Now I’m a green card holder I can donate to a candidate in the US elections. I’m going to give money to the Obama campaign, not because I expect him to stop the oceans rising – it’s a serious albeit ambitious aspiration – but because when Romney says he’s going to “help you and your family”, noble and modest as that may sound, it is profoundly dishonest. You’ll have to be very much the “right” sort of person to feel the benefit of Romney’s help. You can only hope that somebody else will come along and help you if you happen to be a woman, gay, a rape victim, unhealthy, innocent on death row, poor, uninsured, uneducated, a musician, a public broadcaster, disabled, Iranian, a soldier, a non-Christian… to name but a few.
If I’ve learned one thing this week, thanks mostly to the Paralympic Games, it is that enlightenment needs a second chance and it could certainly do with a second term in office. I’ve understood that progress, like wealth, doesn’t trickle down from the top. Progress comes from allowing ALL people, from every corner of society, to give of their best. All too often conservatives have leaned their considerable weight against progress and against those things which are now held to be fundamental rights – votes for women, civil rights, equality, public education…again to name but a few – and history has treated that resistance with the scorn it deserves.
My money’s going to Obama quite simply because he’s a progressive and Romney most certainly is not.