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• Friday, July 18, 2008 10:03 AM

  I agree with the sentiment

  that political orientation should become transpartisan, but I'm not sure a lot of Americans would agree with you.

  "Iraq, U.S. treatment of detainees, domestic surveillance, attacks on press freedoms, executive power abuses, Iran, the equating of dissent with treason"

  I know that these issues are important to me--perhaps too important and I recognize that we, all of us who read blogs such as this and are participating at this level, are, for better or worse, a wing of the polical class. That is, our discourse and our activities occur far from the purview of 'ordinary' people (I use this term for lack of anything better).

  I have begun to recognize over the last few months that to a certain extent these issues can also serve as a smoke screen so that other government activities go largely unscrutinized. For example, though I have heard a lot about FISA, Bush's constitutional non-sequiturs, etc., what is occuring with corn subsidies for ethanol and the relationship between the United States and oil and gas producing countries outside of the Middle East goes largely unnoticed. Similarly, we do not seem to be too interested in corporate malfeasance in the form of pollution and ecnomic marginalization that is taking place on a vast scale across the nation. I realize that this blog has a particular focus, and I depend on it, but I don't know if people in general really are retooling their political perceptions along constitutional lines, or if that's just the way it looks from here.

  —omooex Read omooex's other letters
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