American President

America has voted Barack Obama in for another four years. I find myself rather embarrassingly unable to comment further on this, because apart from seeming like a really nice guy, I know very little about Obama or how good a president he is. He has only been voted in by just over half of the voters so that means that nearly half of voting Americans didn't want him.
The reason for my ignorance about politics can be traced back to the 1970s. Many of my contemporaries were starting to take an active interest in how our country was run by their early teens, but I found it all very boring and almost wilfully ignored political newspaper articles and programmes. I am not proud of this. I read in one of Stephen Fry's autobiographies that he does not sympathise with people who say that they have missed out on education, because knowledge is everywhere, like streets paved with gold, and can be easily accessed. I agree with him and am always intending to remedy my earlier lack of interest by reading up properly on politics, both domestic and world. The trouble is, life is busy and I never quite get round to it. So I honestly don't know where my own politics lie. That's not to say that I don't have any opinions; I just haven't worked out where these opinions place me in the spectrum of political opinion. It doesn't help that my opinions can bend in the wind a lot, depending on what knowledgable person I am talking too. I remind myself of a character I remember in the comedy programme "The Fast Show" who became increasingly uncomfortable during arguments in pubs because he found himself agreeing with the points both sides were making and then both sides would be angry with him! I have always said that I am cursed by seeing both sides of an argument. An example of this was a few years when I was very admiring of someone who really made a stand about something. But when I told James about it he pointed out that the way they had gone about it prevented someone else's free speech. And of course I agree with free speech too so I was thrown into confusion!