(Cross posted from
my blog.)
If you've been reading this for a while, you already know quite a few of my political pet peeves. Another one came to mind this morning when I heard about Dick Cheney and his hunting mishap.
(As an aside, let's not pretend it was anything but a mishap. We all know that if this were ten years ago and it was Al Gore or either of the Clintons, the right wing s**t machine would be in overdrive spreading the rumor that they just wanted to silence someone who knew too much about Whitewater. But we don't need to sink to their level. Really.)
Right. Back to my point.
We've heard a lot in the past few years from various talking heads in the "liberal" media, about how Democrats need to learn how to appeal to rural, white voters. It's not really new; I can remember reading such things as far back as high school, and that's just when I started reading about politics. It was probably going on for years before that. I don't disagree with that in and of itself - after all, I've made that point here in the past, calling for greater attention to rural issues. No, my beef with what the pundits usually say is that they think we should do it by sounding more like Republicans.
Not only has that strategy failed before (because it's a really stupid idea), but you never hear the reverse from anybody. Think about it: the West Coast and the Northeast have sixteen states between them, making for 64 possible wins in the past four elections. Out of those 64, the Republicans have won five (Alaska all four times, and New Hampshire once). But no one ever talks about what Republicans ought to do to put a stop to their increasingly poor showing on both coasts. No, it's always the Dems being expected to figure out a way to appeal to the South and the Corn Belt, even as it becomes increasingly clear that if one or two more swing states tilt their way, the Republicans will be playing defense for a generation or so, no matter how big their margins in Texas remain (and they probably won't).
So it's always up to us to appeal to the other side without any reciprocal expectations whatsoever. But what's worse is the attitude behind that. It's the Democrats' fault for failing to respect the "values" of the red states. Well, where's their respect for us? My own take on all this has always been, if you want to pretend it's still 1955, that's your business, but please don't drag the rest of the country back there with you. But it doesn't seem that they'll be satisfied with anything less, and the punditocracy (which so loves to rail against the East Coast establishment even though most of them live in New York and DC) is just fine with that.
All this came to mind this morning when I heard about Cheney. Why? Well, it wasn't the 18-hour delay in confirming what had happened, or their apparent intention of not revealing it at all if that one reporter from Corpus Christi hadn't broken the news. That's disgusting and all that, but it's not surprising given whom we are talking about here. (Yes, even the Vice President is entitled to his privacy - but when he shoots a man, it's news. It's just that simple.) No, it was seeing this picture in the paper at the bus stop:
[Picture removed because it was too big to fit well on this page. You can view it here.
It's from an NRA event a couple of years ago. Many of us who support gun control tend to think the gun nuts are trying to make up for some perceived masculine shortcoming or other. Or they just think of them as toys for big kids. To me, that picture just screams both. It's also another example of how the cultural divide looks from the Blue side of the fence. They don't just want to take us back to 1955; sometimes they want to go all the way back to the Wild West. Which, after all, didn't exist the way so many people like to pretend it did. Just for starters, most people there didn't have guns. There's no evidence anyone was ever "called out" at high noon. Some "heroes" like Wyatt Earp really existed, but they weren't especially heroic in real life. But don't tell the NRA!
Gun nuts love to say the rest of us just don't know how to handle guns properly and safely. To which I've always responded, "That's why we don't think everybody and their brother ought to be able to stockpile 'em!" But that's beside the point. The point is that they always say - or at least imply - that guns are perfectly safe if you know how to use them. (Incidentally, I have seen a couple of the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" gun safety videos for kids. They're pretty good; too bad the source itself has long since become so evil.) Is anyone else wondering right now if Dick Cheney has practiced what he and his ideological allies preached and learned how to handle his toys correctly?
So, to my friends in the Red States (which, after all, start just about six blocks from where I'm typing this, at the Littleton town line), all I am saying is this. I don't want to take your gun, as long as you learn how to use the damn thing correctly. I don't want to force you to abandon your "values" just as long as you don't try to shove yours down my throat. But could we at least start dealing with reality instead of the mythical past? I think Cheney's friend would like that very much at this point!