If this business about
'values' causing our 2004 defeat is true, it appears that a large group of people in this country decided to vote based on things that they see on TV, which don't affect their own lives and which are none of their business.
The economy surely affects everyone's lives, healthcare surely affects almost everyone's lives, the Iraq War affects many people's lives since their children or friends' children are dying or being mamed in Iraq and are in danger of being drafted. Terrorism affect the lives of those living in or visiting a large city. But 'values' (or 'moral values' as TNR now says) appears to have topped these in importance and brought John Kerry to defeat in 2004.
When people talk about voting on 'values' they mean gay marriage, abortion rights (including stem cell research), and some phony image of the president 'having strong faith' religiously.
A president 'having strong faith' has zero effect on people's lives, since they will never meet or know the man. The image of Bush as 'having strong faith' is pure phony advertising created by Bush's consultants and promoted dutifully by the so-called liberal media. Moreover, the coverage is not only superficial but contains such glaring omissions of central facts that any judgment of Bush's faith based on media coverage deserves zero confidence of accuracy. For example, most of those who trust in Bush's 'faith' don't know that Bush never even goes to church as
TNR showed last month.
People who oppose gay marriage so strongly as to make it a top priority in voting rarely, in their own lives, knowingly come into contact with gays, since few gay people would reveal that they are gay to a biggot. More importantly, gay marriage does not affect the lives or marriages of heterosexuals at all. Embryos in stem cell research are extras left over from in-vitro fertilization, which would be thrown out anyway, and are donated voluntarily by the couple that produced them. Those opposing abortions so strongly as to make it a top priority in voting don't knowingly come into contact with people who are thinking of or having abortions, unless they are protesting and harassing people outside an abortion clinic.
Basically, these people are voting based on things that they only see on TV, which they think are scary and are none of their business. They are voting to interfere in things that do not affect their own lives, but they feel that their own superior 'values' give them to the right to interfere with other people's lives. Of course abortion and gay marriage are hyped and used to scare people constantly by TV news media and religious rightwing television.
My trouble is with the priorities of these people: A large swath of the American populus has now traded in their jobs, their income, and their security in return for a more pleasant TV-viewing experience, where they don't have to be annoyed by such things as watching gay marriages, where they can take pleasure in reports of the abortion rights of people they know nothing about being violated, and where they can gaze on the shell of a president which conforms to their self-righteous, superficial judgment of what constitutes a moral man.