Posted by m1s1n (153.90.114.188) on November 04, 2004 at 19:44:33:
Some more thoughts on the election from Squidi.net
Tycho, of Penny Arcade fame, recently wrote, "I never know if I'm being a bad citizen or a good host when I avoid discussing politics". That struck a nerve with me and stuck with me as I watched the results of the election. I don't think I really understood why it stuck with me until I tried to write this blog three times. When does being a good host mean being a bad citizen?
When did we lose the ability to talk about issues without someone else accusing us of preaching? When did we lose the ability to call bullshit on politics without it falling down one party line or another? When did we become so polarized that the middle ground is increasingly difficult to find and stay in? When did our dedication to a political party's ideals become more important than our own? When did politics become untouchable and dirty?
I will say that I did not care about politics. I did not vote in the 2000 election (I was in Japan at the time). I made fun of my dad, whose recent obsession with political documentaries borders on psychotic obsession. I purposely avoided watching the news. All this changed when I got personally involved in a public relations war and lost hard. With a point of reference by which to judge media spin, I started becoming more and more involved and I'm sorry that I didn't do it sooner. We are being lied to. We are being manipulated. We are being purposely confused. And until this Tuesday, I thought Americans weren't going to take it anymore. Instead, they gladly offer up their puckered asshole to be raped repeatedly by the men and women they voted for of their own ignorant free will.
In this election, we fucked up big time. I'm not talking about Bush, though I'm certainly not thrilled about that (how bad DO you have to screw the country before people don't vote for you?). I'm talking about the 11 states which have decided to strip the civil rights away from citizens. The ones that wrote discrimination into their state constitutions. Some states were worse than others, barring any kind of same-sex union and not just marriages, but they were all guilty of bigotry and prejudice of the tallest order.
In my own state, we voted for an amendment that would require notification to a parent of an underage girl having an abortion. Not only have this girl's privacy been wholely violated, but it has also created a dangerous situation. Making abortions prohibitively difficult will only cause young girls to seek alternative solutions. If the abortion rate goes down, it will only be because suicides and deaths due to unlicensed abortions go up. This, from a state which refuses to teach any sexual education beyond complete and total abstinence. Abstinence is not a choice - it's a punishment.
In a strange turn of events, which leads me to believe that people just Christmas tree their voting forms, we also voted for conflicting admentments concerning medical malpractice. One amendment limits the settlement on can get from a malpractice suit, while one opens all records (regardless of context or completeness or need to know) and the other literally boots out practitioners who have three malpractice suits (which will resort in high risk doctors, like brain surgeons, to avoid Florida altogether, and will lead to far more settlements than convictions - especially in conjunction with the limited damages amendment).
The one shining moment was when California passed something which allows funding of stem cell research. Stem cell research is the future of medicine, and I don't think I'm overestimating it's importance when I say that a great deal of the incurable diseases we have today could be potentially cured, or at least helped significantly by this research. The question of immorality is weak. Science is amoral, and that fact constantly weighs on the mind of the scientists, the government, and the American people. But the cost of knowledge, in this case, is not too high. Indeed, it is very low, and the number of people who can be saved by the lessons we learn from stem cells are too numerous to ignore.
I've decided that I've been neither a good citizen nor a good host. If I care about something, am I doing the right thing to not talk about it? Am I doing the right thing to do nothing for it? Am I doing the right thing to sit passively by and watch the things that I believe in systematically destroyed before my very eyes? We've got intelligence genocide in this country, and anything which requires an open, rational mind is at risk. EVERYTHING which requires an open, rational mind is at risk, and nothing pisses me off more.
Plato had issues with government. Why wouldn't he? His friend and mentor, Socrates, was given the death penalty for the simple act of teaching contrary ideas. These contrary ideas, as we know them today, have become the foundation of our government and philosophy... but back in the day, the people considered these ideas dangerous. And they were. Ideas are always dangerous because people fight for ideas. People die for ideas. People kill for ideas.
Plato was suspicious of a true democracy for the very simple fact that people, as a group, are stupid. They are ignorant. They are intolerant. They are selfish. They fight change, even when it would be beneficial to them. Plato was embittered by politics and didn't trust democracy. I understand that, but I had always though that at the end of the day, people were good and trusting and even in the face of surmounting odds, would fight for what is right. The longer I live, the more I realize that Plato was justified.
I want to give you guys a quote. This is one of my favorite quotes in a world with brilliant and insightful quotes. It comes from a man who wrote a book on ruling. An amoral and manipulative book whose very nature has given this man a bad name. But Machiavelli saw the world, not through the lens of idealism, but through the naked eye of realism. I am not praising the man or his methods, for the same reason I do not praise the current President or his methods. I will, however, include this quote:
"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it."
Change MUST happen. We can NEVER have a repeat of this Tuesday again. I believe that we have been too easy on ignorance in this country. We have incubated it. Raised it. Cared for it. We have allowed Creationists an equal footing when they don't even deserve to have the microphone. We have justified and voted for the removal of the rights of normal, everyday citizens who want nothing more than liberty and the persuit of happiness. We have passed on lies under the flag of an unbiased media, allowing bullshit to move through unfiltered and unjudged. We have been uncritical of the very people who need it the most, and we have been quite when our voices most need to be heard.
Change MUST happen. People can only be pushed so far before they start pushing back. We definitely haven't been pushing back enough. We NEED to start calling bullshit and shenanigans. We NEED to start paying attention, because the bread and circuses are confusing us and making us weak. I don't know how to end this blog. All I know is that I want to keep talking. I don't ever want to stop. But I will leave you with yet another quote, this one from the Declaration of Independence. How long before we start pushing back?
"Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."