Owen Very well said, Steve. I probably should have been a bit more clear about my interest in the close vote.Actually, I think you were clear. I think it was the rest of us that took one implication of your question and ran all over the place with it. That is why I felt compelled to try to get back to the original point you were trying to make and to encourage discussion around. And on it goes. And I still find that "them" is "me". "We have met the enemy and they is us!" - PogoYes, I think this is very important to remember. I think it sometimes undermines our conviction when things get tough. We can't see our "opponent" as "enemy" which makes it harder to fight "to the death". I think this is *why* there *is* a tendency to vilify the "opponent"... go generate the self-rightous energy required to fight hard (or dirty) enough to win. In general, I would say that the Conservative Party and followers have been more able to obtain this stance. A lot of my talk amongst my peers is to try to get them NOT to take the low road of hate, judgement, intolerance as a mechanism for developing the self-rightous energy and conviction that can help carry you through a tough fight (including the tough position of being the loser). I am also saddened by the replacement of statesmen with politicians at all levels. Not only have the candidates for our high offices degenerated to spouting whatever rhetoric it takes to be elected, the common voter often takes the same stance. We do not often enough discuss the real issues and their implications thoroughly and thoughfully, but rather grab the most extreme of them, pick a very one-sided view of them, and then try to ram them down the throat of anyone not agreeing. I would like to postulate that we have a tension between Centrist idealism... at some level we all just want to get along and find reasonable solutions to our problems... but at another level, we can be whipped up by our greed and fear into thinking that to get what we want (or avoid what we fear) we need to take an extreme position. I still hold that these are consequences of a two-party system. Every issue has two answers and many issues where there is little or no disagreement between the dominant parties never get addressed. Third and fourth parties (when viable) help to open up questions the dominant parties of the moment are unwilling to address. This is why I liked having Perot and Nader in the mix, even if Nader somehow became the 00 spoiler for Gore. The Greens and the Libertarians have a lot of important points to put forth, but we will hardly listen to them unless they have a viable place in national elections. BTW... I *don't* assume that the entire constituency of this list is Pro-Obama or Anti-McCain. It seems likely to be heavily loaded that way... like the TED conference when one of the speakers asked for a show of hands and there was only a smattering of Republicans. I also assume there is a strong contingent of independent thinkers who *only* identify with one party or the other as a "lesser of evils" I'm off for a trip to the Dixon Studio tour. Beautiful day for it! - Steve |
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