I feel bad because Ra began this week with an excellent idea for a theme, involving random recollection as a Rosetta stone for our personalities. I like it. In fact, I had a column pretty much ready to set sail on the subject. And then. And then my good friend Harlock torpedoed my column with his vitriolic attack on, interestingly, the Democratic Party. Now far be it from me to disagree with Harlock on matters of politics, but just occasionally I feel like I'd like to nudge him in the right direction, when his rudder gets stuck, if you'll forgive the extended nautical metaphor. This time, the good ship Harlock is definitely sailing in circles.
I have no interest in defending President Bush although I do wonder when the left is going to stop this pantomime of pretending somehow a Terrible Conspiracy was responsible for him getting elected. You know, it's not like he got just a couple of votes and then decided to have any dissenters shot. But electoral whining apart, I'd like to make a much wider point about politics, people and the state of the universe.
See, things come and go.
Ok, maybe that needs a little elaboration.
Generally, things come and go. What I mean is, that ideas, trends, political views, social movements, they all go around, within the framework of the society that generates them. Sometimes we're a liberal society, sometimes we're not. Thesis. Antithesis. Hopefully at some point, Synthesis. Right now the pendulum has swung in the direction of conservatism and nationalism. It's a reaction to the world, the times, our immediate past and our view of the future.
You see, you have to remember that whatever you may think of the current government, if you are violently opposed to them, and I know Harlock that you are, you're in a minority. That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does mean that the government reflects the current mood of the population. It's a simple fact that most people generally approve of how the government is handling things. That may well change, and if it does, we'll get a different one that more closely reflects how people see the government they want and need. Which is rather how democracies are supposed to work, I would argue.
If you need to point the finger at the progenitor of the current conservative movement within the US, then you need to start looking a little closer to home. (Not literally. There isn't someone hiding in your backyard. You can come back and carry on reading, really.)
I would argue that if you want to know what made the American public more conservative by nature, you might consider the effect of decades of "do anything, it's all ok" Liberalism has had. The liberal viewpoint, which could best be characterized as the view that anything is ok as long as it doesn't involve making absolute moral choices has resulted in precisely the backlash that propelled Mr. Bush into the Whitehouse. It's just possible that the American people are heartily sick of hearing how they are a bunch of bullyboy thugs who are morally inferior to every other culture on the planet. It's conceivable that the kind of extremist views expressed by parents in Oregon who campaign to have the American flag removed from their school because that's not the sort of thing they think their children should see are *precisely* the views that have so alienated the general public from liberalism, in all it's forms.
Perhaps if the extreme left were able to adopt a position in which the American public were constantly shackled with guilt over crimes committed two hundred years ago, or weren't regarded with sneering condescension for even considering their moral choices as in some way absolute, then perhaps the weak willed and clearly directionless Democratic party would be able to rally more of the voting population to its flag. Whatever flag that might be (and lets hope it's not Old Glory, with all that horrible Blood For Oil and Capitalist, Imperialist taint that it carries.)
I accuse, then, the very people who are now squealing that somehow American has become the servant of all that is evil. I accuse you of propelling this president into power. I accuse you of so alienating everyone else that your agenda, whatever it might be, has been drowned out in the collective groan of revulsion from "Middle America" which you so readily and happily lambaste.
Good work boys. Keep it up.