Are Some Political Parties More ‘Holy’ Than Others?
No. Political parties are inherently godless. Parties are not concerned with God or Faith, they are concerned with power, control, influence, branding and money. The Democrats and Republicans have monopolized power in the USA, and in the end all elections are a decision between one of these two Party’s candidates. Both groups suffer from corruption, and they both seek money and power above all else. Fortunately, good people can emerge from any system, regardless of how corrupted that system is. With the same logic, we find that no good person or candidate is perfectly good, or they themselves would be God: We will always disagree with a candidate on some issues.

But I’m a Business Owner, Is my Wealth Going to be Redistributed?
No. The rich will continue to be rich. The Government is not going to tax you into the middle class, so don’t sweat it. Despite Obama’s election and the Joe the Plumber rhetoric, at the end of the day you’re still going to live in your huge house, drive your sparkly German cars, and make more money in a month than the rest of us make in 5 years. The only thing that might push you back into the middle class (or bankruptcy) is our plunging market system. Our financial system has collapsed due in large part to unregulated greed and corruption, and remember that the Republicans (as well as many Democrats) supported deregulation up until the collapse.

Christians Don’t Vote for Democrats because Democrats Support Gay Marriage.
Wrong. Questions over the definition of marriage are decided by the states. More than that, the question usually bypasses both Parties and goes straight to the voters, who are given a choice between recognition or non-recognition of same-sex marriage in the form of amendments to their state’s constitution. The majority of states have added, or are adding, amendments that don’t recognize same-sex marriage. All of this is independent of the American President. Coincidentally, Obama and McCain completely agreed on maintaining this system, so it doesn’t matter who you voted for, they have identical opinions on the topic.

Christians Don’t Vote for Democrats because Democrats are Pro-Choice.
Wrong. The President does not decide whether abortion is right or wrong. That choice is left to the courts. As it turns out, Roe vs Wade was enacted during a Republican administration (Nixon). Since Roe vs Wade, Republicans have controlled the White House twice as often as Democrats. There have been 6 Republican and only 3 Democratic terms of office! If the Republicans can’t overturn Roe vs Wade with overwhelming odds, then it should be abundantly obvious that you shouldn’t be voting based on abortion: the President’s personal view on the topic carries about as much weight with the courts as yours.

Is Barack Obama a Socialist?
Barack Obama is a member of the Democratic Party. There is a completely seperate political party that never wins elections: The Socialist Party. Obama is not a member of that party, and he is not a Socialist in philosophy. Remember that in 1992 many argued that Clinton’s rise would bring about Socialism. It didn’t happen then, and it won’t now. Not only did Capitalism continue under Clinton, but business prospered in the 1990s. Why does the Socialist Party perform so poorly in elections? Because almost all Americans, Republican and Democrat, hate Socialism. With that in mind, remember that a political party’s chief concern is maintaining power and control. You don’t maintain power when you institute an economic system that your entire electorate hates.

But Democrats Damage our Nation by Taking God out of the Schools.
Nope, this is not damaging to the nation or to you. We all have the choice to send our children to private schools if we want them to receive spiritual as well as intellectual instruction. When we send them to public schools, we don’t want to roll the dice on the spiritual views of that school’s Principal and administration. Even if that administration favors Christianity, what type of Christianity is it? Do you want your children coming home with a Christian doctrine that may be radically different from the doctrine preached at your church? Or what if your local public school hires a new Principal that has the students face Mecca five times a day and pray to Allah? Would you be okay with your children going to that school? Let’s be rational here: We want our children to learn about the faith of their family, undiluted by educators and administrators. As it turns out, the 1st Amendment allows students to pray, sing, meditate, and talk to others about their religious faith at school. Thankfully, the teachers and administration may not.

I Vote on Politicians Based on their Faith.
Remember that being a person of great faith does not make you a good statesman, organizer or leader. Imagine for a moment a person at your church, one of the most faithful, God-fearing, moral people you know. Now, imagine that, based on their faith, they have been elected to be your boss at work. They are now dictating specific policies and practices over a job that you excel at. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? You are primarily concerned that a new manager knows your trade inside and out. In order to run a successful business with good morale and job satisfaction, they must be good at their job. If, after that, they share your faith, then it is a big bonus. When we vote solely based on faith, we end up with leaders that share our religion but are terribly inept at doing their job.

But Republicans Seem More In Tune to my Personal Values.
Over the last 8 years, the Republican leadership has pursued policies that would be heavily condemned by Christian standards. This includes war-mongering, defence of torture, secret prisons and holding foreign nationals hostage without attempting to establish their guilt or innocence. Additionally, a curiously high number of Republican leaders recently ended up being homosexual (an orientation frowned upon by faith voters), or they were drug users, bribe-takers or adulterors. Again, this is not God’s party.

I Hate Big Government, so I Vote Republican
The Government has never grown so big, so watchful and so 1984-esque as it has the last 8 years under Republican control. They are reading our emails, tapping our phone calls without warrant, pushing the courts to absolve the guilt of telecommunication companies that participate in this intrusion, passing creepily titled security-over-freedom laws like the PATRIOT ACT, creating new domestic spying agencies and, most recently, buying substantial chunks of the Banking system. That investment in Socialism, don’t forget, originally called for absolutely no oversight by our Congress… It was to be completely controlled by the President and his Treasury Department. Thankfully, the Democrats stopped that.

Conclusion
In 2000 and 2004, marketing genius Karl Rove along with other brand strategists convinced Evangelicals that voting the Republican ticket was the only way a Christian could go. These marketing strategists were hired not to support the will of God, but to ensure the continued success of a rich, powerful, greedy, opportunistic and above all Secular political party. To be fair, the Democratic party is greedy and secular too. As I stated above, Political Parties are inherently godless.

Therefore, if you find out one of your friends or family members voted Obama, don’t ask them if they are a Socialist. That question is an insult to them, an insult to your own intelligence and (humorously) an insult to the Socialist Party.

If you find out one of your Christian friends or family members voted Obama, read the above, and don’t ask them if they are a Christian. It is an insult to them, an insult to your intelligence, and, above all, an insult to God.

I don’t think anyone would argue that 2001-2008 was a rough patch in American politics and policy, regardless of whether you voted for George W. Bush. Because of this, the pendulum swings to the opposite of what Bush represents: Even 2008′s Republican candidate John McCain didn’t beat down the White House door to get Bush to campaign for him.

However, regardless of what these 8 years were like, something is amiss in the art/design community and their embrace of Barack Obama.

The above image, by Shepard Fairey, is the most ubiquitous. Fairey is the creator of Obey, a popular street art project/brand.

But Fairey isn’t the only painter or street artist making iconographic and emotionally charged Obama posters. Obama imagery, rooted in the style of Soviet and Chinese propaganda posters, have become commonplace everywhere from Street/Low Brow art powerhouses, like Juxtapoz, to popular graphic design publications, like Design Observer.

Despite individual political views, it can rationally be argued that Obama would provide better leadership than what we have seen recently. However, Barack Obama is still a politician. He is a politician that represents one of two extremely wealthy, powerful and deeply rooted political parties that have held control of US law and policy for the majority of this country’s history.

One of the most alarming aspects of the modern political climate is the recent growth of fervent political fundamentalism. This has created a polarization of the population, both sides of which earnestly believe that their views represent absolute truth while the other side is inherently subversive. Propaganda seeks to utilize this zeal in order to acheive an end, and in doing so, it pushes the masses away from reason and encourages blind, emotional adherence to political doctrine.

Regardless of how bad you feel the last presidency was, designers and artists should be universally suspicious of iconographic imagery that supports a major-label political player by pulling at the emotions of the audience, rather than presenting them with facts and logic. Those politicians have their own marketing departments that are already saturating the public space with emotional appeal in the form of TV commercials, billboards and viral videos. However, the  campaign machines just can’t do it as expertly as the sharp-witted independent artist, working for free without deadline or supervision.

Anyone who has studied art and design, whether in a University or on the streets and railroad tracks of a sprawling metropolis, should find propaganda inherently sinister, regardless of who it supports or what that person stands for. Yet some would argue that the last presidency was so damaging to civil rights, foreign relations and the general state of the nation/world that a change in leadership must be enacted by any means possible. However, when the thinking people of a nation lower themselves by seeking to sway the mob using hype, icons and emotional appeal, that nation has not changed or improved. Instead, intelligence and reason–those things that we struggle so hard to attain–lose yet again. The only winner is emotionalism, which, by simply changing the focus of its blue or red Pantone colored gaze, stays the course.