Concrete Ideas

Well, reality is settling in.

On the streets heads hang in shame and beers are being cried into without restraint.

I'm not sure what everyone is ashamed of. There's a lot of "Get real...it's over," and squealing tires as folks run for the border.

Yes. There are two Americas. One that wants women's bodies to be be controlled by the government so that God's law can be protected (anyone else notice the irony in that?), the other that wants...well, the opposite.

That seems to be part of the problem now doesn't it? The pro-choice, liberal-leaning sections of America seem to have an agenda that is reaction-based. We don't want what they want, or so it seems. Our beliefs are based on certain ideological principles but there's also so much smoke that I dare-say only a few Democrats and lefties have solidified their ideas and forged a bond between the what-we-stand-for and the why-we-stand-for-it. The Democratic platform has been defined by a vague leadership who tried, badly, to pander but came off sounding like a drunk with a bad pick up line: "Hey bebe, vote...urp...for me, I'm principled."

Thhbbbthp. Sorry. The worst sell is the abstract-ideas sell. My big grouse, for those of you in academia who know me, is that, while the great ideas are truly great, if you can't translate them to Joe Public they're really not worth much. The "beauty" of the Republican machine, with Rove at the Helm, is its simplicity. It uses meaning like secret handshakes to let the necessary parties (the Christian Right) know that Bush and Co. are serious [e.g. "Dred Scott"...great example...put that out with an audience of 55 million during a prime-time debate—he won the election then]. When liberals learn to master the technique of being straight forward and striking a chord with the lay-person, then we're on to something. Right now we're infatuated with the more abstruse elements of the argument which is fine, it's just premature and ambiguous. It gives the impression of not having a stance unless the fit has hit the shan....

I'll be back to getting links on here when I've finished scouring the internet but here's a good one from FPIF again.

Also, Paul Krugman's excellent op-ed piece in today's NYT hits the spot. So stop with the sniffles already.

And to whet your whistle, did Kerry win? No, seriously did he win?