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Personal Experience

I've been ragged on by a certain friend, that I'm just paranoid, that there isn't that much hate out there for Obama... guess it depends on the definition of hate I suppose.

Perhaps it is just ignorance, but having a man, after seeing my Obama/Biden button on my shirt in a bar this evening, saying to me, "you're gonna vote for that nigger?" Here in Colorado, not Georgia, or South Carolina, but here in Colorado. And he said it loudly, and confidently without shame. I explained to him that not only am I going to vote for him, that I'd just spent my entire afternoon and evening canvassing, walking and knocking door to door to make sure people are going to go out and vote. Perhaps he was saying it to get my goat, but after I looked him directly in the eye, and told him that, he kind of looked down at his beer, and we began an hour-long discussion about why Obama isn't a terrorist-loving, socialist out to destroy America as he was insisting. He was also shocked when I told him that I'm an Air Force veteran and the reason I'm supporting Obama isn't because I'm a Democrat (I'm still registered independent, last registered as a Libertarian), but because McCain is running against his own ideals of just a few years ago, and now parroting Rove-like talking points. Funny that much of what is being said is over 50 years old... behold, the father of American slander and fear-mongering, Senator Joseph McCarthy ---

His running mate continues the McCarthyite rhetoric that has disturbed me, and people like Colin Powell so. Now, I probably didn't change his mind, but it helped me believe in calm and smart diplomacy, even in the face of ignorance and even relatively benignly passive hate.

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