationalistic, non-American. Bullshit. If I didn't love this country or have an affinity for all things American, I wouldn't have returned, wouldn't be living in northern California nor would I care enough to speak up.

The last couple of months have moved beyond disappointing and embarrassing into....let's say disturbing. There's something that just doesn't sit right with all the candidates even though there's no doubt when faced with an Obama/Biden ballot over McCain/Palin, I could only stomach supporting the former.

I've been having strange dreams (somehow Palin shares an advisory board seat with me or two - arrrgh) in between the first debate and the last and understand that I'm not alone. A friend tells me of a dream she has about a fictitious friend's 18 year old daughter who suddenly becomes pregnant and because McCain doesn't make it through a very hectic four years given his age and the stress level (a significant fear of all non-McCain supporters), Palin is suddenly in charge.

In her dream, her friend's daughter is hung in front of a born-again Baptist congregation in the south, with Palin preaching to Americans "let this be a lesson to ya" with her well renowned wink of the eye. Supporters egg her on, clapping and shouting as if its some modern-day public lynching spectacle. Egads I'm thinking and I thought my dreams were over the top.

But frankly, I'm not surprised. Mediocrity has been creeping into this country for awhile and as it continues to settle, we stop noticing how far we've let it creep. Can not the loyal Republicans who love her Hockey Mom personality take a step back and ask a few fundamental questions? Is this woman qualified and smart enough to take on the most powerful position in the leading nation in the world? Can we trust her to handle a global war given her limited at best experience with foreign relations? Or how about just: Is she qualified?

I have sad economic dreams and ones that bring in the the rest of the free and unfree world, who have lost whatever respect they may have for the U.S. post Bush? What was McCain thinking?

Yet, you can "betcha" that Fox TV has come up with enough fanatical Republican spokespeople to tout her many accomplishments in Alaska, her solid background in energy, and the fact that Hockey Mom Palin is no different than America's Joe Sixpack despite her new addiction to $2,500 designer suits.

Since I've been told now by a half a dozen people that they have come across Americans who think Obama is the anti-christ (a 68 year old family friend living in Florida thinks so too btw), more than 50% of the American public believes that Obama is the Anti-Christ as well as an Arab terrorist in yet another dream. In this dreamed theatrical production, McCain doesn't step in anymore because frankly he's too tired and old to deal with international pressure and his declining reputation.

Forward wind....another dream. America is crippled with fear. People are running through the streets throwing gas bombs and holding up convenience stores. Those who can't understand how McCain and party got in with Obama's 10+ leads in countless states two weeks before election day, are either taking anti-depressants and seeing shrinks or they're on a rampage through the country wanting to terrorize even their own.

Sound a bit like Mad Max a decade before the movie trail begins? Sometimes it feels as if we're moving in that direction. I'm not a TV channel flipper and yet lately, I can't help myself. I move from channel to channel begging for intellectual opinion and piece-meal it comes.

Most of it is so infuriating and full of campaign-fluff, you find yourself shaking your head and saying "how did America come to this? how did we become so unaligned? so uninformed? so careless? so self-centered? so accepting of mediocity?" ..... and all of it in my lifetime, a lifetime that is only half over.

While Obama wants to make this country a better place, a more humane place, its not as if I don't have questions and concerns. I may not necessarily benefit as a small business owner under his new tax policies, and while he wants to make medical care available to all, I fear that I fall in that middle ground -- not poor and not rich, and as a result, may very well be left unrepresented.

It can't possibly be worse than it is now however and the alternative choice is more than frightening. As a healthy young woman, I pay nearly $6K a year and that excludes my hefty deductible and 30% co-pays throughout - before and after the deductible is met.

And then there's the fear, uncertainty and doubt campaign that the Republicans are so good at. Their mantra doesn't let up. Obama's connection to Pastor Wright still remains vague to many. Wright apparently suggested that "the entire war in Iraq and the larger 'war on terror' have been based on lies, half-truths, and distortions to serve the agenda of the United States imperialism." Yet, many pro-Americans have said that or at least thought it.

In an MSNBC article earlier this year, it was said that Wright stated, "we have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is brought right back in our own front yards.”

It's remarkable how many Europeans feel the same way - with heart of course. These are not Europeans who hate Americans; they're Europeans who watch American behavior and political decisions from afar and are much closer to the consequences (with the exception of 9/11) than we are.

And because of all of this uncertainty, people are asking questions, live in fear and have dreams and visions where none of the dots seem to connect. They are heightened by rewatching the debates, Saturday Night Live re-runs, state rallies, national network interviews and YouTube videos. I'm not caught in a fear bubble, but it is a bubble of disbelief.

Even if McCain and Palin don't get in, Palin isn't going to go away. Why would you want to when you've tasted a bit of what the Republican "fashion and hair" committee can buy you in just a few short months? And there's no question she's loving the publicity. You betcha she is.

McCain at 72 may in fact be relieved at the end of it all - he shows sign of more and more aging by the day. Poor McCain, a respected politician and a known Maverick who so often stood up when the chips were down, is now running around the country with a Hockey Mom whose uneloquent unedited responses have to make him cringe beneath that all American smile.

As experienced as he may be, he isn't the man for the job either, yet you can't help but feel sorry for him. (Joe, former POW who lost his toes in Vietnam and is now a taxi driver in Las Vegas doesn't think so either)

There's no question we've got a tough road ahead of us. Every day I get a new email from a friend or former colleague who is out of work and asks me for leads. I'll get an email or voice mail from a business contact who was about to close a round of funding and now they're shutting their doors. Others who may have closed their funding "just in time" are laying employees off and tightening their belts. People are talking about lower-income options and others are canceling white beach vacations at popular destination resorts, where the dollar is no longer in charge.

Economically we grasp for more air...and clarity. Politically we do too and its only going to get worse. The McCain/Palin camp is still trying to get Americans to think that Obama isn't a "safe choice." Obama's "way" is not secure they suggest, so anyone who hasn't lived outside this country and seen America from foreign soil will resort to what they know - more of George Bush-like cowboy politics.

We need to repair international relations, which appears to be a top priority for Obama. That said, there's a lot at risk right now, so we stand back, we watch and listen to the candidates in ways we haven't in years. Our hope dried up after eight long painful years of the Bush Administration. So now, we listen more carefully and we tap into more voices than what we learn through three networks and CNN.

We read blogs, blog ourselves and shoot photos and videos in small towns and urban areas. Anything and everything becomes recordable and publicly available within minutes. There's more noise and therefore more confusion. Yet we're a nation of choice and choice and quantity is what we want.

And so, we watch and we wonder with our fingers tightly crossed behind our backs and then, we vote from the bottom of our hearts for the first time in a long time. And even though November 4th is not yet upon us, many already have.