Politics and Culture

As in, "I can't imagine any serious person voting for Obama." This lack of imagination afflicts people with a certain confidence in their beliefs. Liberals have told me, "You're a Republican? How can you be a teacher?" Others have said things like: "You're a conservative? Does that mean you're like a Nazi or something?" and "You're a Christian..." (It's my experience that religious people can't imagine how people can't believe in God and that secularists can't comprehend that people do.).

That conservatives aren't as insular as liberals doesn't mean that they too can't have an speculatively atrophied mind.Beides Hugh, I myself have fallen into this trap. I remember thinking to myself: "Yeah, they like the Beatles, but that's only because they haven't heard James Brown. Wait until I play it for them" only to wonder, one extended version of Cold Sweat later, if they had experienced some sort of soul-dectomy.

That's not to say that some tastes don't signal intellectual impairment or predict serial murder; I occasionally meet (not just read about) some people who don't like Stargate. I usually try to scurry away quickly so it's entirely possible that these philistines may have a good explanation (kept in a closet or something), but hard to wrap one's mind around nonetheless, no?

Anyways, I can not only imagine how people can vote for Obama: I wonder why it was close for so long. After all, it takes a certain discipline to reject a person promising you everything after being ignored and insulted by one's current mate.

Can't you empathize with the 51% of people promised the stuff of the other 49%?

So, despite the rapture of college students and the registration of the homeless in Ohio, the common sense of Americans will override curiosity about Barack Obama and infatuation with his celebrity, and trust John McCain to pilot the country for the next four years.

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Star Time (4CD)

Stargate SG-1 - The Complete Series Collection