politics

[quietann]

I've recently rediscovered my high school classmates; they had a reunion in August and tried to track me down in time for me to show up, but I ended up with 10 days notice at a time when I could not take time off from work to fly across the country to San Diego.

My high school was an interesting place. It was a public math/science/computers magnet school, with a small enrollment. My class (1982) had 47 students, of whom 42 graduated (including Stever Robbins, who some MIT folks might remember.) The first 3 or 4 classes (1981-1984) number about 150 people and consider themselves a single group for the purposes of reunions and such. The vast majority have remained in or near San Diego.

It was a school full of geeks, not surprisingly. There were about 5 boys for every girl. There was a fairly large radical-anarchist contingent, some hard-core code warriors, a lot of underachieving guys who probably had undiagnosed ADD, some "good kids" looking for a good education, and so forth. The last group tended to be more conservative and were more likely to be fundamentalist Christians, but people got along pretty well.

They have Yahoo Group, and I am a member. I got into a huge argument with a couple of the more conservative members over gay marriage; surprisingly, the guy who started out willing to listen to me shut down as soon as I brought up children in queer families, and the guy who was the most Bible-thumping to start ended up agreeing with the idea of gay marriage out of a sense of fairness.

Politics has also been an issue. But over time, anything I say is basically being ignored by everyone (except sometimes Mia, who is the only other really active woman in the group.) I brought up the idea that Shrub might have some cognitive issues (early onset Parkinsons or senile dementia), and people thought that was incredibly rude of me because I made a comparison to Ronald Reagan's second term, and they've been ignoring me ever since. I feel like a voice in the wilderness.



Here's my question: Voter fraud and intimidation appear to be huge issues in this election, with most of the fraud and intimidation being done by Republicans. Does anyone out there know of an example of a *Democrat* doing things like tearing up registration forms that aren't marked with his party, stealing yard signs for Bush&Cheney, vandalizing cars with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, going into poor neighborhoods and telling people that they can't vote if they have outstanding charges against them, or if they don't have a certain form of ID, or that they can't bring their children to the polling place, "losing" voting machines destined for liberal neighborhoods, or....

Comments

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Not addressing the question at the bottom, as I haven't seen any examples; but either one of the bloggers I check or Tom Smith recently pointed to a video comparing Bush's speaking patterns on the stump ten years ago and today, and the decline is noticeable.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I posted a link to that video to the list, and NO ONE replied. NO ONE said they had watched it. In the meantime, one of the list members has spliced together a tape showing Kerry's "flip-flop" and everyone wants to watch that one. Makes me wonder if I am being shunned....

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I have shun worries all the time, list-wise, even if we did get a decent turn-out at the last Chocolate Party. This reminds me, Tigerlily and I want to book a dinner with you and your primary, cooked by me, for a to-be-determined Friday. This time seems better than most to mention it... (we have been talking about it for a month or so, but we've been busy and a bit shy to bring it up)

**thoughtful frown** I don't recall seeing your posting.
I have noticed, politically speaking, that there's a lot of partisan hacks who will use any possible excuse they can to waive away bad stuff their candidate did but will take any possible shred of an excuse to slam the other candidate. In the interests of fairness I will note that it seems to happen on both sides; in the interest of accuracy, I will note that it seems to be a helluva lot more Republicans than Democrats, and a helluva lot more often by any given individual Republican hack than any given Democrat hack.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

oh, hm, dinner, yes. Dinner should happen! And we should bring something...

I actually didn't post the link to the video here; I got it from Tom L. and posted it to the Yahoo Group.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. I did not know about the Yahoo group.

I will check to see when we can do the dinner.

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you are being shunned; politics in this country has become extremely polarized and divisive. I'm thinking that if the Red and Blue parts of the country were more clearly geographically delineated, we would be at civil war again already.

Therefore, if you want to both talk about politics and get social warm fuzzies, you have to hang out with people on the anti-Bush side of the spectrum. If you try to discuss gay rights with a bunch of homophobes, you are going into battle. Don't expect to be liked in that setting.

So what if a bunch of homophobes and leaning-Bushes shun you? I have largely given up on people who aren't anti-Bush. Refer to my post, about stance on Bush reflecting underlying values, and shared values being a prerequisite for true friendship.

If I may be so bold as to offer some constructive criticism, you seem too concerned with whether everybody likes you. I see this in your Camberville rants, etc. I enjoy talking to you, and I am happy on those rare occasions that you and Ben invite people to your home. It may be a small set of people who feel this way about you-- not some huge percentage of the population-- but your friends are a smart and sensitive bunch, and you should treasure us rather than worrying about what all those other people think. Now that I know that there are a few people who really actually like me, I don't fret any more about not being popular, and I'm happy.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Well... I still can't tell about the shunning, though I suspect it's not going on. One guy (son of the guy who was the Head Honcho at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in the 1970s and 80s) came out swinging against me. sigh.

I have friends -- true friends -- on that list, too. They just aren't as likely to say anything, perhaps having already learned that arguing politics with the guys on the other side (and they are ALL guys) isn't worth it. There was an amusing incident at the reunion; one of the strongly pro=Bush guys came on to one of the liberal women. She turned him down because of his politics ("nice guy, but we'd end up fighting all the time")

But I haven't particularly been looking for warm fuzzies there as much as just reconnecting with old friends.

The concern with whether people like me or not... old history there, but I basically can't judge this on my own. I have to be told directly (as you have, thanks!)...

You'll be at the top of our guest list once the house is back in order, hopefully before your daughter is mobile, because the house is in no way childproof... but at the rate things are going, she may well be walking and talking by the time we can have people over again!

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

C'mon Ann, in this crowd? I mean, if I stood up and screamed "The sun rose in the East yesterday and I've got the videotape to prove it!" I wouldn't get a lot of foot-traffic, as the retailers say. Can you name three people who would disagree with "Bush isn't real intelligent."?

(The deeper point is that in 1984, Reagan was already going senile, or I guess they'd say now, showing early signs of Alzheimer's, and he scored the largest vote total that any candidate has received in any democratic election ever. IQ, per se, is not the determining fact in elections.)

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

But, you must understand, the Republicans are doing it all for the Children!

They have to keep the Pro life president in place, or if some justices retire in the next administration, a LIBERAL might get to nominate their replacements! We have to get conservative judges in the Supreme Court, so we can make abortion illegal again! Back to the old, God centered laws!!!!!

And George is doing everything he can to make the world safe for out children! The War on Terror has to be continued to avenge the people who were killed on September 11! Why, Saddam was responsible, and he was stockpiling weapons of Mass Destruction, like nukes or something! Besides, now we have all the oil in Iraq. Don't they like, make all the oil in the Middle East or something? Oil will get cheap once we kill all the insurgents and pacify Iraq anyway, right?

Sorry. I must have channeled a FOX "News" viewer for a moment.

[frotz.livejournal.com]

Petty (and not-so-petty) grassroots vandalism is definitely happening on both sides of the divide. Take a lot of people, get them worked up yet feeling helpless, and then give them a concrete target for their frustrations...

For specifics, try feeding "political vandalism bush kerry" to Google News; you'll get a zillion articles about trashed yard signs as well as some more serious stuff, or "political vandalism union" for a bunch of reports on allegedly union-sponsored trashing of Republican campaign offices in several states.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yeah, there's a bunch of news stories about yard signs being vandalized. also, there have been reports of some break-ins (and possible theft of computer gear) at some bush/cheney campaign headquarters.

damage

[spaceshotscot.livejournal.com]

Around here in Maryland, several people were arrested for burning bush/cheney signs. A guy who lives on a main road put up a sign and someone burned it. he replaced his fence and sign and they went at it again. this time the police were watching. I pass several huge bush/cheney signs on my way to work, 4 of 5 have been defaced/ damaged by something.

[scliff.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find corrupt local officials in equal proportions. Look at city politics in Miami, San Francisco, D.C., and if you want to go further back, Daly's Chicago. Given the polarization of Mr. Uniter, I'm not surprised there's a lot of local vandalism on both sides.

And I haven't really studied or researched it, but just from following the news this election year, I'm coming to have sense of unprecedented systemic corruption by Republicans at the national level. The breaking Voters Outreach of America thing, the 2002 phone-bank jamming in New Hampshire, Tom DeLay's abuses of power in Texas and elsewhere, the Joseph Wilson case, etc, etc.

I'm conflicted about being able to convince people. On one hand, there's the "If you aren't outraged, you just aren't paying attention" perspective that says there's hope if you can just get people to wake up and look. But then when I see all the news, it seems to me that everyone has already made up their mind, and will simply ignore data that doesn't fit their model. And then there's this perspective on it from the Rolling Stone article on the Daily Show:

After mulling over how to find an undecided voter for an upcoming bit ("Well," Stewart muses, "you'd have to go out and find a fucking idiot"), ...

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I'm conflicted about being able to convince people.

OTOH, this problem shows there's more hope for democracy that you'd think. In reality, all of these charges are a side-show, petty attempts to push the vote counts a little bit one way or another. The crucial question is whether the final vote count reflects "what the people want", or maybe "close enough to what the people who have any strong interest or opinion want, given the choices we have". That all these little things aren't moving people means that they're not masking people's ability to see which candidate better aligns with their interests, opinons, and goals. Whether X's supporters burn a few of Y's signs really doesn't affect whether X represents the sort of socio-politico-economic organization that will improve my life.