because I know that I can tend to run on so I’m bringing my bloviating over here from Rainy Day Things.
I’ve written before about my distaste for partisan politics. I’m just not sure when or how it got to the point that 60% of the population goes unrepresented in a representative democracy. I know there was a sea change after the 1964 election when the Dixiecrats defected to the Republican party making the Party of Lincoln the party of the privileged, but I don’t know if that was The Turning Point.
In any event, primary campaigns now are targeted to “the base” which is either too far right or left for any objective person to get involved in, and general elections are a choice between the fascist and the socialist and who in the hell wants to deal with that? (My hat is off to state and local campaigns able to run and elect an independent candidate, but at some point it’s the Republican Party candidate vs. the Democratic Party candidate.)
I confess that the Republican Party scares the hell out of me (figuratively speaking). Are they going with a neo-fascist or a religious fundamentalist? A Libertarian or could there be a true Goldwater conservative left? In any case, that’s a strange and scary group of bedfellows, but they can organize! They can sell it! People about whom nobody in their party would give a rat’s ass will swear to this day that Dubya was sent to save them. It’s amazing.
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Democrats, on the other hand, would have a hard time selling water in the desert. They’d have a hard time deciding among themselves whether to sell water or electrolyte drinks or both or neither; maybe pass out salt tablets instead. Republicans are wrong so much of the time, but they’re decisive and I think people generally respect that.
I don’t want to donate to elect Democratic candidates. Democrats wanted to defeat Rick Santorum so badly that they found a candidate possibly more conservative than Santorum to run as a Democrat against him. What is that? I want my Representative and my Senators to represent ME! I LIKE that Heath Shuler will occasionally break ranks from the Democrats; I wish that he didn’t stay in that religious fundamentalist rooming house when he’s in D.C. but I like that he’s not in lock step with a party. I like that when I disagree with him his office – maybe him but probably his office – will respond with a rationale for his position. In California I had Grace Napolitano for a Representative, and she never broke ranks and I never heard a word from her.
So, yes, Rain. Partisanship is a huge issue if for no other reason than that it tears at the fabric of our representative democracy. Reducing politics to the lesser of two evils is not what we’re about. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 and elected a President in 1860. We couldn’t do that today, and that’s a damn shame.
You might run on but you say a lot when you do it. I agree. It’s a problem right now and I don’t know what it will take to change it. I am not thrilled with either party nor any candidate. Ironically I am more interested in the possibility of Hillary Clinton running for VP than anything else and I was not a fan of hers before she became Secretary of State. Now she’s looking like a level-headed choice although I will never totally agree with anybody who gets to the top of political power.
I was kind of thinking for awhile that maybe Jesse Ventura would make a good alternative party candidate and then I read how he may have fudged his military record and wasn’t really a Seal even though he did much that Seals do. That kind of disillusioned me but then are any of them pure by the time they get to that level?
A very thoughtful analysis of where things are today in our country. I never thought it would get to such a disastrous low level of competency in both parties, but it has. Pretty scary stuff. I place much of the blame on money, on the airwaves being owned by very rich people with a lot of power and investment to protect their interests. Most of the “issues” that make the headlines are distractions from the very real war being waged on the middle and lower classes. We never have that discussion, instead I see the headlines about wanting to cut social security, or health care being reduced to death panels. A thriving democracy requires a thriving free press, and I’m afraid those days are over.
You make an excellent point, Robin, and it’s one I’ve mentioned before. The free flow of objective information for the citizen to make what he will of it is critical to the democratic process. If we only know what we are told by a handful of corporate-controlled media outlets we’re powerless to control our fate.
Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable laying blame for that on the Rupert Murdochs.
John Galway, who was born on this date in 1867, said “A man of action, forced into a state of thought, is unhappy until he can get out of it.” I think he’s pretty close to the mark. I think we don’t know a lot of what goes on because we don’t want to deal with it. We want “them” to deal with it so we don’t have to think and understand. We want Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to make, if not sense, something that sounds enough like sense to us that we don’t have to think for ourselves.
The biggest story on ABC News is “The Bachelor” or what Michelle Obama was wearing when she deplaned from Air Force One. What did the President know about Snooki and when did he know it?
The problem isn’t Rupert Murdoch; the problem is that we’re buying Rupert Murdoch. Journalism went out of business because no one wanted to hear the truth, much less analyze it or act on it; and the News Department got rolled into the Entertainment Department. I think the reality is that many of us are too dumb to live in a democracy.
Were he still alive, my father would not recognize the Republican Party of today. In Oregon we had Republican senators Mark Hatfield, and before his personal life went south, Bob Packwood; both men were “statesmen” in my opinion. My defection from the party happened after I voted for Reagan.
Indeed I too feel that issues of significance to me are not being addressed by either party. One constituency I am sure is getting attention, though, are the big business interests. There exists this sort of philosophy that if we defer our resources to business, it will flourish and raise the economic standards of us all. But as I say, I believed that back in the 1980’s – I was wrong then and I don’t believe anything has changed. The CEO’s will skim the cream and leave the rest of us dry… again. I am discouraged.
Musician Eileen McGann wrote a great song called “Too Stupid for Democracy”, you can hear the whole song here. Enjoy.
Thank you, Robert! I was going to use the word “stupid” but I chickened out.
My first political campaign was Goldwater’s, and I voted for Nixon (I was working in the O.R.s at the Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan) and for Ford. I never trusted the Republican apparatus again after that, and voted for Anderson in 1980.