Monday, November 01, 2004
Rant
So here we are, on the cusp of what many believe is the most important election in a generation. Whether or not that is true is, for the moment, obfuscated in the fog of the here and now and will be bourne out by history. What we do know is that a decision affecting the future of our country comes tomorrow (or as soon as all the recounts and lawsuits are finished) and that by January we will have some idea of what the next four years will hold.
There is a lot of crap floating around this campaign season, much of it ugly and a great deal of it untrue. The candidates offered us are, at best, poor and the rhetoric has divided the country to the point where opposing sides can't even have any sort of a reasonable conversation. The environment of dogmatic sophistry has overwhelmed the middle ground and hopes for compromise on issues has fallen prey to the salt the earth attacks which have positioned the players where they currently stand.
A couple of things before I continue. I'm supporting Kerry, not because I'm thrilled with him, but because I believe Bush to be a poor President with poor policies. Bush, despite what some people may wish to believe, is not a moron. He may be intellectually lazy like so many wealthy playboys before him, but he's not stupid by any means. He's also not the worst president we've ever had. Has he been bad for the environment? Yes. Bad for the poor? Yes. Bad for foreign relations? So it would seem. But, Andrew Johnson will still reign as the worst president ever. He wasn't elected to the position, wasn't even qualified to be VP really and was only in the position to appease the south. He was a true moron.
Like everyone else this election season has made me pretty sick to my stomach. We've heard less about issues and more about useless, unimportant things than I can ever recall. Politics seems to have stumbled into this morass of single issue voters who are swayed more by marketing strategies than they are by real facts. Our politicians lie, just flat out lie every day on the campaign trail. They make things up and nuance their way around the truth. No one calls their statements lies of course, instead choosing to chock it all up to "politics". As if there should be a much lower standard for what is the truth when it comes to the political circle. We allow the misdirection and half-truths slip by because we know that they aren't true, as if that too makes it ok, but it's not ok.
Here are a couple of examples. The Kerry campaign is still talking about job losses during the Bush Administration. One of the consistent statements on the trail have been that Bush lost 800,000 jobs. Originally the cry was 3,000,000 jobs, but as things have improved nationally in the market that number has fallen and most of the jobs have been replaced. What the Kerry campaign did was focus on white collar jobs, of which, right now the country has lost about 800,000 in the last 4 years. The problem is that isn't how it's stated. The way Kerry talks, you'd think he was speaking about jobs in general, but that isn't the case. Is it a horrific thing? No, but it is a deceptive.
Bush, on the other hand, keeps dropping the 75% number when it comes to the amount of senior Al Queada leadership he's taken out. First couple of times he talked about it the number was 50%, but before too long it went up to 75%, probably because it sounds better. This is a great claim, but one with seemingly no quantifiable basis. Conde Rice was asked on one of the Sunday news shows about it and she admitted that they really don't know how many there were to begin with or how man leaders Al Queada now has. Not only that, but it's a completely unimportant figure considering all the terrorism experts claim that Al Queada's numbers are back up to where they were before we attacked Afghanistan. It's almost like claiming that you've taken out two thirds of the 2001 New York Yankees. That's wonderful, but when you took Aaron Boone they went and got A-Rod. I wouldn't call that a real victory. Never-the-less, it is acknowledged that the Bush Administration took out some of the bad guys so the claim stands and no one says anything.
We all sit about and bitch about the media and how they let people get away with things. We complain about the offered candidates or the tone of the campaigns, but in the end we are the problem.
Admittedly, it doesn't seem to me that the United States has an real leadership out there. No one who is able to step up and raise the collective consciousness of the nation. But we don't demand it. We've gotten what we asked for. George W. Bush is the perfect people person president. Is he a really good president? No. But he seems like the kind of guy you could hang out with, drink some beers, tell some dirty jokes to.
George Bush says you should vote for him because you know where he stands, but that's not true. We know what he says, where he stands is a completely different matter. Is Kerry any different? We don't know and won't know unless he's elected, but right now his words too are simply rhetoric and marketing devices.
If you really want a change, then engineer a change. Start paying attention to the issues. Start looking deeper into things and not just getting your talking points from Air America or Rush Limbaugh. Start trying to understand the implications of actions that we take as a nation. Start reading papers from other countries to see how they perceive what we are doing. Start looking outside the two traditional parties to see if anyone else out there speaks with a voice that rings true. Stop saying you hate mudslinging, but then react to that type of campaigning with all the resolve of a recovering alcoholic during a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery. Stop tearing down people who seek to do good simply because they mispeak or have made a mistake at some point. Good people don't run for office in the country because they know that there is no way to remain good in politics. We, the electorate, are the ones who let that happen. When someone starts personal attacks, start demanding a return to the issues. Get active in your own local politics. Demand more from your local news on the radio, newspapers and television. If you want this country to get better from what ails it, then take some responsibility.
The time is coming where someone will step up to lead this country forward, away from the partisan bickering towards a better place. The question is, when they come will you be ready to listen.
There is a lot of crap floating around this campaign season, much of it ugly and a great deal of it untrue. The candidates offered us are, at best, poor and the rhetoric has divided the country to the point where opposing sides can't even have any sort of a reasonable conversation. The environment of dogmatic sophistry has overwhelmed the middle ground and hopes for compromise on issues has fallen prey to the salt the earth attacks which have positioned the players where they currently stand.
A couple of things before I continue. I'm supporting Kerry, not because I'm thrilled with him, but because I believe Bush to be a poor President with poor policies. Bush, despite what some people may wish to believe, is not a moron. He may be intellectually lazy like so many wealthy playboys before him, but he's not stupid by any means. He's also not the worst president we've ever had. Has he been bad for the environment? Yes. Bad for the poor? Yes. Bad for foreign relations? So it would seem. But, Andrew Johnson will still reign as the worst president ever. He wasn't elected to the position, wasn't even qualified to be VP really and was only in the position to appease the south. He was a true moron.
Like everyone else this election season has made me pretty sick to my stomach. We've heard less about issues and more about useless, unimportant things than I can ever recall. Politics seems to have stumbled into this morass of single issue voters who are swayed more by marketing strategies than they are by real facts. Our politicians lie, just flat out lie every day on the campaign trail. They make things up and nuance their way around the truth. No one calls their statements lies of course, instead choosing to chock it all up to "politics". As if there should be a much lower standard for what is the truth when it comes to the political circle. We allow the misdirection and half-truths slip by because we know that they aren't true, as if that too makes it ok, but it's not ok.
Here are a couple of examples. The Kerry campaign is still talking about job losses during the Bush Administration. One of the consistent statements on the trail have been that Bush lost 800,000 jobs. Originally the cry was 3,000,000 jobs, but as things have improved nationally in the market that number has fallen and most of the jobs have been replaced. What the Kerry campaign did was focus on white collar jobs, of which, right now the country has lost about 800,000 in the last 4 years. The problem is that isn't how it's stated. The way Kerry talks, you'd think he was speaking about jobs in general, but that isn't the case. Is it a horrific thing? No, but it is a deceptive.
Bush, on the other hand, keeps dropping the 75% number when it comes to the amount of senior Al Queada leadership he's taken out. First couple of times he talked about it the number was 50%, but before too long it went up to 75%, probably because it sounds better. This is a great claim, but one with seemingly no quantifiable basis. Conde Rice was asked on one of the Sunday news shows about it and she admitted that they really don't know how many there were to begin with or how man leaders Al Queada now has. Not only that, but it's a completely unimportant figure considering all the terrorism experts claim that Al Queada's numbers are back up to where they were before we attacked Afghanistan. It's almost like claiming that you've taken out two thirds of the 2001 New York Yankees. That's wonderful, but when you took Aaron Boone they went and got A-Rod. I wouldn't call that a real victory. Never-the-less, it is acknowledged that the Bush Administration took out some of the bad guys so the claim stands and no one says anything.
We all sit about and bitch about the media and how they let people get away with things. We complain about the offered candidates or the tone of the campaigns, but in the end we are the problem.
Admittedly, it doesn't seem to me that the United States has an real leadership out there. No one who is able to step up and raise the collective consciousness of the nation. But we don't demand it. We've gotten what we asked for. George W. Bush is the perfect people person president. Is he a really good president? No. But he seems like the kind of guy you could hang out with, drink some beers, tell some dirty jokes to.
George Bush says you should vote for him because you know where he stands, but that's not true. We know what he says, where he stands is a completely different matter. Is Kerry any different? We don't know and won't know unless he's elected, but right now his words too are simply rhetoric and marketing devices.
If you really want a change, then engineer a change. Start paying attention to the issues. Start looking deeper into things and not just getting your talking points from Air America or Rush Limbaugh. Start trying to understand the implications of actions that we take as a nation. Start reading papers from other countries to see how they perceive what we are doing. Start looking outside the two traditional parties to see if anyone else out there speaks with a voice that rings true. Stop saying you hate mudslinging, but then react to that type of campaigning with all the resolve of a recovering alcoholic during a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery. Stop tearing down people who seek to do good simply because they mispeak or have made a mistake at some point. Good people don't run for office in the country because they know that there is no way to remain good in politics. We, the electorate, are the ones who let that happen. When someone starts personal attacks, start demanding a return to the issues. Get active in your own local politics. Demand more from your local news on the radio, newspapers and television. If you want this country to get better from what ails it, then take some responsibility.
The time is coming where someone will step up to lead this country forward, away from the partisan bickering towards a better place. The question is, when they come will you be ready to listen.
