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...has produced a remarkable evolution in my political thought.
In the late 90s, I was a supporter of people like Ross Perot and Nader, thinking both parties were corrupt and incapable of change. The amount of information I digested about current events was better than average, but still fairly paltry (easy to accomplish when compared to the "mean" of the typical US citizen). As Election 2000 approached, I came around to supporting Al Gore, and during the Recount, discovered that the media wasn't at all liberal and that Al Gore was actually cool as all hell (though his advisors sucked). The first term of Bush "radicalized" me as I began absorbing more information and realized that my "center", while the center of most educated or compassionate people, was to the left of what the media portrayed and the GOP wanted. It was also to the left of where the Democratic Party seems to stand. As 2004 approached, I was a Dean supporter, and when Kerry won the primaries, I supported him. I gave political donations and my volunteer time for the first time in the 2004 election cycle, in the primaries and then in the general.
I'm far worse off today than I was five years ago, materialistically speaking.
After the 2004 Elections and now, I'm finding myself a strong supporter of the Democratic Party, wanting to change it from within. I want it to be a home to "the guys that drive pickup trucks" just as much as I want it to be a refuge for minorities and the GLBT communities. Like many here, I'd like to see the policies of the DLC think tanks and professional punditry de-emphasized. I don't think timid works for us, and "bi-partisanship" has us ill-served.
But I'm not in favor of purges. A fire in the forest burns the sick trees, sure, but it also kills all the rest of the wildlife. Consider that the Republicans planned for and orchestrated their judicial takeover more than twenty years ago. Youthful exuberance has a tendency to push for all right now. That'd be great, but it's highly unlikely. In fact, by pushing for all right now, I think we do ourselves a disservice and make ourselves ineffective.
In regards to Alito, Bush has been in office for more than a term. We've seen the kind of people he appoints. We know every damn one of them has been a Federalist Society prawn, coached and trained up from before they graduated from prep school. But for five years now, Bush and Rove have been blasting at us with scattershot. Five scandals a day, and we want to throw our energy into fighting every single one with 110% of our energy. And dammit, if the man next to me doesn't find THIS fight, THIS issue, THIS day, as important as I, well then, he must be a traitor, or a DINO.
So I could say here, the REAL scandal is that we suffer from a serious weakness in our way of thinking. Believing in democracy, faith in the "goodness" of man, that every person is worthwhile, that every person deserves opportunity and happiness, thinking that everyone has something important to say. They don't think that way. They have no moral inhibitions about denying someone a voice because they are (pick one) a woman, a minority, a gay, a cancer patient, a veteran. If someone disagrees, they should be silenced or ridiculed. We on the other hand have an inherent moral problem with that kind of thinking, as well we should. The DLC was one attempt at remedying this problem, essentially by adopting deception and triangulation as political tools.
So, the question remains, if even 30% of the people STILL support Bush, what are we to conclude?
Are some people just too stupid to vote? If people weren't easy to manipulate, would companies and governments spend millions and billions of dollars on public relations and marketing? Should we really be spending so much of our revenue fixing two bit problems? (Half a trillion to turn Iraq into Iran) Should we really be sitting on our asses waiting for that ONE PERSON that fullfills all our dreams and adheres to all our positions, and tossing any that do not into the fires?
PEOPLE who do the "right thing" are the exceptions, but admitting that runs CONTRARY to some of our fundamental beliefs.
If MOST people do the "wrong thing", why the hell would we trust in a structure of government so easily run off the rails by the "wrong things"?
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