Are you Siamese Twins?
"We are not Siamese. We are American." - Matt Damon (Stuck on you.)A lot of people hate the hyphenated American labels, but we still use these labels because they are useful in many practical ways. I recently read that Vietnamese-Americans prefer Bush to Kerry. Wow. That's probably as big a margin as it gets. Why? Because Kerry was anti-Vietnam war, so indirectly pro-commie, and the people who were able to emigrate to the U.S. are mostly pro-American and anti-commie (think Cuba East). Begin venting, skip to next paragraph if uninterested. This is ignoring the fact that Kerry went to Vietnam and killed Viet Congs, while Bush tried to shoot down Commie planes in the sky of Texas. This is ignoring the admission by Bush in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: "My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that came only later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win." These flip-flopping Yalies.
Can't fault the Vietnamese-Americans though, many people have become single-issue voters in this election. Former DEMOCRAT mayor of NYC, Ed Koch, is voting for Bush, despite disagreement on all domestic issues. Why? Koch, who's Jewish, mentioned terrorism and Israel. He believes Bush will be a strong supporter of Israel. I can understand his worry, a lot of people think that the anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world stem largely from our pro-Israel stand, and that we should cut them loose. My only question is, who did Koch vote for in 2000 when Joe Lieberman was the Democratic VP candidate?
At this point, you may be yelling at the monitor, "So are you Americans first or are you _________ (insert appropriate labels) first!" Or "No one's worried that Kerry will give the FOOTBALL (briefcase with arming codes for our nuclear missiles) to the Vatican just because he's Catholic!" but the left is just as guilty. They can't understand why any Gay/Black/Poor -American would vote for Bush. This stereotyping is not fair neither. I had realized that my initial anger against Koch, "is Israel more important than our country?" was too harsh. People are defined by their experiences, and their values are arranged in importance accordingly. I don't know how it feels to belong to a people living in fear of persecution, or lived through a civil war, or growing up hiding my true sexual preference. Our priorities are all different. It's fine to be a single-issue voter, but we should be careful not to vote for a leader who's not only single-minded, but also narrow minded.
posted by hedgehog @ 2:32 PM
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