| - Be Thou My Vision Time to post again.
To all who thought that last post was a freak occurrence... Kiss it. Now the million dollar question is, what do I write about?
Those that know me well, know that I have always loved discussing politics. You also know that I try my hardest to discuss this very volatile topic with a certain degree of civility. Political dialogue in my opinion could definitely use a facelift. There are many things that I think are roadblocks to any sort of political progress, but for the purposes of this post, I'm just going to focus on one. If you are a Bush supporter, then the rest of this post really isn't directed at you. I do ask you, though (and those that don't like Bush for that matter), to make a sincere effort to understand fully the arguments of those that don't agree with you.
To those not in support of the current administration... you need to be very picky about which arguments you attach their cause to. The idea is to "get heard" and "affect change", right? Well, the people you want to listen and the people you want to change are not going to if you attach strong logically persuasive arguments to those that are borderline ridiculous. By doing this, the strong, logically coherent case for why it was not a good idea to invade Iraq becomes as easy to dismiss as the case for Bush being a fascist. Don't see a difference? They don't either. Guess what, the average Bush supporter doesn't care to distinguish between the two, especially if they being argued by the same person. Are you really so naive and misguided to think the two arguments are inter-changeable? Which argument do you think would stand a better chance in the face of someone who disagrees with you?
What finally brought this issue to a head was all of the hoopla surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Upon the advice of Nicole, I decided to read a post by Chris K., who I happen to like a lot. It was in reference to comments made by Kanye West during a benefit for the Katrina relief effort. In short, Kanye West declared live on TV, "Bush hates black people." I don't think Kanye succeeded in convincing a lot of people that Bush is racist. Do you? Show me someone. What he did succeed in was having a ludicrous statement like this receive the same weight as the argument for a serious look into how our federal and local governments respond to disaster, natural or man-made. I'm sure underlying racism had more to do with the shotty relief effort than the 10% cutback of FEMA's budget under the current administration's watch, horribly run local and state governments, or one of the hundred other things that can and should be fixed before something like this happens again. These real problems, though, are going to take a backseat in most of the public's minds to statements like the one made by Kanye West. Good intentions don't change someone's mind, logically coherent, persuasive arguments do.
So, since I don't have anymore time to talk about this here, good job all of you that have succeeded in making the views of a genius like Kurt Vonnegut as easily dismissible as those of a misguided, egocentric Fred Durst.
ponygirl
p.s.- For a good laugh/cry, and to really understand what I'm talking about, watch Emenim's new video Mosh. Do you want to be associated with that? |
