From the Outside looking In.

By Annita Achilleos (EU citizen (Cyprus))

What will it take for Americans to start voting the right way (if at all)? At the same time, you tell me that the electoral college voting system does not really represent what people vote, and then I ask you…why, in this “great country of democracy”, an absolutely non-democratic voting system keeps controlling the fate of the US and the rest of the world? Why did it start in the first place? And why is it so hard to just count the votes of the people and the candidate that gets the most he/she gets elected? If this were the case, would the democrats rule the country in the last 8 years? That would absolutely make much more sense to the rest of the world, because, you see, in other countries where actual democracy exists (at least when it comes to electing a president), people do not understand the electoral college vote, and they therefore think that the majority of the Americans actually voted for the republicans…twice...and that killed every hope they had for this country to come to its senses. And the rest of the world really needs the US to come to its senses.

Whether we like it or not, if you go back in history at any point one nation had the power and could influence the rest of the world (eg the Greeks, the Romans) until another nation would gain as much power and take over. This last century it’s been the US and the last eight “disastrous” (both on an national and an international level) years it’s been the republicans. You would expect that any person with some common sense would not even think about voting for this party this coming election. You would expect that the average American would go straight for the democratic nominee (whoever that would be!). But it seems that the average American is really afraid of change, and this does sound cliché but it is the truth.

Now you are telling me that the republicans are becoming more popular just because of the vice president they chose? Are you telling me that the American people like McCain now because of Palin? Who is she as a politician? We absolutely know who she is as a mother and as a wife, and we could have known who she is as a politician if she did not lie in every single thing she said and if she was actually knowledgeable of both the domestic and the international political scene. I will tell you one thing: People and especially politicians around the world do not care about how good of a wife or a mother a politician is. We all know what kind of a person someone has to be in order to be in politics, so it really doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man, if you are married or if you have ten different lovers at the same time. When you meet with other world leaders, you are not going to talk about changing diapers or about how you met your husband.

You are going to talk about matters that the rest of the world cares about. Can Palin do that? Can a serious politician say “We are friends with Israel and I don’t think that we should second-guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security” as an answer to the question whether the US should back Israel if it were to try to eliminate Iran’s facilities militarily. Are you kidding me? What kind of an answer is that? Israel is our friend so we’ll do whatever they want! I’m telling you if republicans win again this country is doomed.