4 posts tagged “usa”
You know, I rarely actually write anything about politics, never here, and rarely on the community blogs I frequent. It's primarily because I'm not the best writer in the world, and usually because someone has said what I want to say better than I could anyway. But all morning I've been dying to write something about Giuliani's speech last night. I haven't been able to formulate a good way to write it without sounding like it's straight out of the metafilter echo chamber. so I'm not going to write one here. But this comment from Douglas Rushkoff's blog, quoted in the thread, sums up what I want to say.
I felt a bit nauseous watching the Republican convention last night. I’m very much a give-the-benefit-of-the-doubt kind of guy, so I try to listen to the arguments people make even when they’re made in over-the-top or patronizing ways. Sometimes it’s good to distinguish between the rhetorical devices and the underlying substance. Even people who use manipulative language sometimes have an important point beneath their persuasion techniques (ads against smoking, for example).
I usually don’t feel uneasy when I put those filters on, but last night - during the Guiliani speech - I realized I was no longer filtering a speechwriter’s intentional manipulation; I was trying to look beyond real hate. These folks were gritting their teeth, shaking their fists, and smiling the way gladiators do when going into combat against barbarians. And this is the incumbent party. The ones currently in power.
What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear:
community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below.
From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy
towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict
with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.
On every website I look at for Olympics news, there is invariably a medals table. And, except in one instance, the medals table looks how I expect it to look: in order of gold medals. So China is first. But this is the way that I have always seen the medals table represented!
The one exception is the NBC website (although I don't look at any other USA websites), which lists the medals in order of total won. Which, as of this writing, has the USA at the top. Back in the day, this would have annoyed me incredibly, and probably instigated a rant about US-centrism and blah blah to tedium. Now, it just makes me smile. Aw, America. You need to be first, don't you? It's been hard going the past few years, looking down the barrel of decreasing influence in the world, and obvious contempt for the fucking around in the Middle East. You need that little boost. I kind of want to give the US a hug now.
In other news, New Zealand is having a fucking awesome Olympics. Go Kiwi!
Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif) has acknowledged his nontheism. Pretty amazing that he's the first member of Congress in history to do so. Well, not really when you consider that atheists are the least trusted minority in the USA.
Well done, Mr. Stark.
