Paladin, First, thank you for your service in defending this, the Greatest Nation to bless the earth, country. I've agreed with sentiments behind most of your posts. I have to part ways on this passage
We have not come very far at all in all these years and all those who have gave their life for this great nation. We still see a "black man" and a "white female".
If I am understanding it the way it reads to me.
I like and dislike these two candidates solely for the views on life (life as in life in general not as in pro-) and politics. It has nothing to do with their genders or race. Had we been in a time where pictures were not part of the internet (think Wildcat Bulletin Board or any other bbs) and the popular media had no images to convey and there were not the rancor of raced base politics (to where one were identified by either his own ads or an opponents or "journalism") or the gender traditional names that would identify either of these candidates races or gender, I would do as any enlightened person would do and make their judgment/vote based on the content of their heart and not color of their skin or the gender of their biology.
If you sat me down and said Candidate A believes in this and Candidate B believes in this. I would abhor one and adore the other.
Paladin, I was reading back through the thread to determine what caused you to bring up race and gender and I couldn't find it.
I disagree from more the core of your oversimplification of this. I would hope "we" as a nation are beyond this; but if "we" aren't I am.
Maybe I am naive; maybe, but I'd rather live in a perception of America in its ideal as opposed to one where "I don't vote for him because he's black" or "I don't vote for her because she's white", it not only diminishes the character of what this country is, but its collective intellect.
If I were black, I certainly wouldn't vote for Obama because he were black. I would vote for him because he will lead the nation as I feel he should. Additionaly, if I were a woman I wouldn't vote for McCain/Palin because one of them is a woman. Admittedly, if you went back to my previous hypothetical and had no pictures or description of either their race or gender, one might swear their genders (McCain/Palin) were reversed based on their words alone.
Had I had my druthers, I'd vote for Palin over McCain in a primary. She has more executive experience, less political baggage, and more of the right stuff than either McCain or Obama. And no, not because she's a White Woman, but because, she has tried to impart change on corrupt broken governments.
McCain and Obama's pasts are too shady for my taste, and certainly too "progressive".