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panda-like calm through fiction
Natural Born
I believed in something yesterday. It was so much brighter, and more vibrant, than simply smaller government or lower taxes. I believed Obama, a man I couldn’t stand behind, was a fake. He couldn’t have been our president- we couldn’t really have strayed so far from the dreams of our founding fathers.

My mom was Ukranian, and that’s never really bothered me- America was my home, and mom had left when she was still in her adolescence, so America might have been a second home, but it was home all the same. Dad was a second-generation Mexican immigrant; his parents had come over legally on visas, and eventually earned their citizenship.

I don’t know what it was about Obama. I wasn’t really a fan of John McCain- not really. I remember when he used to conduct the Straight Talk Express (and I liked him then- even if I’d been too young to vote for him), so his true conservative rebirth cast even his former forthrightness in a cynical light. I liked Sarah Palin at first, too, because I thought, “Now here’s a normal American.” But as the campaign wore on, I realized she was as cynical in her own way as John McCain, that her down-home “maverickiness” was just as cold and calculated and disingenuous. And she might be dumb as a post (you know, it’s hard to tell, with how biased MSM coverage can be). I don’t want you to think I couldn’t get behind a woman as commander in chief- just not that woman (though not Hillary, either).

I’m young enough I don’t wet myself every time someone says “socialism,” and I can count high enough to understand why widening social inequality is a problem, but I guess it comes down to the fact that I’m from Texas, and while some of my friends in Texas may tease me about being liberal, I’m certainly no democrat. And I want to emphasize that I’m not a dumb guy- I never professored law at Harvard, either- but on a good day I’d beat a sack of potatoes at chess. But I didn’t want to admit it- I didn’t like the reality, so I, I tried to live- mentally- in a place I could be happier.

But Barack Obama probably was born in Hawaii, just like the birth certificate said. Even if he wasn’t, jus sanguis (don’t ask me how to pronounce it, I found it on the wiki page) and Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part I, Section 1401 says since his mother was an American so is he- like John McCain, who was born in Panama.

I’d heard most of the reasoning before, you know. But it was today my mother finally told me the truth. The man I’d called “dad” all those years wasn’t my real father, and I hadn’t been born in his home in Laredo. My real father was from El Salvador, and I’d been born in Mexico. Mom didn’t even meet “dad” until a few months later, when he was on vacation. They hadn’t told me all these years because they thought it would be hard enough fitting in as a half-Latino.

I don’t feel a kinship with Obama. I still don’t agree with his politics, or think he’s the right man for the job. But I see through my own nonsense about the birth certificate- and there’s no going back from that.

And I am pissed at my parents for lying to me, but I guess I know I dodged a bullet, too. I just thank God McCain was the nominee- because of him I boycotted the election; if Huckabee had won the nomination, I might have gone to jail.


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