Is it time to start talking about POLITICS again?
Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:16 am
With two months since the election and two weeks until the inauguration I am starting to come out of the general malaise that has been with me since Nov. A big part of that is likely the Revolutionary Cinema class I am taking that could be better described as a Revolutionary Theory class that you watch movies in too. Right now we are reading the amazing book, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development by Maria Josefina Saladana-Portillo. This book traces developmental theory from the creation of 1st and 3rd worlds at Bretton Woods (along with the IMF and WB to develop and capitalize on them) up to modern discourse. Along the way these theories are extensively compared to writings of revolutionaries such as Marx, Malcom X, and Che Guevara. The book is fascinating and I highly recommend anyone interested in the subject matter (and those with revolutionaries for middle names) to read it.
So here we are at the beginning of a new year and another administration. What have we learned? I think three very important lessons are: 1) The country is incredibly polarized. Left and right thinkers sit so far apart from each other that the only way we characterize "the other" is to say "they must be stupid" (guilty as charged). The polarization extends to government at all levels where all ideas of bipartisanship are quickly becoming distant memories. Any but the most moderate of republicans is afraid to offend their constituents by working with the gay-marrying, baby-killing democrats (and now they have room to not have to). And all but the most moderate democrats are upset at the prospects of spending at least the next 2 years working with the bass-ackwards, bible-thumpin republicans. 2) The Democratic Party is presenting itself as wholly ineffective. The party just blew an amazing opportunity to make some changes in the country. The defeat was utter and complete. I cannot think of time that I have been so disgusted with their performance (which is saying a bit) in the time I have followed politics. Bush won on values. What values? It doesn't really matter, but he had strong values and Kerry didn't have shit. There is no question that his lack of charisma and believability cost him the election. The democrats were pushing the platform of everything to everybody all the way. That simply does not work. 3) With the resounding Bush victory every republican is now a Bush republican. Before where there was some disunity in the ranks as some republicans could see he wasn't a traditional conservative. Now it is politically favorable to be like Bush. That can only mean more trouble down the road.
Here is the pretty good Op-Ed piece from today NYT that got me going on these thoughts this morning.
So here we are at the beginning of a new year and another administration. What have we learned? I think three very important lessons are: 1) The country is incredibly polarized. Left and right thinkers sit so far apart from each other that the only way we characterize "the other" is to say "they must be stupid" (guilty as charged). The polarization extends to government at all levels where all ideas of bipartisanship are quickly becoming distant memories. Any but the most moderate of republicans is afraid to offend their constituents by working with the gay-marrying, baby-killing democrats (and now they have room to not have to). And all but the most moderate democrats are upset at the prospects of spending at least the next 2 years working with the bass-ackwards, bible-thumpin republicans. 2) The Democratic Party is presenting itself as wholly ineffective. The party just blew an amazing opportunity to make some changes in the country. The defeat was utter and complete. I cannot think of time that I have been so disgusted with their performance (which is saying a bit) in the time I have followed politics. Bush won on values. What values? It doesn't really matter, but he had strong values and Kerry didn't have shit. There is no question that his lack of charisma and believability cost him the election. The democrats were pushing the platform of everything to everybody all the way. That simply does not work. 3) With the resounding Bush victory every republican is now a Bush republican. Before where there was some disunity in the ranks as some republicans could see he wasn't a traditional conservative. Now it is politically favorable to be like Bush. That can only mean more trouble down the road.
Here is the pretty good Op-Ed piece from today NYT that got me going on these thoughts this morning.