sozobe wrote:Yep, nimh, that's back to the social AND personal moral values thing.
I recommend this, some very interesting viewpoints and ideas, changed my perspective on several things:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec04/divided_11-03.html
Feingold has the record and the ideas for it, but I think he'd come off as too wonky/liberal/Jewish to get the people we're talking about.
I love the idea of Obama, but he's had a charmed life so far. He didn't have any real opposition on his way to his senate seat, he hasn't gone through the wringer. If he's seriously challenged -- but prevails -- in 2006, maybe.
I don't really know where best to begin discussing this election. But this excerpt from soz's link to the PBS interviews may be a start...
Quote:BARBARA EHRENREICH: Yes, that is part of it. I agree with what Jim just said, that we shouldn't frame this as moral values versus lack of moral values. I think most people who voted for Kerry were very much driven by a moral evaluation of the war, a moral evaluation of Bush's economic policies. There is nothing in the Bible that supports tax cuts for the wealthy along with social service cuts for the poor. That's an inversion of all those scriptural statements on poverty that Jim Wallis was just referring to.
And, yes, we do have a polarization here between a kind of religion, evangelical often fundamentalist Christianity and the notion of a more secular or at least ecumenical intolerant society. But this kind of religious polarization is happening globally right now. Only in most places the so-called religious end of it is Islamic fundamentalists; here it is Christian fundamentalists.
On another thread here, one contributor held that Kerry was either Satan or a minion of Satan. How different is that from what is being taught in the madrasses of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
Another poster here recently held that the biblical flood was literally true and that the plausible source of the flood was either a) a water canopy suspended above earth or 2) a transfer of water from Mars to Earth (which also explained, he thought, the missing Martian oceans). How different from that is the 'education' of a Libyan I met who was utterly astounded upon reading a simple explanation of how the human eye works? His education, he told me, had been concerned with the evil of the west and the holiness of the Muslim world, with the literal truth of his scripture, where science was not represented...particularly where it might conflict with religious ideas.
It is unsettling to consider that what is happening here, reflected in this election, is not significantly different from the religious extremism and the return to tribal affiliations that we see in those cultures which rightly frighten us.
The temptation for societies to organize themselves repressively - that is, to insist on uniformity and to demonize changes from traditional ways - seems likely to become stronger as populations increase, as internal systems become more complex, as cultures mingle, and as new knowledge and ideas place old 'knowledge' and ideas in jeopardy. Each one of these factors is a very real part of modern life.
All of which makes this turn in American politics that much more unhappy. Above all countries, is has been America which has represented the promise of free thought, of social and religious liberties, of protection of those less fortunate or of those in minority, of charity and inclusion, and not least, of pragmatic and clear-sighted perceptions of the world. Each of these hopes is now in no small danger.
To say, as is becoming the truism of the day, that this was an election which pitted one value-set against another value-set is rather like saying that the problems of Ireland have been values problems, or that the discord between Tutsis and Hutus was a values discord, or that the difference between the Klan and Martin Luther King were values differences. Sure. But there's not much in the way of insight to be had here. What social conflicts are not a matter of divergent values?
"What went wrong?"..."what to do?"...
Clearly, what I'm saying is that what went wrong was complexity and change. The consequences, in America, are as follows.
A liberal social movement began in the sixties which was profound and highly visible. No less profound, but much less visible, was a counter-movement from the right. Krugman, Alterman, and many others have been pointing to this second, or reactionary, movement for some time. Now, it has its own media, its own local organizations, and its own educational resources and institutions. It has its own cultural icons and mythologies and it has become highly adept at working the gears of governance to consolidate power and to enforce internal cohesion to maintain power and gather more. It 'understands' that it is at war. It is not interested in compromise or moderation.
What to do? Biting at each other, like you guys are doing here, probably isn't the best prescription. Dagmarka's laugh remedy seems rather more productive. I'm choosing apathy, perhaps temporarily, perhaps not. Or, I can go with the twisted joy of irony, as with the tax cuts to the top 1% and with the recent surge in the stock market, my friends Lola, Dianne, and dyslexia are now more wealthy than they would be otherwise while McG and Foxfyre are poorer.
