I've been away from a bit, kind of reducing my info flow. My brain was starting to overheat:)
However, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the whole argument over gay rights. How can I avoid it?? It's been on the news everywhere. For myself, who's more interested in the sociological side of things, it's VERY interesting.
Look at how the debate is framed. For the most part, by pretty much every politician (with a few exceptions), it's presented in a negative manner. The question is..how is it negative?
Here's something to think about when you're watching this. How does their stance show what they really think about the people? What they expect from the people. It's not pretty.
Bush is trying to make political hay out of bigotry. The wishy-washy Democrats are thinking that Bush is right and the public for the most part are bigots..at least a signifigant part of the population. How is that a positive message? Isn't that what was needed this year? A positive message for the future?
What's even worse, is that they might be right!
That's really sad. It's a damn embarassment. It's something people should hang their heads in shame about.
Over the last few days, I've seen all sorts of crazies, nuts and bigots paraded into the media..I blink..and I realized something. Why? In reality, even though gay marriage is not exactly popular, the coverage has been fairly supportive. My wife gave me the idea. Advertisers want younger viewers. Younger viewers support gay marriage a WHOLE lot more than the population at large.
Why are the GOP practically writing themselves off as bigots to a whole generation? Especially when, although the Democratic candidates are fairly wishy-washy, the grassroots, the people that younger voters are MORE likely to listen to, are very much for it? (Wait until September/October. The Blogosphere will be huge. You guys better get bigger servers.)
Here's the thing to remember. The GOP cannot lose the presidential election. They can't afford to ever lose it again. There's a few ticking timebombs I'm guessing in the Reagan papers that will take the whole apparatus down. (For some reason I forgot all about that until last night, lying in bed, it hit me).
But why? Didn't they know that this issue could possibly blow up in their face? Here's what I'm thinking. Maybe their internal polling is absolutly abysmal. They know what's coming down the pike, more or less, and they see no way out. So they're going to make this election ugly.
But just remember, what they say about a cornered snake...