Crunch Time
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I’m writing this piece at at 10:20 A.M. on Sunday, November 2nd. The big day is two days away. Most polls will close in 59 hours and 40 minutes. The next 4 years are instantly changed by the numbers that will roll in on Tuesday; maybe even the whole cosmic balance will be changed by those numbers. But for me, my entire life’s course will be decided sometime Tuesday night, or maybe Wednesday, or in the event of some “too-close-to-calls,” sometime later.
Since I was little, I kew I wanted to serve in the military. And not just in a desk job; I want to fight as a Marine. I started to get really serious about this in 8th grade. At the time, Barack Obama was a nobody and Bush’s approval rating hadn’t tanked too horribly yet. I had set my mind on going to one of the five military service academies: West Point (aka Army); Annapolis (aka Navy); the Air Force Academy; the Coast Guard Academy; or Kings Point (aka Merchant Marines). I had heard of 4 of these 5. I hadn’t heard of the Merchant Marine academy. But when I found out that it was a maritime school, I set my mind on going there. I had figured that I would get my education in naval architecture/marine engineering there, and then fulfill my military commitment. All of that was well and good, until the Fall of 2007…
In the Fall of 2007, this year’s election race really took off. The primaries were crazy. Things got really heated. And then Barack Obama became the only Democratic nominee. Thats when things got nuts. Obama appeared to be (at least to a Conservative thinker like myself): a left-wing nutjob who loved all Arab nations: a socialist; a terrorist sympathizer; and a black rights radical. It turned out to be worse than that – Obama said that he would meet with the leaders of Iran with no preconditions. That was the day I decided that if Obama got elected, I was going to enlist in the marines. I felt that I’d rather risk my own life for my country than sit idly by at university. I want to get an education, but if there was nuclear attack, all of my education would be for naught.
Needless to say, my parents are supportive of the military completely, but they want me to get an education, and they would fear for my safety. At the same time, sometimes one must do his own thing if he feels that it is the only right thing to do. So on Tuesday, when all of you get out your calculators and begin to, for the first time, compute what your taxes under Obama will be, I will be sitting by the television with the business card for my local recruiting station in one hand and the business card for the admissions building at Kings Point in my other hand, waiting to see who will get my call.
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wow…that’s drastic. I realize that the outcome of this election will have an impact on the next four years of my life (being that those will be my “radical college” years, needless to say, I am comforted in knowing that the President can’t do too much direct damage without the approval of Congress first – with regard to domestic affairs. Foreign Affairs (regarding the military in this case, however, have defiantly not been at the forefront of my mind, its scary to think about the military power (damage) that the next president has/could cause.