A Uniter, not a Divider

8 years ago, when Bush first publically uttered the title phrase above, it was a calculated ploy to pull voters over to his side.

I was listening to the news on the radio a few mornings ago, and as usual, they were covering the campaign. They had an audio clip from a McCain rally, and the clip started with a derisive comment about his opponent, followed by the booing of the crowd.

They cut to an Obama rally, where you had a stirring comment by the candidate followed by cheers.

What a contrast this provided. On one hand smear, fear, and anger, on the other hope, ideas, and cheers.

This is the politics of division and derision come to roost. I had high hopes for McCain, a person I was firmly behind in 2000, a man I believed had honor, when this election started. I thought that this would finally be an election where the ads weren't all about how "my opponent is the devil". It started out that way, and it felt like about the time McCain seemed to borrow and bring on some of the scummy architects of Bush's victories that the campaign dove down for the mucky bottom.

You get tired of hearing someone spew anger, hate, and fear and smear. It really became apparent when they brought out Sarah Palin, and she turned out to be an Anne Coulter clone. Is that all they've got? Hate & fear?

The problem with the politics of division is when the people you are setting up as "them" become the majority. Since you can't ever tell when that will be, it's best not to rely on it permanently. You have to recognize when pushing the same buttons doesn't have the same old effect it always did.

What you really want and need in leadership is a person that understands the shared threads of many of the people out there and tries to bring them together in common purpose. Someone that can point out the problems, but offer a concrete solution or at least a good attitude of how to respond to the problem.

It feels like the people are choosing hope over despair, action over fear, and coming together over tearing each other apart.

Sabotage by Failure

I was listening to a debate about health care the other day. The subject was whether the government should or should not be responsible for Health Care. The anti panelist was arguing that after the government failed so utterly at Katrina, "you want to turn over health care to the government?"

The next pro panelist immediately responded with the point that having a bad administration screw something up and then using that to justify your position for something that you don't want to do anyway is awfully convenient.

I just tried to find another reference, which escaped me. I was listening to a book review (sorry, can't remember the book) that had some strange and disturbing assertions. The thesis was that conservatives liked to get into government to run it into the ground, thus making it impossible for government to interfere in business. The interview also talked about how President Clinton went into office with plans to provide health care, and the budget deficit was so bad that it was impossible to implement any health care plan. The book that was being reviewed was supposed to show how conservatives like big deficits because it limits the size of government.

This is juvenile. If there is any truth in this assertion, if people either consciously or subconsciously are trashing our government institutions in order to profit more and more easily, this is disheartening. I understand wanting to get ahead, I can even understand greed. But greed that is so short sighted that it's easy to see how it destroys the very society that you hope to live luxuriously in.

Trouble in Sector 34

In our town it's tornado sirens. At 11 a.m. on the first Monday of every month, they test the tornado siren, and it always had the same effect on one of the women in the office. You could almost see her making the calculation of where her son was. There are a few sounds that always make you freeze and consider. Alarms. You hear a huge echoey variety in movies, always there for chilling effect. There are also fire, rescue, and police sirens, going off at random in your neighborhood, making you wonder momentarily if all is not well.

I was listening to a report about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recently. Parts of these reports up to now have been about how some people think that when they turn this machine on soon that it will spawn black holes and it will be the end of Earth. Physicists say this is absurd, this machine is just supposed to usher in a new golden era of understanding in physics. Detractors are doing everything from lawsuits to death threats in order to stop the collider from being turned on. They hear that alarm signal in their head, the end of the world is near. The most recent report was about how the collider has had a setback during its startup. Apparently a relay blew out and they have to warm it back up from 2° above absolute zero (thats about Fahrenheit 451 below zero) before they can repair it. The atom smashing that will unlock the secrets of the universe will have to wait for a few more months. One of the reporters that is following the LHC closely got a cryptic message that there was "Trouble in Sector 34" at the LHC. Obviously, the 7 mile diameter ring is divided into sectors on the engineering drawings for maintenance purposes, and the relay that blew out is in the 34th sector. The interviewer remarked that "Trouble in Sector 34" sounded like a movie title, some sinister X-Files kind of movie, maybe.

So in this case, with the LHC, we have both figurative and literal alarms going off. This is also going on with the economy and government. For years, people have put out warnings that have gone unheeded. With the financial meltdown, it makes you wonder who keeps reaching over and muting the alarms until things got so out of control that the special effects explosions start happening and the ship starts going down in flames. You always wonder when you see scenes where the pilot is in the distressed cockpit with multiple alarms going off and they are still steadily working toward averting the disaster. You want a cool hand under fire. You want someone that continues to work for solutions while the alarms are bleating in their ears. That's what the siren song teaches us.