Email to my conservative Xian friends
Wed Nov 03, 2004 at 03:11:58 PM PDT
I received a few emails from fellow grads of Wheaton College asking my thoughts on the election. Many of them are conservative Christians and I must say that I put a lot of the blame on our current situation squarely on the shoulders of organized religion.
Here's what I'd like to reply with:
Kerry has conceded and it appears that things are going to have to get worse before they can get better. What makes me sad is the irreparable harm to the environment and the lives of military families that will now be done. Harm for the sake of making more money.
There are a lot of questions as, like 2002, the exit polls and actual vote counts didn't align in states using black box voting. That the company that built the machines, Diebold, is a large GOP contributor is a conflict of interest in many people's minds and not something easily written off as mere "tinfoil hat" paranoia. The apparent Republican fear of letting people vote (by using challengers or by suppressing registrations based on technicalities) is curious.
Assuming everything is on the up-and-up ...
...in the counting of the votes, the Republican GOTV strategy seemed to be their key. Rove learned the power of religion in one of his few losses as Roy Moore defeated Rove's candidate for the Alabama State Supreme Court in 2000. This time around,
like Mel Gibson, he cleverly leveraged the
existing infrastructure of church communities to market his wares. Not only to get out the vote, but to broaden Bush's base.
Confused Evangelicals seemed to think they were electing a pastor rather than a president. While Bush's immoral choices and lies have led to the deaths of over 100,000 humans, tax cuts and large contracts for cronies, Kerry was clearly not "Christian" enough. Apparently there is a large Tory voting block that prefers a central leader with strong church ties. Bush said the right things about abortion, gay marriage and stem cells and the Republican talk show echo chamber literally put the fear of God in to the base.
My personal prayer is that the scales will fall from their eyes before the churches in America are analogous to those in Nazi Germany.
Another interesting point is the report that the youth vote didn't turn out. It's not surprising that they find the entire process futile. Some have said they'll get what they deserve when they are drafted. My own liberal and Christian thinking is that we need to help lift people up - the young voters clearly don't understand 1) the reality of the situation and 2) that they can make a difference. We need to show them the way.
As Barack Obama said: "The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks, they don't expect government to solve all their problems... But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all."
That Kerry conceded with votes left to be counted is disappointing, but not a surprise. Like John McCain and Bob Dole, Kerry originally didn't run on his war record. He ran on ideas and optimism. But like McCain before him, as an opponent of Rove's candidate, he found his war record at the center of the campaign as his honor was attacked.
Rove has experience with recounts and close races. In a 1994 Alabama Supreme Court race, his candidate lost by 304 votes. With "byzantine legal maneuvering" Rove fought and stretched recounts for 11 months. With the knowledge that Rove is prepared to do whatever it takes to win, my speculation is that Kerry didn't want to drag the country into the long dirty fight that Rove had prepared. I respect him all the more for this decision.
We could have had a great president but now we are stuck with more of the same. I guess it's going to have to get worse before it gets better. Before the scales fall off our eyes.
Thanks for reading. What are your suggestions?
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