It is a very weird feeling being in the midst of the U.S.A's election. When I was at home, I used to think that US is such a far away place to affect us, besides of course their currency.
On the streets, old people with their walking sticks, stood beside the traffic lights, carrying the large OBAMA cardboard. The way they encourage people to vote is to stand there for the whole day. It looked really funny to me, but it was inspiring too. I got some pins and tags as I walked pass their determined eyes.
In the classrooms, all professors of all three subjects are using election as part of their teaching tool. My Writing class showed the election campaign of 1952 and we discussed about visual argument. Interesting enough, the image that the Republicans and Democrats portrayed 50 something years ago still lasted till today.
My political Anthropology class always offer an inside view of the politics scene in USA. Being such an expert in his field- muslim politics, my prof has been dealing with a lot of 'suspected' icons in the Islamic world thus encountered with CIAs and FBIs. Today we discussed about how the vertical hierachy/beuracracy system in the Intelligence unit made themselves even less efficient than the newspaper in passing out information. Even though the people in the unit has already hold evidence that certain country does not own massive weapons, the 'boss' always use 'prove me otherwise' or ' not enough evidence' to brush them off. I feel that I am in an action movie like Bourne Identity when I heard of all these fascinating inside story. Once, my prof even got questioned by the Intelligence for showing SH's (guess who) video in the class.
The students of course, showed an unusual passion ( in my opinion) towards the whole election. Obama and McCain from their campaigning, sounded like one of their best mates and we should really look out for them. Two of my floormates even bet to shave and dye their hair blonde ( he's a chinese) if their favourite candidate loses. These two days, whole of the campus gone crazy by having students volunteered around the campus shouting " have you voted?" and distributing more and more flyers of the smiling Obama and Palin ( McCain does not really look appealing in flyers) in our resident halls, in the bathrooms, dining hall, restaurants, you name it. Dartmouth Students have a weird advertising method of writing on every single pavement with Chalks to increase publicity. Guess it works, today's world is all about image manipulation, whether or not we truly understand what politics is about.
Having my mom more excited about the election than I do, I seriously hope that I could help witness tonight's historical moment.
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