one thing we need to get straight...

[keryx]

"The Government" did not "defeat the people". I got half way into Margaret Cho's "don't despair; act" blog post before I started wanting to scream. Yes, act - don't despair. But don't characterize the other side as The Man and us as The People. It's not as simple as that. We are all a little bit of both.

And people did vote for Bush. So if you talk like the government is squashing the peeps on this one, you're basically discounting the humanity of Bush supporters (possibly a valid question, I guess). Half the voters apparently think Bush is the bomb for various reasons, and they're likely to continue thinking that unless we change their minds. Shouting angrily at them isn't going to make things better; what are we going to do, take the country back by force? Gather up a progressive junta? Might be fun, but maybe not quite in line with our ideals, huh?

[ETA text of the blog entry I made on this same subject. Cause LJ's not reading the blog feed and the blog post's a much more well-considered rant than this one. The continuing news coverage of the election gradually went from exciting and a little funny to downright sickening last night. It's not so much the Kerry loss as what seems to have happened to Congress - centrist Democrats losing against semi-evangelical right wingers.

And the thing the newsfolk kept coming back to around was "moral values". The BBC has a good article on the subject: [see link].

This election was exciting, if frustrating, from the "you've been served" primary days when Dean et al called Bush out and challenged each other surprisingly little. But the voting last night - or rather, the spin on the voting last night - fundamentally challenged my view of how this country is divided.

See, my own experience leads me to believe that most Republicans actually share my views on most everything. They just disagree on what's important and how to solve the problems we all see. I think we can't let go of social issues, the stuff the press is calling "moral values" and still be a decent people; they think we can't address social issues without individuals and business feeling safer.

But I always thought most non-extremists could agree that it was wrong to deny someone a basic civil right - marriage, for instance, based on any difference between ourselves and others. I always thought that most people were iffy about the ethical question of abortion, for instance, but understood a need to keep it legal as long as we weren't effectively protecting a woman's jurisdiction over her own body by preventing unwanted pregnancies.

I figured the things we really disagreed on were logistical - like, how to fund adequate healthcare, or what the best form of education reform must be.

But it seems that "moral values" - the things that amount to believing that one life is of greater value than another (a murderer should die, someone who isn't born yet shouldn't, a hetero couple is deserving of civil rights a gay couple isn't, etc.) - are the issues that most effectively got people out to vote on the right.

My centrist pro-choice Southern EMILY's listers lost. Most (if not all) states with referenda on gay marriage and civil unions went the path of discrimination. At least it was close in a lot of places. At least the vote was gotten out. But that makes the results that much more unsettling.

People weren't voting on the other side based on economic and defense issues. They were voting, to put it meanly and bitterly, for hate. Which means this country is surprisingly divided over social issues - things that I wish we wouldn't even legislate - not conflicting priorities. I miss the real Republicans, the ones who were embarrassed to court Southern racism in 1960 (not that I ever knew that party, but it sure sounds nice).

Damn.

It's going to be a long four years.]

Comments

[libskrat]

Agreed. One goal I have set for myself is learning to talk to The Other without being a jerk about it.

[drownophelia.livejournal.com]

unfortunately, two of the major reasons why people supported george bush was for "moral reasons" and because they believe the war in iraq is just retailiation for 9/11. not only does "moral values" translate into a pathological irrational fear that if homos get married they'll destroy the united states, it translates into "oh my fucking god, if we allow women to control their bodies, they they'll have control of their bodies like free, self-determining adults, and WE CAN'T HAVE THAT ON MORAL GROUNDS!" not to bring in that neither kerry nor bush actually supported gay marraige, and both supported civil unions.

if anything else, this election is proof that the is NO liberal media, that people will believe whatever the president says, even if he has the IQ of a cumquat, and that 51% of americans are arrogant, racist, bigoted pieces of shit that support the US being the world's most disgustingly snot-faced bully.

--la

[peregrin8.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Problem is, when you take voter apathy out of the picture, we're apparently still in the minority. So we can call them racist pieces of shit, or we can try to learn to talk them out of their position.

[libskrat]

What keryx said.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

So what should we try instead? I'm open to other ideas here, but if we really are the minority... what can we do except try to make us the majority?

[drownophelia.livejournal.com]

the righties won't believe the mainstream news sources which report that there were no WMD, that there isn't a tie between Sadaam and bin Laden, that neither candidate supported gay marraige, that thousands of people have been killed in iraq in a bloody war.

the righties won't believe the outspoken leftists--be they crazy radicals, be they hollywood stars, or well-spoken, uber-self-educated middle-aged white guys like Michael Moore.

i mean, please, do what you think you can to convince them to be decent human beings, but i still say they're horried excuses for homo sapiens. they won't be budged.

-la

[lilithcoyote.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. Speaking of racism, classism, and other lovely forms of prejudice, here's a sampling of things I have heard from progressives since the election, paraphrased:

"Well fine, if the average woman in THE RED STATES wants a misogynist anti-choice president, screw them. If Roe gets overturned, so be it. I'm not fighting for THEIR rights anymore. They made their bed now they can lie in it."

"Only the ignorant idiots from the RED STATES should be drafted. They like Bush so much they can go ahead and die in his war."

"We should have left the South behind in the civil war, because it's filled with a bunch of ignorant racist idiots."

"We should let Europeans vote in the election, then we could win!"

So, in other words, let's let the poor blacks in Alabama and Mississippi and the poor whites in Oklahoma and South Dakota just die already, and let's get some nice affluent whiteys from Denmark to help us take over the country!

Real progressive, huh?

Bush won this fair and square even though we got out the vote very successfully in a lot of places. Do you know what this tells us? It tells us we CANNOT win an election on the strength of New England/New York metro, the Great Lakes, and the left coast alone. Period. We can't. We HAVE TO start talking to people in those scawy, scawy "red states." And we HAVE TO talk to them like the intelligent--if scared and perhaps underinformed--human beings they are. Otherwise we will not get ANYWHERE. Period.

And you know what? The numbers in all those scary "red states" tell us that we have a willing and eager set of allies in each of them. 30 and 40 percent of the population, already convinced to go our way, already working on this. If we stopped writing them off, imagine what we could do?

I'm a hick from the sticks (originally) who leans socialist but don't think the people I grew up with are "sheep on two legs" (another great one I heard recently), and I approved this message.

[kitty-pitchfork.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU.

A big ol' ditto to all of it.

[libskrat]

You. So. Rock.

(I grew up urban Southern.)

[drownophelia.livejournal.com]

but what do you propose we actually do?

[lilithcoyote.livejournal.com]

Well a good place to start is usually to quit stereotyping anyone who doesn't think exactly like you. Stop assuming the only reasons someone could disagree with you are because they are either stupid or hateful. Stop writing people off en masse because they aren't as hip as you are. Stop splitting discourse into either preaching to the choir or "debating" and start talking to people you disagree with in a friendly and open way with the intention of actually hearing each other. Stop waiting for the "other side" to make a move for you to react to and make your own move.

[drownophelia.livejournal.com]

can you explain how gays getting married and denying women reproductive freedom is more important than national security? please, i wish somebody would, and it sounds like you might be able to.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

It's Maslow. It's the culture of fear. When people are seriously afraid for their lives, they'll drop many of their other ideals and become defensive on every front. They become assholes, basically. I know I feel that way when I think about what Bush will do to my reproductive freedom, and I've seen my conservative friends and family shut down and retreat to their nuclear lives in the past 3 years.

Terrorism scares the shit out of some folks the way their position on abortion scares the shit out of me. If they're not gonna try to talk to me about my "minority" viewpoint, that I'm gonna have to learn to talk to them.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Damn straight. Nor, for that matter, should we write off everyone who "leans Republican" currently. If my dad's liberal conversion taught me anything, it's that there ARE people who really just don't have enough information about how bad the civil rights situation is in this country, and who would vote otherwise if they knew more.

And if politicians aren't going to point this shit out, activists have to. We have to step out of our bubble ready to talk, not fight, sometimes. It's going to be scary as hell, but we haveta.