I lied. I’m going to write some more about Politics, but perhaps not about this particular dysfunctional episode we’re going through. I got onto this track when I noticed that February 5th is the anniversary of the passing of Ronald Dahl who wrote a lot that I never read about political “science.”
I may have shared before that my first experience with politics was in 1964 when I volunteered with the Goldwater campaign. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but by then I had a pretty good idea where I’d be and what I’d be doing after high school and I felt like Goldwater was talking about that more honestly than Johnson. Well, no one wanted to have an honest conversation about the upcoming war in Viet Nam and Goldwater lost.
I was working in the operating rooms at the Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan, in 1968, and voting for Johnson’s Vice President never crossed my mind. Yes, I am to blame for Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove and that lot. I didn’t know they came with the package, and I didn’t know that Nixon could be so venal and stupid, but I did it.
I was going to go on about the 1976 and subsequent elections; but, for the life of me, I can’t remember if I voted for Carter or Ford. You can blame me for Reagan in 1980, too, because Carter pissed me off and I voted for Anderson instead. The Bushes are all on you folks.
What I’ve noticed and want to explore is that, coincident with our slide toward neo-fascism, we’ve also made uncertain progress toward civil rights and equality for women. What happened to us?
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Bringing it to the present day, we’ve had about 47 years of one party bumbling along and marginalizing itself with factional infighting; and one party apparently deliberately concentrating power on behalf of itself, of course, and international business interests while passing among us as nationalists. This makes no sense to me.
The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of is, I believe, part of it, and Big Oil; but after all of that is said and done, Americans in large numbers are consistently voting against their long-term – and often their short-term – self-interests. At least one of these people is not home-schooled or poorly educated, and we often agree throughout the course of a discussion at the end of which she will say, “and that’s why I vote Republican,” and my head explodes. What makes people so frightened – I think it has to be fear – that it makes them blind?
More importantly, what makes 60-70% of the electorate so resigned to the failure of our democratic experiment that they don’t even bother to show up? In 2015 it’s estimated that 114 million people watched the Super Bowl. Three months earlier 82 million of 227 million eligible voters cast ballots for their representatives. I know there are only two viable parties, but how did we come to accept that representing us was secondary to representing the Party? We’ve been tolerating that for 115 years now!
I’m going to try to figure some of this out. I have no hope of fixing anything, but I feel a need to understand it better. Feel free to come along and to chime in.
I relate. I voted for Johnson in the first election I got to vote in and really had bought all the rhetoric about Goldwater being such an extremist. Today he looks like a moderate ;). I’ve had it go back and forth through the years and a few times I did vote for Republicans but rarely. Mostly it’s been Democrats. I woke up this morning thinking I wasn’t happy with anybody this time around. In the primary, I will vote for Bernie because I believe in a lot his ideas but the likelihood of his being able to do them is pretty slim. I don’t like the Clintons, not him or her. But if she’s the candidate, I’ll vote for her because the alternative, for me is impossible. They all would take us backward on civil rights and benefits that help the poor. I happen to be one of those who’d likely pay more taxes under Sanders but sometimes you vote for what you believe is best for the country, not just yourself. Sanders has put out a lot of proposals that are not fully formed and that’s worrisome but I don’t trust her. This will be one of those years that I probably vote holding my nose… I should add, I like Obama, voted for him twice and given the alternatives, I’d vote for him again 😉
Lots to ponder about the changes in the political sphere through these years. I’ve never been a straight party ticket voter after becoming disillusioned with doing so early in my voting life. For some time now those with extreme views seem to have been taking over both of our traditional political parties. The Republican party in particular has changed considerably from the beliefs they once espoused as I’ve observed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a third party emerge which could bode well for our country, or could result in unwanted consequences. Hopefully, more of our population is educating themselves and will vote so some troublesome group with less than the total popular vote from the other two parties doesn’t get in office.
Political history, as I recall, even had the two major political parties reversing their stance on issues in the years before I was born so change is to be expected I guess.
I’ve always tried to stay informed, but in retrospect have sometimes regretted supporting some candidates who became elected. We can’t always know what even the seemingly best of candidates will do once they’re in office, or how world events will effect their thinking and actions. I was against invading Iraq and hadn’t voted for the President who took us there, but it happened. I’m concerned now there are too many candidates who seem all too ready to engage our nation in more of what’s considered traditional warfare. I have to wonder, have we learned nothing?
This is a different world, and has increasingly been so beginning after WWII and must be coped with by primarily other means. We do need a strong military but not excessive as there is only so much gun powder and soldiers can do. We better make more effort to win the hearts and minds of people. I could say much more about going about efforts to accomplish that but I think most thinking people and wiser minds than mine are trying to do so. We need to continue and increase such efforts.