The Real America

The results are in:  George Bush won a second term as President of the United States.  Due to a significant increase in voter turnout the Republican incumbent was elected with over 51% of the popular vote and a majority of the Electoral College.  The Senate has moved farther toward Republican dominance and the House is even more staunchly conservative.  The striking results are not how thoroughly the Democrats lost, but rather how strongly the Republicans won.  Behind that victory is a haunting premise that tells a great deal about the path on which America finds herself and the nature of the man we chose to lead us for the next four years.  This man has sod a trail with three ideals that show what it means to be the majority party in America today: Anti-Civil Rights, An unwillingness to overcome fear, and an inability to realize that the debt collectors are already here.

            Over seventy percent of new voters claimed that their number one reason for voting in this election was “Moral Values.”  Behind this supposedly positive term is an underlying denial of the civil rights of a select group of Americans.  In eleven states ballot initiatives were passed that deny the right to wed of a minority group.  Churches within each of these states were well organized by the Republican Party to turn out the vote by convincing parishioners that the government would force gay marriage on them if Kerry were to be elected.    This President used the idea of denying Civil Rights to a group of Americans in order to win office.  This was the platform of George Wallace in 1972.  Worse than Bush using this issue to win this election is the fact that it actually was a successful strategy.  Americans as a whole have decided that Wallace was on the correct path and it is ok to deny people the same rights they themselves enjoy.  This is not the America I thought existed. 

            The second premise on which this president won reelection is the idea that he is the best man to guard us against the threat of terrorism.  Bush appealed to the inherent fear in the minds of those who were not attacked while losing to those who suffered directly from Al Queda’s assault.  It was not in the conservative bastions of Texas, or the rural valleys of Ohio where Al Queda unleashed its onslaught on America.  It was in the heart of downtown Manhattan, the Pentagon in Arlington Virginia, and the unintended fields of Pennsylvania.  In each of these places, those that directly confronted the attacks rejected the politics of fear.  As it turned out, the President appealed to the lowest common denominator of insecurity in order to rally support for his mistaken war in Iraq, failed domestic security policies that have left our first responders under funded and our ports insecure, and abandonment of international law.  We are not safer today than we were on September 10, 2001, but the President was able to convince Americans that we are.  Osama Bin Laden won on this account because most Americans are still scared of him.  This is not a victory in the War on Terror.  It is a major defeat!  This is not America standing strong, this is an America cowering in fear.

            America’s debt levels are historic in proportion and relative size.  This administration has created the largest fiscal deficit in real dollars.  Yet, tax cuts brought Americans out to vote in droves.  I personally met many Americans during the past two years who overwhelmingly disagreed with Bush’s policies from Iraq to Education, but revealed that they were voting for him because he would lower their taxes.  A President has every responsibility to lower taxes if the money is in the coffers to do so, but this President does not have that money.   This country does not have that money.  Yet, the American people demand that money and support this President for his willingness to give it to them.  We will have to pay this debt.  Just as credit card companies hound families across America for not being able to meet all of our personal financial commitments, America’s creditors around the world are beginning to hound our country to begin paying off ours.  Instead of taking us to court we are seeing the devaluation of the dollar at a pace of thirty percent over the past two years.  The only thing holding up our economy is our low interest rate, which allows Americans to continue borrowing money, and maintain consumer spending.  This low interest rate is based upon foreign countries purchasing dollars to keep their currencies weak and their exports to the US strong.  America depends on Asian countries to buy our excess dollars.  These countries depend on America to buy their exports.  This president has made America’s economic survival dependent upon the willingness of other countries to continue funding the United States Government.  This is not security. This is not responsibility.  This is dependency.     

            Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King are rolling over in their graves over the moral, psychological, and fiscal beliefs of our country today.  We as Americans voted to keep a President who abandoned civil rights, instilled fear rather than assured us against it, and willingly created a dependency on foreign countries for our economic survival.  What this teaches me about America is that I wholly misunderstood the country.  I thought in the end the American people would rise up and kick this man out of office.  Instead, they patted him on the back and asked for four more years.  We are not the nation I understood to be America.  If these are the values of the America in which I live, I have to say: I feel very un-American.

Gratitude

There are brief points in life where despite whatever problems you are currently enduring a sense of satisfaction swells over you and you feel thankful for the life you live and the blessings you enjoy.  These moments do not necessarily stem from some successfully achieved goal, but rather from realizations that the goals you seek are merely markers on a path of fulfillment.  You look at all of the inputs into your life, from family and friends, to the choice on how you spend your time to come to an understanding that even if pain exists on some level, the path you are taking and those supporting you on it fulfill you more than any detriment can deplete you.  I am at one of these points right now.

This past week has been a test for me.  I took the time off from work to examine myself, my goals for the future, and my capability to reach those goals.  I had to know if I could be self-sustaining, self-motivated, self-disciplined, and I had to look into my heart to find a path in life of which I could be proud.  All of these objectives for the week were achieved and despite the fact that I could not rebuild the floor of our condo perfectly, what I learned from the process is that I don’t need the security and comfort of government employment to live the life I want to live.  In fact, that assurance deters me from achieving my life goals.  I have realized that I need some form of discomfort, some form of dissatisfaction, in order to make the changes necessary for my life to be fully fulfilling.  This week provided that discomfort.  I had to challenge myself with my first contract job for a publisher to see if I could deliver a quality project on time.  I did.  I had to challenge myself with a devotion to researching and applying for jobs both contracting and full-time to learn more about myself, my future, and my potential.  I did just that by sending out four applications to a variety of organizations I would be proud to call my employer.  I had to challenge myself with a commitment not to spend my normal working hours playing computer games, but instead concentrate on my contracting, researching, applying, and home repair jobs that I had planned for the week.  I did a great job not playing my computer game during the hours I had set to work, but rewarding myself during my allotted off time so that I found balance between work and play.

What I achieved this week was a modest personal success and a dramatic life altering realization.  I accomplished the goals set for myself, but on a larger scale I have proven to myself that I could make it on my own.  Through the support of my wife, my family, friends, and my own motivation I feel far more confident about my future than I have since time immemorial.   I have a future that I can bring to fruition.  I have a path that although likely to alter in specifics through greater experience, will continue me on a journey of self-discover and self-reliance that will fulfill my hearts desires while offering hope to those who could use my energy and skills.

It might be a little early for my Thanksgiving gratefulness, but I have to say that my thanks cannot be limited to one day a year.  I go to bed tonight knowing that I can turn my life into what I want it to be and that I owe much of that knowledge to the support and love offered by those who care about me.  By providing the encouragement and freedom I need to challenge myself and my assumptions about life you have all given me the chance to find out what this existence is for.  Whatever results lay along the path I am forging will trace back to my sense of fulfillment from this week.  That fulfillment could not have been achieved without your presence and encouragement in my life.  Some of you may be surprised to be on the receiving end of this thanks, but I want you all to know that each of you have helped me realize the man I am today and the contribution I will make to the world in the future.

Democracy and Divisiveness

Democracy and Divisiveness

Something I've been thinking a lot on lately and was happy to see an article about in this past weeks Economist is the gist of an article from the Washington Post sent to me this morning.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38244-2004Nov9.html?referrer=emailarticle

As both sides of the political spectrum in the US continue attempting to obtain their sacred 51% the middle is being left out of our politics.  Yet it does not have to be this way.  There are examples in American history when the middle became so fed up with the ends that political movements were formed to reconnect America's politics to its core.  Today we are in need of such a movement again.  I offer these historical examples as insight, not as models: http://www.us-civilwar.com/whig.htm or http://www.britannica.com/elections/micro/92/6.html

 What I'm thinking is an alternative to both the Democrats who I believe are too beholden to labor and Republicans who I believe are too beholden to corporate and religious interests.  A party based on fiscal conservatism, social liberalism, and international engagement diplomatically, militarily, politically and economically would be a welcome sight for me in today's political system.  No such party exists.  Through forming such a party our nation can extradite the extremes of our current state of politics to the fringes where they belong and return our governing institutions to the interests of all Americans, not just the labor liberal or religious-corporate right.

I feel my idea of the American political system is slipping away as pandering to either end drives the middle to retreat into an extreme themselves or be kicked out of the polity.  I don't know of any moderates left in the House, and there are fewer in the Senate after each election.  This scares me not so much because of the election of these sides, but rather how they treat our political system and our constitutional form of government once they are in office.  Attempts to write sections into laws that prevent judicial oversight is a fundamental breakdown of our checks and balances.  The introduction of religion into politics and thus appeals to what is considered a morally conservative America ignores the concept of minority rights and threatens those who do not share the majority's religious beliefs, whatever that may be.  Commentators on both sides strive to appeal to their base for sales of books, profits for cable news stations, and advertising revenue for newspapers.  Politicians feed into this dynamic by attempting to appeal to fifty-one percent of voters rather than the majority of Americans.  Redistricting across the country has led to the creation Congressional seats where over ninety-percent are party locked.  Election officials in almost every state are of one political party or the other, rather than independent.  The top executives of the companies that make the electronic voting machines which will count ninety percent of the next elections ballots are all large contributors to a single political party.  Simon and Schuster may be right that writing for the center is publishing suicide, but that is just what is needed in today's politics in order to return America to the center.   Then again, the American people, as sick as they are of the bickering, sniping, and personal attacks of the campaigns; thrive on such a schism, a view supported by the Post article sent to me.  To anyone out there who is a publisher I would like to request you consider working for the center.  It may not pay as well, but it could save America from the extremes.

When I wrote last week that I did not feel very American because of the results of the election that was an announcement of my surprise at the American people's willingness to feed into such as system rather overturn it with their vote.  I was not feeling lost or demoralized because my particular candidate did not win as much as I felt that America let me down in the face of this extremism from both ends.  I thought America would rise up and reject the Simon and Schuster’s the Michael Moore’s and Rush Limbaugh’s and the politics of hate.  Instead, America stood up and told me, along with many others who shared my faith in the American people, that these forms of politics are acceptable and preferable.  That is what disheartened me.  We did not have a justifiable third-party candidate campaigning for the kind of reforms I wish to see.  I think this left Americans with a stark choice on candidates and they went for what they knew rather than what they could not get a handle on.  On a fundamental level this is understandable.  On a policy level this was a tragedy for me.
There appears to be a threat to the constitutional system of government we inherited from our founding fathers.  At all levels our system is under attack from the right and the left.  Under such strain the center must rise to the challenge presented or else one of the two extremes will take hold of the whole.  Our system has built-in checks and balances to temper populism: the Electoral College, the three branches of government, the presidential veto, and Congressional power to override a presidential veto.  Unfortunately, each of these checks is under increasing strain as attempts are being made to weaken them one by one.  I do not blame that on any party in particular, but rather the willingness of the American people to put up with it from those who run our political process.
I would like to ask every American who is frustrated by all the talking heads on the 24-hour news stations, the aisles at the bookstores filled with books trashing one political side or the other, politicians undermining each other’s credibility by accusing each other of not being patriotic because of differing solutions to the same problems, untold amounts of money being used by political organizations to project distorted messages about contenders for office to the American people, politics of extremism on both sides that appeals to fringes of the political spectrum rather than the mass of America, gerrymandering that assures us a House of Representatives that runs to the extremes of politics, and voting machines across the country that do not offer a paper trail to check election results to join me in demanding an alternative.
It is not my delusion that an alternative party will replace either of the two main parties in our political system.  Instead, I believe we just need to show both sides that there is a core of America that doesn’t want to buy what those who run either of these parties are selling.  We did not have that chance in this election.  We need it in the next one!  Once the main parties realize that America actually abhors the political process they are encouraging those who run our two political parties will hopefully adopt the centrist positions of the new party and return to the center of politics, just as occurred in the past. 
Every so often the United States needs the center to rise and pull the political parties back from the edges.  We are at that point today.  Until we can achieve such a goal we will continue to witness the decline of the Democrats and the slide to the right by the Republicans.  Much of America is being left out of these two parties today.  Let us reclaim the center for America.   

Fully Informed

The state of our democracy calls to service all Americans who want to make our country safe again.  Our times demand action on the part of every patriot to stand up and make him or herself count for what America represents.  We are all going to be asked to sacrifice for the defense, prosperity, justice, and respect of our nation.  As Americans we will come to realize the necessity of making our voices heard when our country strays from the path we believe it should take.  As we approach this election we must look beyond the rhetoric, above the arguments being thrown about, and think for ourselves what really are the issues that define the direction of our country and who best will represent our hopes and dreams while protecting us in these turbulent times.  Only once we have answered these questions for ourselves can we securely and confidently head to the polls to choose the candidate who will lead us as our Commander in Chief as well as our Head of State for the next four to eight years.  I ask you all to consider the issues most important to you and to then question which candidate can best achieve your personal goals for those problems.

Most people believe they have already taken this step, solidifying in their minds for whom they will vote on November 2.  If you are one of these people I support you in your decision whether it be for one party or the other.  What I would just ask is that you take a moment to consider the other side of this debate.  Have you given the opposing side a fair listen, or have you merely prejudged them to be against the things for which you stand?  I do not ask this to be patronizing, but rather to underline the value of our democracy and the need for an informed population making the decisions that determine our country’s path.  If you strongly believe in one candidate or the other after having achieved this request then I believe that is wonderful.  I hope that the candidate who wins has the support of the full country and can govern with a clear mandate to lead and a willingness on the part of the entire population to follow.  Only united can America achieve its full potential.

My reasoning for asking this of each of you is a personal experience.  I met a man this weekend who asked me a question about my job.  I gave him an informed and apolitical answer, hoping to represent the facts of the situation rather than any policy or political opinion.  I saw from his reaction that I had achieved my goal.  Only later did I find out, through a third party to whom he spoke after meeting me, that he believed me to be an intelligent, insightful, and articulate member of his political party.  He saw in me what he wanted to see because he assumed that I was the same as him.  He never asked who I support or how I lean politically.  At first I was offended that he assumed I supported the same candidate he did because of my factual and apolitical answer, but later I realized that this was actually an opportunity.  If he believes I am as intelligent, insightful and articulate as he stated then maybe it would open his mind to realize that I oppose his choice in candidates.  He never considered the alternative to his reality and thus, I believe, will be making a poorly informed decision in November.

So, between now and November 2 please take at least a half hour to confirm to yourself that you’ve given this election a fair thought and that you will be making the most informed decision you can on election day.  Going into that voting booth only having listened to half of the debate, even if it is the half you know you fully support, only leaves you half informed.  As Americans we owe it to our country, to our own futures, and to every generation of Americans who follow us that we use due diligence in our decision making process to decide our votes based on complete facts and realities rather than the lines our respective parties feed us.  An informed population is the foundation of a functioning democracy.  The best way to become informed is to research personally to find ones own answers to the problems of individual, societal, and national importance. 

I thank you for doing your part to make America the country we all want it to be: A safe, prosperous, respected and just nation.  Together we can achieve this goal, but the first step is to be fully informed.