In the election of November 2012, I voted for Barack Hussein Obama.

Though each person’s vote is sacrosanct in this country and we need not discuss it with anyone, I just wanted to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. There is a lot President Obama has done with which I heartily agree, and there is also much with which I heartily disagree.

If you were to see me walking the street, though, or across from you on one of our local buses, you would have no way of knowing who I voted for or even the reasons why.

There are no buttons on my clothing that cry out my beliefs to the world, nor do I wear T-shirts that either implore or demand you see the world through my eyes.

Yet, all around us, like fortune tellers in a carnival side-show, there are many who can tell instantly why people voted the way they did, be they liberal or conservative.

There is a famous William Castle movie, “I Saw What You Did,” which later morphed into a more modern series of cheesymovies about someone who pretends to know what a stranger did with terrible results.

Since the election, we have had “analysis” of why the election went Barack Obama’s way. If you aren’t an academic or someone who plays close attention to politics, the explanations may fit along with your own personal views. In letters pages, newspaper columns, blogs, on Facebook or even in personal conversations, there are those who have the neat answers in the palms of their hands.

Minorities and young people voted for Obama because they wanted “free” stuff. Women (as ever, a sort of political subspecies) voted for him because they wanted free birth control or unfettered access to abortions.

Black people voted for him because ... well, because he was one of them.

Lots of folks are just “against God.”

Obama was going to take all of our guns away,which is as ludicrous a notion as the accusation in the election of 1800 by supporters of John Adams that Thomas Jeff erson was going to confiscate all of the Bibles in America. Best to hide them in your well or bury them in your back garden went the argument.

I’m pretty sure once Jefferson won the election, there were folks accusing others of voting for him because they wanted him to do just that, which was never even on his mind in the fi rst place.

If you voted for Mitt Romney, of course, it just goes without saying you believe in shipping jobs overseas, treating women as second-class citizens and attacking Iran at the drop of a hat. Why should I waste my valuable time asking you why you voted the way you did?

Always with us, this form of political extra-sensory perception has become even more rampant in this young century. “You liberals” is one of the worst epithets one can toss at someone, either in a letter to the editor or on Facebook (or “you conservatives,” come to that), but it hasbecome sadly apparent with all of the words being thrown around, very few people are actually stopping to listen to what anyone else has to say.

Ironically, if the tables are reversed, the person with the ESP often cries “Foul!”

We make a fetish of reading every word the long-dead Founding Fathers and the equally long-dead French writer Alexis deTocqueville wrote, but how often do we read the writings of those we disagree with? The men and women who are alive and tread the earth with us today and are just as passionate, literate and eloquent as those who led the way for us?

Instead we rely on our ESP, knowing instantly why someone would vote the way they did. If we can useour mind powers to see into the soul of another and then dismiss them entirely, we may well bring about results for this country just as disastrous as the way they ended in “I Saw What You Did.”

RICHARD S. DRAKE IS HOST OF THE “ON THE AIR” TALK SHOW ON FAYETTEVILLE’S PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION AND AN AUTHOR.

Correction: The name of the writer was incorrect in a previous version of this story. The error has been corrected.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 01/13/2013