...and then there were two...
A lot of people here have been disgusted by the low tenor of the Partisan Dairies throughout the primaries. Some have gone GBCW; some have done their best to ignore those diaries - difficult to do, like ignoring a burst sewer; others have appealed for civility and unity. We are down to the last two candidates standing, yet the firefight rages on. Accusations and counter-accusations. Contradictory (and often poorly-sourced) spin on records, and out-of-context statements. Not behaving much like a reality-based community.
Passion can be a wonderful, energizing force, inspiring us to work harder for our cause, carrying us through bleak events toward more hopeful futures. But emotion, beyond a delicate and fluid point, is a mind-killer.
It makes sense from a biological, evolutionary perspective. Reactivity, in the natural world, is the dynamo of individual survival. Fight or flight. Eat, and mate, when you can. Seek shelter. Repeat often. Eventually, our neuroanatomy developed some long-term memory and pattern recognition. The chance of reacting productively increased. Time-binding allowed us to compile historical patterns of what worked, and what didn't. Yet that, too, could be skewed by emotional belief and superstition.
But now we've got this neurocortex, see, the Crown of Creation! We can review the past, project out possible futures, and use our physical mastery to aim elements of our world along that course, faster, and with increasing power.
Instead of one knock-down drag-out argument in the marketplace, we have hundreds of ugly on-line diaries a day, filled with self-righteous absolutism, generating smoke and heat, and damn little light.
As far as I can tell, real Reality is a pretty fuzzy place. It's not just gray; the non-physical world changes depending on how you look at it. It's malleable, and is shaped by the weight of perception. And, inertia: the realm of thought, the paradigms of group-think, seem to follow much the same Newtonian laws as does base matter. We are enamoured with our beliefs, subscribe to the accuracy of our perceptions. We may deny it, but we are each the Centre of the Universe, godlings all full of ourselves.
Not too many Americans practice the Tao, seeking perceptual and emotional balance. We're a nation of winners, and worse: of Winner-Takes-All. The winner is In Charge and In Command. Perhaps, some sense of Noblesse oblige will compel them to throw a bone to the losers, after the fact.
This is not negotiation or consensus-building. This is not recognizing your opponents as real human beings deserving respect however much they differ with you. We regularly castigate Freepers, the neo-Cons, the theo-Cons, for their absolutism and one-sided perspectives. Well... have you read - or written a partisan diary recently?
We want the Democrats to win, to lead us in recovering from the rapine and pillage of the current Administration and recent Republican Congresses. We want to advance progressive visions, although the specifics of that are sometimes poorly-defined, and may not integrate well - or be able to be sustained, for that matter - with current political and economic realities.
But it seems that, just like the contests between our candidates, we may be in danger of selecting a President who reflects the worse elements of our activism. Do we want to rule just like the Rethugs have, and wave our wode-painted buttocks in the face of our opponents? Do we want to declare, 'Your deeply-held beliefs, because they are not ours, are irrelevant and subject to nothing but snark and derision?'
We are Democrats, but are we not also Americans? Dumbya had promised to be a "Uniter," and like everything else, it was another lie. But the truth is, if we truely want to recover from our recent Dark Decades, our President must be a President of ALL Americans, not just those who agree with us. We need a President who can inspire the Losers to participate productively in renewing our Nation.
As Super Tuesday, and the nominating Convention approaches, this is a critical question I think we need to ask ourselves divorced of likes and dislikes, symbolic values and individual flaws - they've chosen high profile politics, folks, they all carry unsavoury baggage if inspected closely! Who can best inspire those who oppose us, both nationally, and internationally, to work together with us, even if they're not happy about it.
Neither Barack nor Hillary were my preferred candidates; I am considerably more Liberal in my outlook. But it's ballot-time. Time to decide who will unite us.
Or, if you prefer, you can help poison the well.
What are You going to do?