Thursday, November 09, 2006

Could Be Worse

So the Democrats won Congress and some governorships, and Rumsfield resigned. Cue the dancing Ewoks.

It's probably just as much a cliche as the above to say that we ain't out of the proverbial woods yet, folks. The most important thing I can see is not to mistake the Democrat's victories as a mandate, the way W. thought his elections were mandates. The Dems don't have a mandate any more than W. did; the people didn't vote for the Democrats, they voted against the corruption and perceived incompetence of the Republicans.

As much as liberals (and even quasi-liberals like me) cringe to think of it, it still seems -- as far as can be determined -- that the American people as a whole are pretty conservative. They're not conservative in the creepy neocon way, thankfully, but they do appear in general to be conservative. I don't have stats for this assertion now, but it's just been a vague overall observation. I hope to get stats on American ideological breakdown sometime. I've looked online and haven't found anything yet.

Some of this popular conservatism is the vaguely creepy Bible-thumper kind, but as much as I like to pick on my friends the Bible-thumpers, I think the danger of the "Religious Right" is pretty overexaggerated (well, most of the time). What liberals and quasi-liberals and leftists need to do is to realize that the people who are conservative will keep on being conservative and that not only can't anything be done to stop this, but also that it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Case in point: the conservative-leaning electorate broke the one-party spell. I remember after Sept. 11, the paranoid part of me couldn't help but think, "This is it. The Republican Party is gonna kick the Democratic Party out of politics altogether and we're gonna have a one-party state for the rest of this country's existence." The never-believe-anything-interesting part of me never believed this, but I still thought Republicans had such a pincer hold on mainstream thought -- who can be against both God and low taxes? -- I wondered how divided government could survive (for a good overview of the overall leftist distrust of the ruling right, see http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/11/holiday-break.html). No, the Democratic Party is not our savior, but it gives me a breath of hope to see that my college-freshman paranoia didn't come true (yet, anyway).

That being said, I will repeat: The Democratic Party is not our savior. We ain't out of the woods yet. The thing about the Democrats and me is this: I lean liberal on some issues and lean conservative on others. The Democrats, therefore, are at the same time too conservative on many of the issues I lean left on and too liberal on most of the handful of issues I lean right on. Even if you're not like me, chances are you think the Dems are either too liberal or too conservative, and one way or another you probably don't think the Dems are our saviors, unless you're naive.

I have one main request for the Democratic politicans: Please, please, please for the love of whatever god or gods the First Amendment gives you the right to worship or not worship, please do not go on a vendetta against the Republicans and/or the Bush administration (not even if that vendetta means wearing stylish masks).

Even before the election was over, we all know there has been plenty of vindictive feeling against the GOP and the Bush gang. Most of this vindictiveness is probably justified, at least in a squooshy liberal "you're allowed to have feelings" way. However, it's just not -- what's the word, Buddha? -- skillful. Even if the electorate is all that liberal, the doctrinal hold of liberalism on their minds is not enough for them to put up with the Clinton impeachment in reverse. And as for the voices calling for war-crimes trials -- I'm not even going to debate whether any of the Bushies deserve that or not. That sort of thing ... well, we left-ish-ists all know it wouldn't bring back the dead, and we'd just look like Robespierre in front of the soccer moms and NASCAR dads. So forget about it. The more Dalai-Lama-y the Dems act toward the GOP, the better off the Dems end up looking.

P.S. Some of the ideas I've put forward here I think I got from two or three editorials I read in the Akron Beacon Journal today (Thurs., Nov. 9, 2006). I can't find this morning's paper so I'm boned as far as citing my sources on this. At any rate, it's usually hard for me to remember whether I had the germ of an idea and then read something I agreed with already or if I read something that convinced me.

See also:

http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/thank-god-this-fucking-election-is-over/

A note -- in the comments of the Fantastic Planet post, I say "ay-fucking-men" to the post, which has much of the vindictiveness I was talking about. What I actually meant to say amen to was the fact that the poster, one JP, agreed with me in not voting. After posting the comment, I realized I was giving my support to the vindictiveness I wanted to stand against. Sorry for the confusion and momentary hypocrisy.
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