catapult magazine

so arnold schwarzeneggar was just elected governor of california despite having been accused of inappropriate conduct with many women over many years. the other day, i heard someone commenting that “the liberal media” was behind all of these allegations, which essentially allowed them to dismiss such allegations entirely.

contrast that with the insanity surrounding the clinton/lewinski scandal. remember that? republicans led the charge to spend $50 million on an independent counsel to discover whether clinton had sex, lied about sex or was anywhere near anyone ever having sex.

so was that the liberal media, too?

i know i’m generalizing all over the place here, but why does it seem like conservatives can always cast blame on a liberal media when scandal enters their camp? it doesn’t seem to add up. for example, if al gore had been president for the last three years and had done everything exactly as bush has, i have a feeling he would have been burned at the stake by now.

what’s up with that? what accounts for this strange trend?

We’re all talking as if Republicans and Democrats are truly different from one another. Both sides fight to have possession over “their” issues in order to “take a stand” against the opposing side. It’s the ideal of a checks and balances government. Besides, how could anyone tell the parties apart in the media if they didn’t appear to be mortal enemies? Isn’t that what Democrats are starting to say now? I hear more and more Democrats say that the reason they’re losing votes is because the party has been trying to be too moderate and has lost its distinction from the “other side”.

But there really isn’t that much of an opposing side between “liberals” and “conservatives” to speak of, is there? The perceived “differences” are merely symbolic, based on a long Western tradition of “battle” rhetoric—Americans would much rather see two opposing teams duke it out than go to something like a ballet where “everybody’s a winner” ; ) Despite the war-like imagery, the reality is that Republicans and Democrats are based on the same underlying religious foundations. They’re two sides of the same “Enlightenment Liberalism” coin. We “cino-ites” only promote a sense of tribalism when we keep pulling out the useless “liberal” and “conservative” distinctions.

Once I heard that the media loves the liberals because they get more juicy stories to write about from them. Then again there is Rush Popping and Arnold Groping…I am feeling a bit inconsistent, here.

Ideologically, there are some major differences between Democrats and Republicans. That ideology gets watered down via politics today. Which is why “ultra” conservatives and “ultra” liberals seem so wacky. They’re really just yammering for a return to the ideology that make the parties different.

I think the moderate nature that muddies politics is a result of our society not wanting to work real hard at following a philosophy to its natural conclusion; to its end. We like a la carte ideology. This muddies religion, too … which is more of a concern to me than how it affects politics, but I digress.

Are there people out there who really don’t understand the fundamental differences between Dems and Republicans? I’ll be happy to post some main points later if that’s the case. And I’ll try not to let my biases shine through. Ahem.

I am sure that there are scores and scores of people who don’t know the fundementals of even our political system. Like religion, people are born into their perspective political parties and just go with the flow of the generations before them.

just to add some perspective to the scope of the california recall election i was watching the BBC news last week and they were reporting on it. aside from the surrealness of watching a british reporter quip on about the election and the troubles following arnie, that is actually what they referred to schwartzeneggar as, but the fact that the BBC of all the things they could report on about american news or otherwise chose to do a bit about arnie to me is remarkable.!!! the thing to about the report is that the reporter was kinda making fun of the whole election and arnie; i guess therein lies the inanity of american politics, but much of the world still watches.

You can point out the distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, but it will still be like describing the difference between heads and tails on a coin. You’re still talking about the same coin.

I think our ignorance about what’s going on in U.S. politics goes beyond mere political ignorance. We’re so used to living in a secularized post-Enlightenment world that we don’t even realize there are more than two options.