Free cars for the whole nation!

I've always considered myself a rather patriotic person... I've been determined to see our country drive in the right direction, and unlike a lot of fellow left-wingers I've never wanted to just leave it all behind to be consumed by itself.

But for the past eight years - the first years I've really been politically aware (seeing as I'm 20 now) - my patriotism has been accompanied with a bitterness, that the most powerful people in my country were people I wouldn't trust to babysit my dog, that the people around me would have -voted- for them. I still loved America, but at times it felt like a lost cause.

I didn't realize what I was missing until now. This morning, I felt more proud of my country than I ever have in my life. I woke up and thought... Barack Obama is president of the United States. Someone I admire and trust is president. The American people chose him, and he won, fair fight. Barack Obama is -my- president.

I disagree with him on some points, and view him with the same skepticism one must of any politician. But I'm confident, come what may, that however this turns out, this signals change... good change. And it lifts my heart.

Sorry for rambling on your journal, Greenie - didn't realize how long this was turning out. Hehe!

If I can be uncharacteristically serious for a moment... I wish I knew how that felt.

I'm fairly cynical about politics. To be honest, I voted for the Green party in the last election less because I believed in their message and more because I preferred throwing away my vote to voting for the Conservatives or Liberals, the only parties with a real chance to win.

And hey, we've got a minority government now, which pretty much guarantees there'll be no big changes until after the next election.

But!

After listening to Americans bitch about George Bush the same way I bitch about our government for the last eight years, it's honestly refreshing to hear someone speak of their country with pride. (Someone who's not an ignorant buttwad, anyway. For some reason white supremacists seem to really love America. Go figure.)

So thank you for that. And feel free to ramble, it makes for an interesting read.

Splitter! I voted Megatron '08!

Megatron? Pffft.

Oh sure, he talks the talk, but do you really see a guy like him keeping his campaign promises?

"No blood for Energon" my ass.

Are you really trying to convince me that Senator Prime's choice to assign Jazz as his running mate (who has almost no experience, by the way) was anything more than a pathetic attempt to patronize left-leaning neo-cons in Congress while maintaining his fundamentalist, born-again, red-state ideals?

Don't get me wrong. I admire Prime as a veteran of the Cybertron Wars, but he plays up that "big-hearted-cowboy" shtick way too much.

Not to mention the unanswered question of "Did Optimus Prime arm terrorists in the Iran-COBRA affair?"

He says he has no such recollection, but what in the pit was he thinking? Sure COBRA my have been key in getting hostages out of Iran in the late 70's/early 80's... But at what price?

Can we trust a leader who lacked the foresight to see that COBRA would rise to be a very real terrorist threat in the 21st century?

I'll concede you the COBRA point, that was a fiasco. But how far should we go to correct that mistake? Megatron has made no secret of the fact that he supports Senator Duke's "Real American Hero" act, which would put a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the government. Whoever heard of a military faction with absolute jurisdiction and which answers only to itself? And what happens when they finally succeed in defeating COBRA? You think those men are just going to hand all that power back to the American People?

That's it. I'm voting for Sir Leoric in '12. He's a real... ahem... (WARNING: PUN AHEAD)... Visionary.

I'll admit defeat: that last one went right over my head.

I'll at least explain it...

Visionaries was another Hasbro line of action figures. They incorporated lenticular holograms onto each figure.

Transformers were "More than meets the eye", GI Joe was "A real American hero"...

Visionaries were "Knights of the magical light".

Like Transformers, GI Joe, Inhumanoids and Jemm, Visionaries had their own Sunbow Productions animated series.

Leoric was the Duke/Optimus Prime of the Visionaries.

Oh I see. Nicely done, there. I have no memory of Visionaries, but then I was born in '85, and thus barely count as a child of the 80s.

God I'm old.