From
Battlegrounds & Ballot Boxes
My whole life I have been fascinated by battlegrounds, where men and women face off for something they believe in that is often much larger than them. Today my life still revolves around them, whether it be the memory of the my grandfathers stories from Pearl Harbor and Anzio, the loud cheering song of "One Nil to the Arsenal" coming from the stands overlooking the pitch at
Highbury stadium, or the political fights that determine the way many of us will live out lives over the next 20 years.
The interesting thing about battlegrounds is they can be large or small, forgotten or famous, real or theoretical but not matter what they will affect the outcome of the whole campaign whether it be military, political, sport or commercial. These what happens in battlegrounds are what comprise make or break a mission. We often are caught up in gamesmanship and the drama of characters we often miss the drama of the many. We worry about Dean and Bush, we watch
celebrities be "real people" and real people be celebrities, we turn sports into courtroom drama and courtroom drama into prime-time TV. Everywhere we go we create, re-invent, and talk about the characters in the various dramas we watch and battle we fight.
However, rarely we pay attention to where those battles are fought over and over, and picking the places we want to fight. Instead we prefer to concentrate on the characters of the time. One can blame Arafat and Sharon for Middle East violence, instead of studying the whole of the players in this drama including the names many don't know. We tend forget that people have battled over Palestine and Jerusalem for as long as they have had those names, and when we remember we rarely use that to our advantage. We talk of needing to win in the South, but concentrate on "who" can do that and rarely fight to gain permanent advantage in these fields of political battle that are needed to move this country forward.
Even worse we rarely notice the battlegrounds that are emerging, like copyright law. Here people wage this battle on many fronts with few dramatic leaders taking note, but it is still battle being fought even if it's only well known "character"
Lawrence Lessig disappeared (I hope he stays around for very long time). There is more to the copyright fight than Lessig or any character. The same goes with Wal-Mart who brings the battlegrounds to the suburbs and fights about our way of life with the Unions, but few recognizable characters dominate this battle, so it is often overlooked. However, the outcome of Wal-Mart's success, and
other companies attempts to emulate it, shapes this nation almost as much as any election.
The reason I started this new blog appropriate as we come out fop this weekend and the capture of one of the worlds modern villain characters - Saddam Hussein - many appropriately point out that the outcome of this little political theatre is
not yet determined. The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis still goes on and this is an important victory in that quest. However, it is just theater when it comes to the battle over terrorism, extremism, and our own political election. The battle over terrorism will be decided in the poorer villages across the Muslim world, the battle over extremism will be fought in the classrooms and media worldwide, and the election of 2004 will be fought in the cities and towns of places like Miami-Dade County, Florida;
Maricopa County, Arizona; San Bernardino County, California.