Tuning Out for the Night

Enough of the election. Based on the wide margin of the popular vote, it seems like a pretty handy Bush victory. It is important to note, though, more than one election has turned on the day after.

Regardless, however, I find it utterly pathetic the distance the Democratic party is from rural voters. How is it that all these people vote against their own economic self-interest? They vote on faith and the Republicans seem to have the monopoly on that.

We need to relate to these people more. We need to not snicker and think they are WRONG. They have beliefs and I don't think they are being misguided or that they are being manipulated or that they are WRONG. They have positions we need to understood and listened to.

Sure, we can try to scrape by and win the big population centers and try to win battleground states - but that isn't representing the country. Look at that frigging red and blue map and look at all that red space.

With abortion, we need to get away from the "no budge" on Roe v. Wade and start taking the position that, "Look, we don't like abortions, either...but we think it is a difficult decision, a difficult choice...and the question boils down to - who makes that choice, the government or the individual. We think it should be the individual." Not only is that a more relatable position, it's a more honest one.

With gay marriage, we need to frame the debate as a rights issue, not a marriage issue. Marriage is not and should not be the business of the state. The state recognizes contracts. It is not the church. Marriage, in the eyes of the state, is a contract. The reason for the separation of church and state is to preserve the sanctity of the church - not the state. Politics is about compromise. The church is about faith. We've had this separation because our fore-fathers were wise and saw what happened in Europe when the church became involved with the state. The relative secular nature of Europe now can be attributed to the over-involvement of the church in state affairs. The church lost it's legitimacy. It church-goers want to maintain the legitimacy of the institution, it is imperative that the church not be involved with the state.

These are not the positions of democrats. Democrats think if we budge on abortion, if we agree that partial birth abortions are wrong, then we're on the slippery slope to a pro-life America. Liberals think if we budge on gay marriage we're pandering to racism and anti-gay groups. Change does not come right away. We cannot force people to accept a gay lifestyle they find repugnant. But if you ask people whether they think a gay person ought not to have the right to pass on money to who they want, I strongly suspect, even someone not comfortable with the gay lifestyle, would agree that a gay person ought to be able to assign the fruits of his/her labor to whomever they want.

If we look at the issues in a smarter way, not only do we not have to compromise, we bring people over to the other side. We do not need to compromise on "gay marriage," we need to change the vocabulary to gay inheritance rights or to gay medical benefits. With abortion, we need to reframe the debate and get away from the pro-life or pro-choice positions. It leaves us in a math problem that is unsolveable, without factoring...

Currently we start with:

1. Life exists at conception
2. A fetus is part of a women

We cannot resolve this issue.

We should start with:

1. There is intrinsic value to human life and also intrinsic value to a fetus.
2. There are conditions in the world that make an unwanted child a potential harm to other people. There are families with too many mouths to feed. There are people who will not be good mothers given their life situation. There are situations in which the fetus affects the health of the mother. There are cases of rape and incest, where the health of the fetus is in jeopardy and the brutality of it's inception could plague both the life of the mother and the child.
3. These very difficult issues, not ones that can be judged as absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
4. This is not a women's rights issue. It is an issue about who ultimately is responsible for making what can be a super difficult decision. Our options are:
a) the government
b) the mother
c) the father
d) the doctor

Are there any other potential decision-makers? If we agree that the government should make the decision, then so be it. But I don't think most people would agree to that. I sure wouldn't.

But in the end, we have to be better than Karl Rove. His is a politics of division and so long as we fight it, we are playing his game. In soccer tonight, we had more skill than the Danish team, but they had more size. Instead of possessing the ball, we tried to force it down their throat. The won, 2-1, on two counter attack goals, that are the result of pushing forward without good possession. If we possessed the ball, and passed around them, we would have worn them down and created space for ourselves to make aggressive runs to the goal. We could have won 5-1. That takes practice, though, and we don't have the time. With politics, it takes effort and willingness to change our mindset towards the red states. The longer we look down upon them and secretly snicker at their "backwardsness," the more we play into Karl Rove's hand, and he can point and say, "They don't represent you." And he would be right.