MarCom Maven

Maven's Note: For anyone who reads this site for marketing information, please forgive me. I just felt compelled to write this today. Tomorrow, back to marcom, etc. 

Politics are personal, right?  So, please indulge me if I give two very personal, very selfish reasons for not wanting John McCain to become president of the United States.

Sam and Shira.

These are my kids. Sam is 15 and Shira is 10. Of course, they are both going on 40 because they know far more than anyone of my generation ever did at a tender age. But I digress. Sam and Shira are, unfortunately, headed for draft age within the next eight years. It scares me, well, shitless.

Sixty-five years ago, my paternal grandmother said good-bye to her only child when he enlisted in the Navy. He was part of a class that was rushed through Yale so they could all be part of that great patriotic effort called WWII. They were the cream of the crop, the bright young people of their generation and they were off to fight. Honestly, I don’t know how my grandmother did it.

I can’t do it.

Maybe World War II was different. Perhaps people knew that there were all kinds of moral issues to be resolved back then. Maybe it was the fact that our relatives were being annihilated in horrendous ways in Europe. I don’t know because my paternal grandmother died when I was about six months old.  I don’t know how she did it, but I can’t.

I just can't encourage my children to fight for a war that was based on a falsehood. Ok, I'm too fierce in my need to protect my young. Maybe that makes me a bad mother. I’ll take the hits.

Mr. McCain, I can't agree with the America you envision. This war is bankrupting my country. Why must we "win" this war when all those dollars could have been used to improve America’s deficit-ridden education system and declning infrastructure?  And let me not even mention the fact that we are the only industrialized nation not to have universal health care.

Frankly, I don’t care if it’s Clinton or Obama. It has to be either one that takes the oath on a crisp, hope-filled January morning in 2009.  I’ve told my children to join me in campaigning this Fall. They have to do it. Their lives depend on it.