- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
It seems to me that Salon and many of its readers believe in some kind of inherent power of the GOP to control the minds of rural and conservative Americans. As if these people would not want to think that Obama is a terrorist or that a Democratically controlled federal government would mean a socialist agenda. The fact is, however, these things that the McCain campaign and numerous campaigns around the country are saying these types of things because they stick. There has not been full Democratic control of the federal government in 40 years, and then 30 years before that. Both times these federal governments rolled in huge packages of social programs aimed at equality and justice where there had been none. In the 60's it was the Great Society plan and in the 30's it was the New Deal. Most people, albeit wrongly, associate each of these periods with socialism and have that historical backdrop by which to measure a proposed Democratic super-majority. It is this fact that keeps conservatives from voting for Democrats in the first place, if they can pallet the total disdain for knowledge that the modern incarnation of the Republican party has shown. There is something even more to this issue than just historical factors as well. We live in a country that puts so much emphasis on the individual and his/her responsibility to provide his/her family with opportunity. Many people come to believe that when they have bought a house, paid their bills, educated their children, provided for their future that this was all done on their own as told from the mountain of American freedoms and individualism. It is inherently part of their psyche. Why have there been no exposes on this idea? Why it is a mind control game that the GOP plays? It seems to me that other than Obama's ability to distance himself from the rest of the Democratic party, which is laughable sometimes, and the fact that the Repubs have screwed up soooo bad the last 15 years, the Democrats would have no game plan because they don't know how to appeal to this part of our culture. Where does the individual get uplifted in paying higher taxes? Where does the individual get uplifted for being more responsible to his/her neighbors or community? These are the questions that the Democrats will have to answer in the next two years if they will the way they are projected to win. Because if they don't, and they can't turn things around from where they are going now, then they are in big trouble. It might be very prudent, especially because the press in this country is supposed to hold EVERY administration accountable, for Salon to do an expose on these issues and how a Democratic presidential administration and Congress will appeal to that American individual in each one of us, no matter how big or small it happens to be.
