DESPITE the hype around the two recent national conventions, too many people I’ve spoke to lately don’t seem to be following the presidential race. This is to be expected, considering Guam doesn’t get to help choose the next most powerful man in the world. Such a statement in the United States itself might seem like an affront to democracy and self-government! But what is the point of calling on people in Guam to care about a race they aren’t allowed to participate in?

This November when you head to the polls, you might get a ballot that asks you if you want to vote for either Willard Mitt Romney or Barack Hussein Obama. But since the vote doesn’t count, it makes you wonder why we even do it at all? It is yet another way that people on Guam seek to create the illusion of Guam being a secure and full part of the United States rather than face the truth of the situation. It is akin to seeing someone who is hallucinating that they are eating a gourmet meal and while they have their hands before them cutting imaginary rib eye steak with an imaginary knife, you politely offer them some teriyaki sauce to go with their meal.

The realities of American contemporary colonialism make the apathy toward presidential politics understandable, but it is still inexcusable. It is a foolish sort of fantasy, and one that is dangerous because it makes people on Guam feel like they belong in a way they don’t, and so therefore they don’t perceive
the way in which a presidential election actually does matter to the island.

The election of the U.S. president isn’t like the election of a foreign leader for Guam, but at the same time it isn’t really the election of “our” president either. Did the place you come from offer Electoral College votes that helped candidates get
elected? If not, then the president isn’t really your president.

The most basic way in which you can perceive Guam’s colonial status is through this simple lack of representation/participation. You did not get to participate in the election of the president, not even to vote against him, and so all your feelings of patriotism don’t make that person “your” president.
But, the glitch here, the reason Guam is a colony, is that you not being represented democratically does not exempt you from the decisions of whoever is elected and whatever laws he signs and whatever people he appoints to his cabinet. Even though you
are not included in American democracy, you are still included in the everyday exercise of American power.

The reason why you should pay attention to presidential politics is because not all candidates are the same and most importantly not all parties are the same. Even if you don’t have the right to vote for or against them, they still have incredible influence over Guam and what sort of relationship it will have with the federal government.

In this upcoming election, the stakes are very high for Guam. The Republican Party has become far less cooperative, far more conservative and much more ideologically intolerant in the months leading up to this election. Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan, a conservative darling who doesn’t easily appeal to centrist or Independent voters, is a clear sign as to how rightist their party is today.

You could argue politicians are politicians and the parties are pretty much the same, but in terms of relating to the territories, the Democrats tend to be friendlier than Republicans. It is Republican politicians who repeatedly question whether people who live in territories are actually Americans. (If you ask Congressman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., for example, he would tell you they aren’t.) The reason? The fact that people in the territories get all the privileges of being attached to the U.S. but don’t support it through paying taxes. If you search around the Internet for those who don’t like the
idea of Chamorros getting war reparations, they are predominantly Republicans. The social programs on Guam, through which people oftentimes feel their dependency toward the United States, are things Republicans love to claim need slashing. Finally, Democrats and Republicans differ on global warming; one side taking it more seriously than the other. As an island, Guam should definitely hope that the side that takes it more seriously prevails.

Although there is a lot of complexity involved, you can reduce this difference between the parties to the ideological narratives that give them strength. Republicans claim to defend the real Americans and attempt to return America to its roots (both of which lie beyond the bounds of the territories). Democrats are more comfortable promoting the expansion of the union and therefore feel more obligated to help out their “Insular Empire.”