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I have already voted by absentee ballot for John Edwards, the candidate (besides Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson) who speaks most clearly to my concerns and values. I don't quite trust Hillary Clinton (her opposition to the war on Iraq has come quite late and not quite lukewarm, her health-plan seems designed in collusion with the “managed healthcare” insurance companies.)
Barack Obama, I am suspicious of. He is too green in the senate (as in 'inexperienced' as opposed to 'environmentally committed') and I don't like the company he keeps (Joe Lieberman who supposedly mentored him in the senate and Zbigniew Brzezinski who is said to be his chief foreign policy advisor; neither of whom share my values and whom I cannot distinguish from the fascist opposition.) The record of his short time in the senate is not impressive and though he speaks change, he seems to have no concrete plan I am aware of on how to bring it about and toward what ends.
But he speaks well, charismatically even. He is young, good-looking, and he has a style that owes not a little to that of Martin Luther King Jr. There is a not little hint of the preacher in his delivery. And he has the words of faith: “unity,” “change,” “hope.” He uses them with a preacher's flare — and they move one. Especially the idealistic young.
I wriggled my butt deliciously to the music so fraught with memories and of a
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They are of the best of our young. They are idealistic,
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You do not play with our youths' hope frivolously, falsely. And if you falter, I trust and expect that they will demand that you be true — with their just anger, even if the laws are in place to criminalize dissent, even if the concentration camps are already built and the rail cars already equipped to take them there.
Had I not already cast my vote and Edwards not withdrawn, I would probably cast it for you today— but let us be clear: my trust would be in and my vote for the hope of youth.
© Rafael Jesús González 2008
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