Thoughts and Reflections on the Past Couple of Weeks

Here is an article from 2002 that talks about Reagan and Bush and evil - which I found interesting.

So I spent most of this weekend continuing to mourn Ronald Reagan.

Ok, just kidding. But I did notice that every public TV in sight had his funeral services going on. A tad much, I'd say.

I was in Minnesota at my sister's college graduation going from party, to cocktails, to dinner, to more parties, and leaving parties to wake up the next day for more parties. I have much more sympathy for Paris Hilton and other socialites - it's a tough job.

But these college graduation weekends are interesting - you get to meet all these other families from all around the country. Families are inherently weird entities. The individuals are all too similar. Meeting a new person is always a little odd, they have new idiosyncrasies to learn. But seeing families with like-idiosyncrasies and seeing how similar the siblings are or the parents are, is always funny. Plus, it's not often I meet big groups of people not from a particular place. We met people from Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, Portland, and it's kinda fun.

On a political note...the past couple of weeks I've hung out with a lot of different people from around the country and a common theme for whatever reasons has been a deep hatred and distrust of Bush. It starts in LA, where I have a lot friends who don't like him. But LA people aren't terribly political and film people tend not to care all that much about politics...and when they do, it can take a 'let's all cheer for Michael Moore,' limousine liberal attitude that's hard to take seriously. But my cousins in Whittier, friends in Seattle, parents and families in Minnesota, sister who'll soon be in Boston, all have this deep, beyond distrust, hatred of Bush.

I can't really talk rationally with any of these normally intelligent people about policies or the war, without it being reduced to this discussion about how hypocritical and distrustful the administration is and then beyond that, how distrustful and hypocritical america is. These aren't arguments, they are emotional and person feelings, stretched into political positions...but they have legitimacy despite that. People go with what they feel is correct. Bush himself does it. He decides about what's right and wrong and goes with what he thinks is right. He epitomizes the triumph of faith or feeling vs. reason.

And this is why I think Kerry needs to win the presidency. It's a weird logic, but I think Bush has offended and angered so many people (most of whom I think are irrationally angry) to the point to which he has forsaken any ability to pull people together. To be a uniter, as he claimed to be, during the 2000 election.

I'm so sick of hearing about how he stole the election, how the rich are getting richer in Iraq, how it's this big scheme to get oil, how he lied about WMD, blah, blah. All of this avoids the harder and more important questions about what to do about the Middle East and terrorism.

We live in a sharply divided and partisan country. It sucks. It sucks because we now realize, after the glorious and peaceful 1990s, the world is a dangerous place and we have serious enemies who are doing everything they can to eliminate our ability to live as a free society. We can't afford to spend our time fighting with each other over minor differences. I think we mostly agree, save the radicals and crazies on both sides of the spectrum, about what we need to do to engage terrorists and defeat the elements that cause terrorism. We differ on how exactly to do it. But while these are things worth arguing over, the arguments don't seem to be happening. Our partisan political situation right now isn't ripe for debate. People have entrenched positions over Iraq, the UN, all of our policies. We are not using reason, but rather feelings and using our personal feelings about GW Bush to dictate what we should be doing in the world. And that is deeply troubling.

The Bush hatred has gone too far and sadly, to nip it in the bud, we need to take away the impetus for the hatred - Bush. It's the same logic for solving the Palestinian issue. Take that issue off the table and we give the Arab autocrats nothing to complain about - instead they'll actually need to focus on rehabilitating their own societies. Take Bush off the table and we and the world can heal and work together towards real solutions.

Sadly, we take the Palestinian issue off the table and I still think we'll have issues with terror and despots in the middle east. I also think we'll have issues within our own country and with the world without Bush. But both would put us more in the right and make us feel like we're doing the right thing, which, I now understand, is almost as important as simply doing the right thing.