by Vito Rispo

Obama’s new political ad, “The American Promise” is the single most frightening political advertisement I have ever seen in my life. It’s absolutely chilling. The rabid cultist gleam in the eyes of the supporters nearly weeping as Obama repeats his meaningless rhetoric. Can this be real?

I’ve never had much faith in the political understanding of my fellow man. Admittedly, I’m a horrible misanthrope, of the opinion that the masses are irrational chumps, with about as much understanding of basic economics as I have about the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider.

Maybe I’m out of touch, but I imagine the average person setting out nachos every Sunday to root for Red or Blue like a political football game; shouting out buzzwords like “More Regulations!” and “Al Qaeda Hates Freedom!”, then talking about it the next day at the water cooler. Why else follow politics if not as conversation fodder, right?

I figured I’d just watch the madness from the sidelines for a while and move to Costa Rica when the shit really starts to hit the fan and the freaks inevitably vote themselves into slavery. I didn’t think it’d happen so quickly though.



To be clear, I’m emphatically not a McCain supporter. I’m not expressing a partisan bias, I’m expressing a bias against stupidity and absurdity.

Really, this ad is mesmerizingly absurd. Have we been so completely zombified by political rhetoric spoken over rousing music that we can’t even recognize propaganda when we see it?

Obama offers nothing in this ad… absolutely nothing, no issues, no solutions, only more fodder for the cult of personality that has grown up around him. But he even goes beyond that by brilliantly switching the campaign away from himself. He’s no longer the candidate, the people are. According to this ad, a vote for him is a vote for yourself. You like yourself, don’t you?

New Ideas?, New Politics?, Change?

These words mean everything, and therefore nothing. They’re vague and obscure and all-encompassing and they have no place in the political arena. It’s time people spoke up and stopped letting these pandering maniacs insult our intelligence with nonsense terms. We, as voters, need to demand clarity from politicians. We can’t sit back and mindlessly applaud every grunt and gesture and bit of gibberish as if it had real meaning. We can’t get hypnotized by whimsical jive, no matter how beautiful it sounds.

And Change is, of course, a beautiful word, especially now. Undoubtedly, we’ve had a very real creeping badness growing in the US over the past 8 years. We have an endless war on terror and constant fear of terrorists and even of our own government. I don’t want to get blown up, or snatched away to some far off dentention center for reading a book on the danger list. The world has changed, and people are hopeless in the face of this insanity. They need some sort of empowering message, something to make them feel good about their government, to make them think their government is finally on their side. Obama, the brilliant politician and marketing genius, has capitalized on that, without offering a single tangible, workable, political solution. The thing is, government is never on your side, and you should never feel good about it. Anyone telling you otherwise is just covering your eyes to the thievery and corruption that goes hand-in-hand with all government. Don’t fall for it, you’re smarter than that, you’re better than that.

I have never feared more for my country than I do this election year.