A brief, irreverant thought about nominating conventions
2008-09-04So, I am work and listening to the Palin speech. She speek gud. And, with my disinterested observer hat on, she really slipped in some zingers, too, which I enjoyed. Even at the points where I disagree.
But all this makes me think about nominating conventions. Honestly, they remind me of football games, except that they’re packed with poli-sci majors. The attitude is the same. Drink your beer, cheer your team, and play armchair quarterback.
Is this really the best way to choose the leader of a nation? No wonder the rest of the world thinks we’re scary and unreliable.
Seth,
I respect your opinion on the zingers, I just disagree heartily. When that speech classifies as heady political rhetoric, it pretty much sounds the knell for true political discourse. Or reads its obituary. And that goes for the Democrats, too.
The good news is that conventions don’t pick the leaders. That was already done. This is more like a pep rally to convince the undecided and the easily persuadable that one party or the other is AWESOME. But basically your sporting event analogy works. But unlike Sunday’s game, the fate of the nation rests on this decision.
Hey, Chris. Welcome to the blog.
See, I had a similar opinion about the Obama speech…or at least what I was able to see of it. I thought that I had tracked down the full speech on YouTube but was then disappointed. And maybe we’re in agreement on this. Yeah, I’m not seeing any of this as actual political discourse. I’m up in the stands, throwing popcorn at everyone, laughing at the sheer spectacle of it all.
And yeah, a pep rally is a good analogy. When I said, “Cheer your team”, I meant your political party and its candidate. But, really, what’s there to be excited about? Selecting leaders for a nation should be a moment for calm reflection and reasoned discussion, as well as passionate speech.
But, hey, I’d given up on that happening on a national level a LONG time ago. So, at this point, I can content myself with watching the unfolding drama, secure in the knowledge that, in the final analysis, it will not do one whit of good.
The funny thing is that I have a much different opinion about local politics. In the final analysis, the re-election of Councilman Gary Sandberg or Mayor Jim Ardis actually has a greater impact on my life than who occupies the White House.
Seth,
I am slowly gathering all the proof I need to know that I am 100% biased and that I can’t listen to the RNC objectively. Or the DNC for that matter. It saddens me.
So you may very well be right. The DNC may be full of as much hate speech as I feel the RNC was.
You are right about picking a president needing to be a time for calm reflection. For those so inclined, prayer should play a big part in the decision.
I do worry about my the national election a great deal. I feel like while local leaders are important, too. They affect my day-to-day life more. National leaders affect it with one or two major decisions, but those major decisions have a greater total impact that all of the local leaders’ decisions.
Go to war? That affects me. Ignore renewable sources of energy until gas hits $4? That affects me. Appoint supreme court justices who make pro-business rulings against things like equal pay for men and women? That affects my loved ones. All of these affect me in ways Mayor Funkhouser’s decisions to rollback city spending cannot.
Seth sez: “Honestly, they remind me of football games, except that they’re packed with poli-sci majors. ”
I sez: As a poli-sci major - you are exactly correct. In another sense, they are big infomercials.
The conventions and their smoke-filled rooms no longer play the role they once did, but they still serve of energizing the base and ‘rallying the troops’ as they go out in their home communities to get-out-the-vote for their candidates.
Besides, it can (but not always) make for good theater.
Chris,
Look out. We might actually have a productive conversation online. Don’t tell anyone if it happens, okay?
I don’t want to downplay what happens at the national level. However, my ability to impact that directly is minimal at best. My voice won’t really be heard amongst the millions of people clamoring for attention. On the other hand, change on the local level will slowly work its way up to the national level, and my voice is more likely to be heard, simply because there are fewer people involved.
Of course, there are still the open questions about what exactly needs to be changed. I have several hot button issues, which I’m listing in their approximate order of importance for me:
*Abortion
*”War on Terror”
*”War on Drugs”
Why these issues?
The first one is easy. The most fundamental duty of any government is to protect the lives of its citizens. Therefore, the legalized murder of any of a nation’s citizens not only represents a fundamental failure of a government to execute its duty but also is a great wickedness in the eyes of God, who is the King of Kings (and Presidents).
The other two issues are related in my mind, because they both represent open-ended conflicts that require the abridgment of our liberties in order to prosecute, while simultaneously increasing the amount of violence and danger to our citizens. (They also spill over into our foreign policy in oddly similar ways.)
How does one win a “War on Terror”? How does one win a “War on Drugs”? Who is on the other side to surrender? How can we know that we are finally finished fighting?
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the government kept the populace in a state of endless war to improve the control that they had over the populace. I see both of these “wars” being used in the same way.
To tie all these things together, I see a common thread being an idolatry of the State. We believe that the government can fix all our problems, so we elect those who promise to fix things in the way that we want them fixed. Obama speaks like he’s running for Messiah, not President. Though, to be fair, that’s mostly a matter of intensity of rhetoric. The Republications are also running a man for Messiah; they just aren’t as open about it.
And I think that’s what I’d like to see from people: a realization that all the Presidential candidates are simply human. They sit down to take a dump, just like the rest of us. None of them are our saviors. None of them will truly fix the brokenness of the world.
Once we nail that down, then we can start talking about what needs to happen next.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that we will not arrive at that point any time soon.
Wow. Um. That’s a long comment. Revved up more than I thought.
Seth,
You’re right, there’s not enough flaming or passive-aggressive attacks on each other. Let me rectify that right now by saying “your personal hygenie leaves much to be desired.” I hate to be the aggressor in these matters, but I felt I must. I understand if you need to counter-flame me, though since I pretty much covered senseless ad hominem attacks, I would prefer a passive-aggressive style counter.
Okay, now that’s that over…
First, a clarification. Are you okay with abridging civil liberties to win them and so want the wars over are you worried about the War on Terror as a whole because it’s abridging civil liberties.
All in all, my biggest fear is the slippery slope. What I’ve found is that civil liberties are a lot like gas prices. Gas prices skyrocketed (what a 200+% increase in eighteen months until people really started to complain then the dropped about 10% and have held steady since then.) Restriction of civil liberties is the same. They get taken away in massive swaths and then never comeback. There will always be domestic spying. There will always be a Patriot Act.
My hot button issues look like this:
1. Health Care Affordability and Availabilty
2. Reduced Shipping of Skilled Jobs Overseas
3. Budget Deficit
Sadly, these are not issues I can have addressed at a local level. I want to know if I lose my job (I work at a marketing firm in a time of economic stagnation/recession) that my wife and son can still go to the doctor. What kind of society doesn’t allow their sick to be treated easily just because they may not have a job? To me, that is as big of a poverty as allowing abortions. It’s still a failure to protect the lives of the citizens.
Shipping skilled jobs overseas is a big one. It does upset me that Americans are losing jobs while companies reap the benefits. To make matters worse, with the way the price of everything is continuing to rise, it’s not like the average guy is catching a lot of breaks.
Obviously the national debt is a national issue and one I would like to see addressed partially by bringing troops home. I have a buddy in the Air Force who did a tour in Iraq. I asked him if he wanted the war to continue. He basically told me that there is always going to be fighting and death in Iraq, the question is that whether we want our soldiers to die, too. I think no.
Re: abortion. I WANT to be 100% beside, instead I am about 95%. My thoughts are this: 1. If it’s not legal, they will still happen in far less sanitary environments. 2. I have deep concerns about children being raised in families where their parents would be okay if the baby was dead which is why any efforts to make abortion illegal MUST, in my opinion, coincide with a sharp increase in support for adoption agencies and a reasonable set of steps to make the parents’ lives easier (free sitters perhaps, nutritional programs, etc.) though that opens an entire can of worms.
Indeed, there is a part of me that is strongly considering running for local office and seeing where it goes because you make an interesting point about being able to affect change at higher levels starting at a lower level. Who knows, Senator Perrin has a nice ring to it. Maybe I can get some of the other senators to play Polaris in session.
CP - a few of points
1. National Security is not in your top 3.
2. When speaking of abortion, you skip #3 - adoption.
3. The war in Iraq will continue with or without us. That isn’t the point. Look at the change since the surge. Cutting and running would have been wrong. Now the time is approaching when we can leave the place better off, rather than worse off.
On another note about “there will always be a Patriot Act”…
There has always been a swinging pendulum with regards to our rights. There was the alien/sedition act, we interred Japanese-Americans in WWII. Both of these were wrong.
Now here we are with the Patriot Act. It seems that a lot of people have a short memory, and cannot remember the panic - really, that’s the word for it - that ensued after 9/11/01.
I expect the pendulum to swing back again, no matter who is elected.
>You’re right, there’s not enough flaming or passive-aggressive attacks on each other. Let me rectify that right now by saying “your personal hygenie leaves much to be desired.” I hate to be the aggressor in these matters, but I felt I must. I understand if you need to counter-flame me, though since I pretty much covered senseless ad hominem attacks, I would prefer a passive-aggressive style counter.
I think that it would be best if you were to self-reflect about this in another thread.
(I am so dead now.)
Anyways!
>First, a clarification. Are you okay with abridging civil liberties to win them and so want the wars over are you worried about the War on Terror as a whole because it’s abridging civil liberties.
The second. Very much the second. And before that, the War on Drugs was doing the same thing.
Re Your Big Three, some comments:
>1. Health Care Affordability and Availabilty
I work for a health care nonprofit (Samaritan Ministries), so I’m painfully familiar with health care issues. I don’t really have the time to type everything up right now, but I’m persuaded that the largest problem with our current health care system is the third-party payer system that we’ve set up, compounded health care being increasingly viewed as a business instead of charity work, as it was in the past. For way more info than you might want, check out this site.
>2. Reduced Shipping of Skilled Jobs Overseas
Do you know why these jobs are being shipped overseas? Taxes and regulation. Companies will look to produce a competitive product as cheaply as possible. American labor costs too much and doesn’t provide a comparable bump in quality. Reducing the regulatory burden on businesses, especially small businesses, can only help.
On top of this, vote with your pocketbook. Choose to buy locally, instead of from a big box store. This will help support American labor and business much more than additional government regulation.
(Of course, I say this as one who still shops at Wal-Mart. But I’m trying to direct more of my funds to local business as we go on.)
>3. Budget Deficit
Uh, do you notice how government addressing items #1 and #2 directly affects their ability to address #3 effectively? Because addressing items #1 and #2 (aside from deregulating and doing less) will cost more money that we don’t have.
Just sayin’.
Re: your abortion comments
The “sanitary” argument doesn’t hold weight for me. We don’t look at (say) burglary and say, “Well, people will break into houses anyways, so we should criminalize security systems and guard dogs.” Rather, we say, “Maybe they should have thought about the guard dogs before deciding to break the law.”
Also, where’s the defense of the victim? Remember, the basic presupposition is that the unborn are human beings and equal citizens in this nation. We wouldn’t justify lynchings by shrugging and saying, “Since it’s going to happen anyways, let’s make sure that the lynchers are using quality rope.”
As far as your other point, I’ll trot out my bona fides. When I was growing up, my mother worked at a Crisis Pregnancy Center. In particular, she managed a group home that was available to women who had chosen to carry their children to term. I also volunteered from time to time as I was able. Additionally, during that time, we actually had two women with crisis pregnancies live in our home. I have been on the front lines of this issue.
So, I’ll tell you that there are plenty of charitable organizations who are willing to intervene and assist women with crisis pregnancies. It can happen now.
If those women are willing.
Finally, playing Polaris with other senators….
You know that Ben Lehman’s opening move in Polaris is invariably to slaughter the Senate and declare martial law?
Again, just sayin’
[...] making abortion illegal is a noble goal. As I mentioned elsewhere, the fundamental duty of any government is to protect the lives of its citizens. As long as [...]