Letters to the Editor
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@Steve Hall, who I don't know from Adam
That long post of yours looks good, but I'm going to bed now. Quite seriously, I plan to read it in the morning. Hold that thought.
I'm off for real.
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damn, a long one from seamonkey
I like your stuff. I'll read yours in the morning too.
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@lateagain
Thanks, I'd be pleased to hear what you think.
When I mentioned being entertained and educated by many of the posters on Salon, you are definitely at the top of the list.
Oh, and thanks for the shout-out to Dawkins's The Selfish Gene .
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Nice Comment, Steve Hall
Steve Hall--
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree the Clinton/Obama race has become partisan. But that's not all bad.
The Democrats may operate under a big, noisy, contentious tent. But admission is cheap and open to all. We snarl and snark and say all kinds of stuff-- all in pursuit of our man/woman.
But in the end, we labor to present a united, if disheveled, front.
To paraphrase Will Rogers: Avoid organized political parties. Become a Democrat.
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@ lateagain
Ahem--that's "whom I don't know from Adam."
Seamonkey, yeah, by Rovian I was just referring to the political game in general. I might well have said Atwaterian.
Specifically, the unforgivable and false use of "elitism" as a dagger. Not only is it hypocritical, which is the least of my concerns, but it reinforces the notion that education is suspicious.
That's an extremely dangerous value to promulgate, especially in a system where we are all counted on to self-govern.
Without "elitism" you have mob rule, and I don't think anyone wants that.
In general, I just mean the malignant divisiveness.
Also, the fearmongering. Again, I think it's extremely dangerous--this country's infantile and exaggerated fear is precisely the reason it's so easy to launch a war, whether on Iraq, homosexuals, secular humanists, the poor, minorities, etc.
Any person in a position of trust and authority has a moral obligation not to manufacture and exploit fear.
It's not just morally reprehensible, but it makes for poor policy decisions.
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Xrandadu Hutman
Speaking as an atheist I can say where Obama got a lot of that non-religious vote - from the Wright scandal.
You see, atheists can't really vote for anybody who panders to our causes, because there isn't anybody who panders to us. We are pretty much despised by the same blue collar white working class uneducated people that we are told to be nice to.
Think about Bush Snr saying that atheists are neither citizens nor patriots. He actually won the presidency after that. Had he said the same thing about any other religious grouping in America - he would have been out on his ear.
As much as women and black voters might think they are prejudiced against and treat like second class citizens, they at least haven't got a problem establishing that they are citizens at all.
So what does this leave us with? Precious little we can vote for on the "One of us" stakes. We have to go with the issues within the issues when it comes to the emotive votes, because atheists are people just like everyone else and emotion does form a part of our thinking.
What was the issue within the issue with the Wright scandal? A challenge to one of the fundemental things that atheists in America agree on - that there should be no religious bar to who is president.
We don't care that Obama's pastor is a nut, we have serious problems with the sanity of mainstream Christianity anyway, what we care about is the idea that religion and government shouldn't mix. This doesn't mean don't elect religious people, this means don't choose your candidates based on religion.
When the Wright scandal gained steam, a lot of atheists saw this as a challenge to this concept.
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To Jacksonian -
Thanks for the kind words.
I didn't mention a lot of specifics in my post; I was trying to stay under the 1,000-word limit, and I didn't want to be too, err, partisan. But here are a couple of examples:
In the Salon forums, I read a lot of letters that are critical of both Clinton and Obama. There is plenty of negativity on both sides, but Joan Walsh only (and repeatedly) mentions the negative Obama supporters, as if they are a particular problem for Obama. Say what? But you know, once I get past my initial partisan reaction, I think she has a point. Obama is the likely nominee, and he is the one who will be running this fall. While it would be nice for Clinton and her supporters to start to heal the divide, Obama and his supporters can't control that. What Obama and his supporters can do is start to reach out to them.
Or WV: Which is the real story? Is the story that Clinton has won one of her traditional strongholds because of Obama's (and his supporters') disrespect and lack of understanding for non-elite, working class whites?
Or is the story that Clinton has changed her campaign strategy to become a race-baiting populist who is now using the Republican tactic of smearing a Democrat as a latte-drinking elite, amid shocking media reports of openly racist attitudes by WV voters towards Obama? (Aknowledgements to yourself and Seamonkey)
Both versions of WV are being offered as the true story. Maybe there are elements of truth to both, but I definitiely think I know which one is the real story. Because of the partisan passions, though, I gurantee that many people truly beleive that the other version is the only true one.
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To Steve Hall
Steve--
Check out an opinion piece in today's NY Times by Timothy Egan called "White on White." The article makes a great point that for all Hillary Clinton's posturing on winning white voters in West Virgina and Kentucky, the white voters of Oregon and other swing states are likely to hold the key to the general election.
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Something is brewing here, Joan, that you just do not get
There are two models at work here, involving our belief (or hope) of how the human mind works, and, therefore, how it may be appealed to and formed. One model is that the human mind is under individual control -- that facts, evidence, appeals to reason, may affect change. The second model is that the mind is a culture mind, formed in groups, formed by appeals to passion, prejudice, and built upon past bias. We liberals, and we convinced democrats (with a small "D") need to believe that our fellow citizens are amenable to persuasion -- that the simple yet endlessly complex decision leading to the casting of a vote is determined by fluid slidings of temperate consideration, and not the fore-determined expression of attitudes set in concrete. Of course, Joan, we are people of the world -- we know that there are those who live by and cling to their prejudices. And then there are politicians whose power is built on the creation and exploitation of the divisions inherent in prejudice, who need to keep these attitudes in concrete. Joan, Hilary has helped set this concrete, with the word "white" in conjunction with "hard working," a calculated appeal to stereotype and prejudicde, and I will never, ever forgive her. Ever.