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Out of touch
January 11, 2005
Election protest shows why Dems don't count - This is an excellent article that expresses some of my own feelings of how the Democratic party has been heading in the wrong direction - to the fringe. I'm a moderate liberal who has adopted the political title of Independent because I don't like calling myself a Democrat. That has to change in the next few years else we're in for more of the same from the Right. I think the neo-cons and the Right are on the fringe, too, but they're winning over the (majority of the voting) people with their tough-talking swagger, while the Democrats looks more and more out of touch with reality.I've hesitated to say it publicly, but I was terribly disappointed with Michael Moore's latest movie, Farenheit 9/11. I felt it was a shallow string of conjectures aimed at exposing a great conspiracy that doesn't exist. A conspiracy theory that could only serve to divide people into conspiracy "believers" and "non-believers". I'm a non-believer, folks. Bowling for Columbine was a much better investigative argument. Moore should be ashamed for some of his antics. Asking Lawmakers to sign their children up for the Armed Forces is ignorant and betrays the fact that we have an all-volunteer army - people willing to die for you and me. Please don't leave me any comments that suggest that his stunt was analogy for sending other people's kids off to war. I understand that, but it's still ignorant and disprespectful. The left needs to be smarter than that and less willing to resort to publicity stunts like this to get their points across. Ever heard of a thing called 'debate'. Let's give that a try again.
Is driving around reading the Patriot Act from an loud-speaker the way to get folks to pay attention to your ideas? By yelling at them? Cramming it down their throats, Mike? Bill O'Reilly would be proud of such a technique.
A quote from the article:
Another two years of Tom Daschle obstructionism and Michael Moore paranoia. You don't need to run a focus group to know that's the formula that will sweep Dems into office on Election Day 2006, right?
A Democrat chum said to me on Thursday, oh, well, they're just doing this to toss a bone to the base. But they're running out of bones to toss, and the base needs a reality check, not more pandering. One reason why the party has shriveled away to Greater New England plus the ''minority neighborhoods'' of a few cities is that it's all fringe, and no mainstream. The base is out of control; the kooks still holding their post-election vigil outside one of John Kerry's mansions sound no loopier than the big-time senators. The party has no urge to move on from moveon.org. Precisely, it's time to Move On and work on tearing down the edificial lies that the public is buying. And it's not getting done with these methods. I know the election was close, but so was the previous one and I've walked away a loser in both. I'm not going to lose again. Not if I can help it, at least.
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This is my weblog - a place for me to write about whatever interests me. The topic is a wildcard, but is likely to be about UI Design, Usability, Web Standards, Photography, Music, Politics, etc. Every once in a while even a little politics. Expect anything.
Thanks for the link....and your thoughts, as usual they are appreciated :).
I also wanted to congratulate you on finding out you're having a boy - very exciting news!!
while i don't intend to be combative and i don't want to abuse the comment sapce, i do want to make a comment about the all volunteer army. the all volunteer army draws heavily on folks from lower socio-economic classes where there the opportunites to advance are limited. i think moore's stunt drew attention to the fact that kinds from more privileged classes aren't typically encouraged to join the services. if the blue collar jobs that rapidly increased the middle class after ww2 weren't disappearing i think the numbers of folks joining the service would be different. i'm not a moore fan, but i'm not a moderate liberal either, which may explain why i didn't find the movie so devisive. i also don't think the democratic party has shriveled to Greater New England plus the 'minority neighborhoods' of a few cities . there was a great article in the nation a couple months ago about big dem wins in the west. also, bush won by a narrow margin on 2%. you have to go back to woodrow wilson to find an incumbent re-elected with a similar narrow margin. ok, i'm ranting . . . sorry. you seem passionate about wanting change, chris, and i respect that. thanks for blogging your views.
i fail to see how demonstrating that the armed forces are predominantly composed of lower socio-economic classes is a critique of the bush administration or has anything to do with his administration's policies. as liz cites, it's been that way since post ww2. does anyone really think that if the makeup of the armed services more truly reflected america's demographic composition, it would have been more than a speed bump on the rummy/cheney's drive to war?
i don't believe it would have. this is just another example of moore using inference, smoke and mirrors, and misdirection to make an argument for which there is no basis. in doing so, he emulates the tactics of those he most despises.
hmmm . . . i don't think i want to pursue debating the armed services point or the bush policies here, but i do want to clarify my point. what i intended to say was i think that the armed services currently draw more recruits from lower socio-economic classes now than they did at ww2. i'd argue that there was a lot more class diversity in the ww2 volunteers than in todays recruits (or the post vietnam military). ww2 generated an economy that gave rise to a middle class comprised of lots of blue collar jobs, specifically labor jobs that paid well. as labor jobs have been lost and the power of unions has been dismantled, lower socio-economic classes may look to the military for the opporunities they once sought from labor.
I believe that the Army draws disproportionately from the lower classes, but I think it's been that way for a very long time - hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The privileged classes have always been protected from having to serve in the military. And the relative few from the privileged class who do serve always end up moving through the ranks faster than the average Joe's, for sure. That's not fair, but it's a more a construct of how power and privilege is spread out in societies rather than anything that lawmakers can do. The only solution to it is to have mandatory service for all citizens. Is that what you'd prefer? I kind of like the idea, myself.
This movie told me nothing I didn't already know about George Bush - Privileged son of former CIA Chief/V.P./President goes from heavy-drinking/failed businessman to self-righteous evangelical governor/President. Moore often refers to Bush benefiting from a privileged background - his daddy and friends bailing him out of bad business after bad business, etc. - but John Kerry is cut from similar cloth, so I don't understand where he was headed with that indictment.
Mostly, I disagreed with the implication that the Bush Family, in cahoots with the Carlyle Group, et al., are conspiring to protect potential terrorists (or terrorist supporters) because they care more about business than they do about protecting America. That whole bit was conjecture, at best. The minute he heads down that road, he lost the very people he should have been trying to speak to.
Pick any country in the world; take the most powerful people in that country and you'll inevitably succeed in a "Six-degrees of Kevin Bacon" back to the Carlyle Group. Is it any surprise to you that people who hate the Saudi Royals also hate the American Oil Tycoons that do business with them? It's not to me. But it doesn't translate into anything other than a far-flung conspiracy-theory. The Bin Laden's that were in America surely already had security clearance to be here. Osama was already a wanted man, and any interrogation with his family about his whereabouts surely took place long before 9/11. That's why they didn't need to be questioned. We already knew everything they knew. We'd been pursuing this asshole for years. Their lives were in danger. Seriously in danger. Imagine your last name just happened to be McVeigh and you live in Oklahoma City in the early nineties.
Unfortunately, I think Moore's stunts in this film only speak to people who are already aware of, and believe in to a large degree, the things he's saying, rather than speaking to Republicans and the people who might have a change of mind given the right information. I'd much rather see him explain why and how a separation of Church and State is vital to all of our freedoms than it is an attack on religion - a discussion I think the Dems are going to have to start having in the next four years, else suffer the fate of the past two elections. Evangelicals are just far too pissed that religion appears to them to be getting pushed aside and that they see the U.S. government becoming Atheistic, rather than being impartial.
When Moore visits Flint and highlights the family whose son gets killed in Iraq, he heads down the road of the argument that you're making, but I felt he got derailed when he hit Washington and passed a sign-up sheet. The implication here is that lawmakers, many of whom themselves served in the armed forces, have the will or the power to send their own children to war. They don't. Their children either feel obligated to go into the service or they don't. Service is still a choice, despite the social constructs that you and I agree make that decision more enticing to the lower classes.
I do think that you're right, Liz, that we draw more enlisteed from the lower classes now than in the past. At least the recent past. And I think that this is due in part to the fact that there has been a sizable and active anti-war movement since the 60's. Korea and Vietnam changed how American's view war. Not that I'm advocating marching to the beat of the drum, but it seems that serving in the military has lost any luster and that that creates a situation where those who have a true choice about serving (the more priviledged classes) opt out more. There's nothing in it for them anymore. No prestige. No honor. They aren't going to serve for money or opportunity - they already have those things. They're certainly not going to serve if it means that they're going to come home and be labeled criminals. (Not that that last statement means that I don't respect John Kerry for fighting for justice when he came home from Vietnam, but I do have some issues with his methods and the way his actions were interpreted.)
Liz, I also wanted to say that I think you're right that the lower classes will look to the U.S. military for employment. As I said, I think that's already begun. And I think that our military is only going to grow as the U.S. becomes the self-appointed world "Peace-keepers".
Our military has/will become a veritable "for-hire" military that spreads democracy and capitalism. Both of which are means to the end of creating more "customers" to buy our protection services. Sort of like the mafia.