OT Maybe we sometimes forget that our system of government requires that we accept other points of view even when they are politically repugnant to us. It's unsettling to witness demonising and destructive "us and them" rhetorical arguments based upon what happened sometime in the past or may happen sometime in the future.
My experience is that the extreme arguments are fueled by angry rhetoric from the Sharptons, the Jesse Jacksons, the Rush Limbaughs, the ultra religious right, the Chomskys and on and on. What is interesting is that their methods are all the same and their arguments all follow the same patterns. The pattern is to create a caricature of the opposition, set up straw man positions that caricature would adopt and then use any available truths, or half truths, or even non-truths to reinforce those beliefs and fuel outrage. In this way differences are emphasized, exaggerated and sometimes even created. There is no emphasis on finding commonalities and on respect for and acceptances of differences.
We are clearly not all alike. We have regional differences, cultural differences and gender differences, as well as many others. I would like to see an effort to find common ground as opposed to delighting in the differences and the rightness of our position and the wrongness of theirs. I don't care if we are republican, democrat, catholic, asian, white, female, etc. we should all at least be able to agree that we each want the same basic things for ourselves and our families. Sure black gangs have terrorized white people and white gangs have terrorized black people and religious people have terrorized other religious people and on and on. But this is America. A land of laws, and lawyers and courts, and dammit we don't have to put up with that for too long.
We aren't on the verge of a constitutional crisis. No one has challenged the power of the courts to resolve this issue. The legislative branch is empowered to resolve impasses and the military and police authorities are not about to erupt into anarchistic gangs intent upon seizing power. Even more importantly, neither of the two wimps has the inclination, the charisma, the following or the issues to escalate this beyond anything more than an interesting political event. There will be no mass uprising of Jesse Jackson led forces meeting the forces of Rush Limbaugh (by the way, if you want to see war wimps, why not look into those two?)
So what should happen? I voted for Gore, mostly for the Supreme court appointments since I think we need balance there and the last few appointments have been republican. Even though I voted for Gore, I have to agree with some of our self proclaimed right wingers on the election. There is no clear mandate for either Gore or Bush. The margin of error in the election process is large enough that no matter which way the final tally turns out, we will never know who actually would have won in a "pure and accurate" tally. In view of that fact, I think that whatever method of tallying the votes is used, it should be used uniformly within each state. If some of the votes are hand counted and that tally is used, then all of the votes should be hand counted. If not, then only the machine tabulated votes should be counted. Since Florida is the pivotal state, the most accurate method of tabulation should be used, whatever that is. It would be healthy if both candidates would agree on the process to determine the winner, announce it ahead of the final tally and agree to accept it. Each candidate should consider how divisive this is for the country and should consider affirming the propiety of the process and their genuine support for the other in the event of their loss.
All of us should be thankful that our founding fathers understood the importance of a balance of power.
An aside to our self proclaimed right wingers. 25 years ago most of the policies of the Democrats over the last 8 years would have been unacceptable to "true Democrats" then and would have been welcomed by most Republicans at that time. Hey, the right is winning ground, the left is losing ground and more and more young people are less liberal and more conservative than their parents were at their ages. What is surprising to me is that as the country has moved further to the right, the right has moved further to the right. Do you see this differently? Ed |
