I'll respond to your post, Scott.
I understand your point. Let me address both of your central arguments, which I understand to be:
1. The election was a tie and nobody will ever win it
2. We all need to move forward and get this behind us
First, the election was not a tie. Under Florida state law, there was a winner. However, the Florida Supreme Court has put a hold on the declaration of the winner of the election. We all are awaiting further developments on this.
Further, the only reason this election in Florida is not over is because Al Gore filed a lawsuit contesting the results of the election. The subsequent Bush lawsuits were filed in response to the actions of Gore. The resultant activity is getting extremely complex, as it always does when attorneys get involved.
(If this sounds "highly partisan" to you, then you are working from a partisan viewpoint yourself.)
Secondly, I fully agree with you on your point about getting this all behind us. Unfortunately, it is not that simple now. Once Gore filed that lawsuit, everything about this election totally changed. We could argue for the next ten years about the intentions of the parties involved in this little drama, and I agree with you that those arguments are mostly coming from a biased viewpoint.
What I personally find most interesting about all this is not the bickering and fighting that is going on, but simply the fact that bickering and fighting is going on at all.
***Note: what follows is personal opinion.***
Gore made a tactical decision to challenge the Constitution. That's a fact. Nobody that understands what is going on here will dispute that. He made a political decision to do it, and that decision was made long before the election took place.
Everything that the Gore campaign has done since that first lawsuit has been a part of a calculated strategy to win a legal case in a court of law.
These are things based on empirical evidence. You can see these things, I trust.
We also know that the media feeds on controversy and trouble. That is what the media eats. The media also creates controversy.
The TV programs, the radio shows, the newspapers, all these things are based on the fact that there is some controversy or trouble that is being addressed in some way by the media. The media has degraded in the last 40 or 50 years to something resembling professional wrestling. It's kinda like a sport, but it's being run off a script. There are people that watch professional wrestling and don't know that the ref is calling the next scene to both the actors. People watch Rikki Lake and don't know they are watching professional actors. People watch NBC and don't realize that the guy who decided what to leave off the show wants them to believe what he believes. Al plays touch football.
At the same time, we have an imperfect world, where things are not right all the time. People do bad things, people have bad things done to them. It can get pretty ugly.
Combine these factors in this presidential election, and what do we get? We get a community of people on the Internet that has been learning and sharing and building respect and friendship suddenly feeling worse and attacking each other over this election and what has been happening with it.
You see this. I know you do, because you want to address it in a civilized manner, take some responsibility for it, resolve it, and move forward. Not only do I respect you very much for voicing that, I'm in complete, total agreement with you on it. Therefore, you are my friend.
I assume from your name that your mom makes good chile rellenos, so if you have any spares, I'm interested. <G>
But, my friend, we must confront what has happened first, or it will never be fully resolved.
You've seen analysis of, and personal opinions about, the people in this little crisis and their actions and intentions. These opinions are based on individual understanding and beliefs.
It appears to me that what you object to is not the arguments but the way in which the arguments are presented.
If that is the case, then I am in total agreement with you on that as well. Bill Buckley said recently that he was sure that if the roles were reversed, the Republicans would be doing the exact same thing that the Democrats are doing.
I don't agree with Bill. I believe that if one gets above his politics and looks at what is really going on here, he (or she) can see what is happening. I believe it is possible to observe and understand what is really happening.
What I think is happening is that federal law in the United States is being challenged, and the underlying motivation of that challenge is a selfish desire of a small group of men to assume control of the United States government no matter what they have to do to do it. I think they sincerely believe they are above the law. In other words, the end justifies the means. I think they have, for example, hired people to become members of SI and foster unrest and disharmony. SI appears to me to be a little microcosm of the bigger picture. It's really interesting because eight years ago, this particular microcosm didn't exist. And that is the power of the Internet...but that's another topic. <G>
I think, in this particular specific case, what is going on with this election is really, really wrong. And I think it's really, really bad for the United States, in a whole bunch of ways. And, I think there is somebody sitting close to Al Gore that is fully responsible for it, and is directing it like a movie. I think Al has put all his cards on the table, and if he loses this, he is wiped out. He's averaged down on margin, and he is out of chips. Additionally, I believe that he will make a big mistake. I've seen this kind of thing many times. Eventually, the guy that is breaking the law, or wants to break the law, screws up. Al's boss did, and I think Al will too. In fact, he may already have. If some NBC camera catches some Gore attorney standing next to an election official and it is determined that some GI's vote got thrown out fraudulently, Al is a goner. He might even be a goner just because that GI thinks he got screwed.
Bush, on the other hand, could very soon be the president, and it seems to me that he is doing what I would want him to do if he is going to be the next president. He is not swimming in the cesspool with the rats. Somebody is going to have to lead the United States here in a couple of weeks, and if I were to choose a man, the choice is pretty simple for me at this point. We may disagree on that, but we can still be friends.
I want this thing to play out fully, so that people that don't see what I see will see it and recognize it for what it is. I think there are some bad people and that they are doing some bad things, and it might be bad for everyone else if they are not caught.
We'll see if I am right. |
