Category: Political

Now that the election is over, I need to focus back on work but I wanted to point out a couple of ‘aftermath’ stories related to the elections here in Missouri.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Senator-elect McCaskill didn’t win this election because she won over a bunch of disaffected Republicans. In traditional Republican strongholds, Talent still had the majority vote–and in fact, his vote in these districts increased. What McCaskill did do was capture all of the Democratic electorate, including those who did not vote in the last election. She also grabbed the swing voters–those who might typically vote Republican (or Democrat), but who will change based on events.

Two events worked in her favor: the Iraq war and the vote on Amendment 2, the Stem Cell amendment. However, I do think that it was the stem cell amendment that worked most in her favor. According to the article:

Artist George Denninger, 60, of St. Charles, said his opposition to the war influenced his decision as a Republican to vote for McCaskill instead.

But an even bigger factor, said Denninger, was his agreement with McCaskill when it came to embryonic stem cell research.

Denninger was among several St. Charles County voters Wednesday who said that they voted for McCaskill because she favored Amendment 2. The amendment, which narrowly passed, protects all forms of embryonic stem cell research allowed under federal law.

Talent had opposed the amendment because of his belief that such research amounted to human cloning.

John and Kim Henson, both 38, of St. Charles County, also cited the stem cell issue as a key reason they favored McCaskill.

Even with such polarizing issues, only an estimated 52% of possible voters showed up at the polls leading me to say that the other 48% should spend a year or two in countries such as North Korea–to remind them of the importance of that which they treat so indifferently.

I’ve read elsewhere that many Democrats are already thinking ahead to the next election, and how to keep the Republicans who voted in their favor in this election. That’s a huge mistake, and one I’m not going to have a lot of patience for. I want my Democrats to be Democrats: no more Republican light. I plan on monitoring them by subscribing to my house representative and both senator’s RSS feed of their votes.

I also read that the Republicans are re-thinking their position, and returning to their roots, which is low tax/small government. This is a good thing–this shows that the Republicans will, for once, stop catering to the fundamentalists and focus on government rather than morality.

If there’s one thing that stands out in this election, probably more than the war in Iraq is our legislating morality. Eight states had anti-gay marriage amendments, all of which would be moot if the Supreme Court ever rules in favor of gay marriage. The laws are stupid, and unenforceable. Why, then, when we have so many other problems, we focus on anti-gay marriage amendments, I don’t know.

Thankfully Arizona–quiet Arizona–stood up against what is nothing more than a denial of equal rights to our citizens and voted no on their amendment. All I can say is: go Arizona!

Not just Arizona, South Dakota, too! The voters of that state turned out to vote down what was a direct challenge to the Supreme Court’s Roe versus Wade decision, by turning down the anti-abortion legislation that would have made it illegal to get an abortion other than for health reasons.

Two states on my must visit list this year: Arizona and South Dakota.

We here in Missouri also deserve a visit or two. Not only did we elect a Democratic senator, we turned down our own ‘morality’ vote, this one on embryonic stem cell research. This was a first of its kind vote, in a state where fundamentalists have a strong holding. The vote signaled what I think is a growing unhappiness with fundamentalist influence: in our schools, our governments, over our bodies, and now our health. That last is the kicker: unlike abortion, embryonic stem cell research could benefit all people of all ages and all sexes.

Those who campaigned against this amendment now plan on continuing this fight in other ways, whatever these are. Most likely, they hope to get legislation sneaked through at the state level to hamper this type of research in whatever ways they can. That’s OK, because eventually people are going to get tired of having these issues brought up, again and again and again. I expect to see support for the anti-stem cell movement degrade over time. We who support this research must continue to be diligent.

The positive aspect of this is that people are going to start getting tired of seeing all of this ‘morality’ issues continually brought up for a vote: wasting legislator’s time, costing tax payers money, and generally being a nuisance.

With this election, we’re going to start seeing a global pushback on all of the so-called morality issues. It’s going to take time, and a lot of work, but I think we’re seeing fatigue with the morality play we keep putting on with each election. People have more to worry about in their lives than whether Fred and Ray can get married, Sally have an abortion, and Joe get stem cell treatment for his Alzheimer’s. We saw this in Missouri, in Arizona, and South Dakota. I look for what happened in these states to gradually become more widespread. To me, this makes us all winners this election.

I have been heavily involved in political issues recently, all of which have added to an already overstressed mind and body. I look forward to the elections on Tuesday for no other reason than it will be over. As this CBS Report states, the might of two parties, the same media company behind Swift Boat Veterans, and every foul person calling themselves a ‘journalist’ has converged on this state and examined us like bugs under a microscope. Yes, and told us how we should vote, too.

(In the middle of all this, we now face the possibility of some jejune wannabe journalist sticking cameras in our faces while we’re standing in line at the polls; for no other reason than some people think adding to the problem and the confusion and the stress ‘helpful’.)

The Missouri Baptist had their annual meeting this week. I don’t even have the energy to mention the proclamations coming out of this event (this, this, here, and here.) When you realize this organization is part of the largest protestant organization in the US, it’s enough to make you want to knock on the doors of our Canadian neighbors and beg to be allowed in.

The lack of brotherly, and sisterly, love is not limited to just the Baptists: Archbishop Burke, leader of St. Louis Catholics, states that people like me who support Amendment 2 are the agents of the culture of death. His priests have been handing out signs for lawns, and telling parishioners how to vote. The signs are so thick on church property, it’s a wonder the moles have a place to dig. They don’t just disagree with people like me–they despise people like me.

What’s particularly sad is that the Archbishop’s people have been deliberately spreading confusion about what the amendment 2 states–saying that state funding will be used for this research, when there is no indication at all of this. Saying that adult stem cells have been used to treat Parkinson’s, when there is absolutely no fact to back this up. They aren’t relying on their faith to advocate this bill–they are relying on miscommunication and untruths. They have been relying on lies. This from the leader of the Catholic church in this entire area.

(I wanted to point to this article in Rolling Stone Magazine which calls the current congress the worst in history. I wanted to link to the person’s post where I found this article, to give him credit for the find, but then I remember he’s Catholic. Considering the nature of this post, I felt I would be doing him a disservice to do so.)

Regardless of how this vote goes this week, we can no longer ignore the elephant sitting in the corner that is religious influence on politics and government. People are not always going to be able to complacently have their ‘faith’ and their ‘science’, because in too many cases belief in one denies the existence of the other. Members of a church may have to consider challenging the precepts of the church, and individual churches challenge their association with a larger body. Basic human rights can no longer be pushed aside in the interest of ‘culture’ and ‘belief’, and the religious faithful cannot be allowed to determine how the rest of us live or die; how and when we have children; who we can love; how we dress; destroy our world in the interests of ‘being fruitful, and multiplying’; reduce our science to superstition, and bind our ethics to obscure passages in ill-interpreted religious texts.

This issue is not just one that belongs to Missouri or the midwest: what’s happening in Missouri is just a taste of what the rest of the country, the rest of the world, is having to face in the upcoming years.

Based on my own experience, I can attest to one thing: events such as these drain your hope, your joy, and your spirit–whether you call such ‘soul’, or not.

I find it ironic that one of the most religious states in the union has a city considered to be the country’s most dangerous city. Ironic and sad, because many of our problems in this city are curable if we focused on these instead of denying gay rights and turning the clock back with both our education and our medicine. We don’t because, to be blunt, most of the victims of crime in our city are black. We read of a young white student who gets drunk and wraps his car around a tree, and we come out with flowers and create commissions to study teen drinking and cry out about a general loss of moral fiber in America, which has led to such drinking; we read of a young black man who is shot in drive by shooting and we hear….nothing. Silence.

It is said that Missouri acts as a macrocosm for the country as a whole, because how we vote reflects how the country votes. If this is true, then our country, like this state, is headed towards a crises of faith, and by that I don’t mean people not believing; I mean people believing too much.

We get sidetracked on moral issues, while more important problems are shunted aside, such as the Iraqi war, global warming, the growing number of people within poverty levels, the disintegration of our inner cities, an increasing racial disparity, our country’s economic and educational decline, lack of quality health care for 45 million Americans and so on. Even now, with the British report of alarming environmental shifts and increased violence in Iraq, Bush is running around the country talking about the importance of keeping Republicans in office because gays are being allowed to marry in New Jersey. Seriously, is this really the most important issue facing Americans? Regardless of your personal beliefs?

We have the evidence of our eyes as regards to global warming, and the evidence of numbers of dead in Iraq–not to mention there isn’t a person who probably doesn’t know someone who has no health insurance; or who has been laid off; or can only get a part-time job because fulltime jobs are disappearing. More than that, we’ve become a country that condones torture and have given away most of our legal rights within our court systems, as we increase a growing deficit between us and China, weakening our own economic stability.

By focusing on moral issues, by encouraging fear of the unknown and fear of the different, corporations can do what they want in this country because all they have to do is get some politician, and yes the Republicans have shown themselves to be most willing in this regard, to point out the Muslim threat, wave abortion or gay rights, and now stem cell research and we’re off and running while they quietly rape our country of its resources, its labor, its spirit, and its soul.

There are at least two, and I believe more, webloggers who have been expertly trained by so-called ‘conservative’ think tanks in how to direct and misdirect communication in weblogging so that the focus is on immigration or the Muslim threat because if we ever stopped to look around ourselves, we’d realize how many of our basic protections and rights have been eroded. So like the hamster on the wheel, they keep us spinning and spinning. In that, they’re aided by technology, which just adds to the noise.

Do I think the Democrats would do any better? I think they would provide a necessary balance for the next two years, and at that point in time, we can re-negotiate. I’d like to see Democrats take Congress this election, but if they don’t get their act together then we’ll see about kicking them out in two years, and putting in a Democratic president and Republican Congress. If the Green Party could gets its act together, I wouldn’t mind seeing a third party enter the lists.

In other words, start showing that we the people they supposedly serve are not going to be led around anymore–that no party has a lock-in on the people. They have to earn it, and by that I mean work for it; not spend all their time in expensive lunches with lobbyists, while they toss out a gay or abortion flavored bone from time to time for us to gnaw on like the good dogs we are.

There will always be extremes: pockets of people who will vote a single issue or a single party regardless of what happens around them and we can’t do anything about these people; I don’t think most of us fit in the extremes. We’re bombarded by mixed messages, we’re pushed about on all sides, we’re afraid for our jobs and our families and the environment and the safety of our world, and politicians on both sides prey on this fear but we don’t have to be manipulated.

All we have, is each other. Even when we disagree, all we have, is each other. We need to send a message this election, and if that doesn’t work, we need to re-send it two years from now.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I think at times this medium skews attention to that which furthers acrimonious debate than anything truly useful or important. While we focus on how far we can take the Foley thing (including David Brooks equating Foley’s actions with a character from a play), gun shots are heard along the Korean border, and North Korea prepares for a nuclear bomb test. How to explain the lack of interest? It isn’t Google, it doesn’t sell, and one won’t get acclaim for such plain writing as, “this really scares me”, but this really scares me.