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Head-in-the-Sand Nation
DeAngelo Starnes
Guest Editorial Archives
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page 15
Music can be a nice meditative diversion to a rapid descent into depression. In light of the upcoming inauguration, I pulled out Gil Scott-Heron’s Spoken Word masterpiece “H2O Gate Blues.”
Gil asked, “How long, America, before the consequences of keeping the school systems segregated, allowing the press to be intimidated, watching the price of everything soar and hearing complaints because the rich want more? It seems that Macbeth, and not his Lady, went mad. We let him eliminate the whole middle class. The dollar’s the only thing we can’t inflate while the poor go on without a new minimum wage.”
And so a man who has no business being President gets re-elected and rides into office on tax cuts. Where’s the correlation between tax cuts and an upturn in the economy? As far as I can tell, tax cuts have led the nation’s economy from a budget surplus to record deficits. We've lost the most jobs since the Great Depression. And people keep losing jobs to citizens of India, or, in the very near future, Iraq. And the so-called newly created work pays less than what was being earned before. The only beneficiaries of tax cuts were Bush’s cronies/friends/campaign contributors who were responsible for some of the worst business collapses in history (collapses that wiped out jobs and pensions).
(Quick question: What’s the difference between a “campaign contribution” and a “bribe”; “welfare” versus “tax breaks” and “corporate subsidies”?)
Pundits in the media claim votes went to Dubya because he was seen as a guardian of “moral values.” Why does society accept that notion without questioning the term or the question that provoked the “moral values” response? Morals mean different things to different people but beyond morality, how about fairness? Is it fair to have religious imposition on an individual’s free will? Is it fair to tell a woman she must have a baby she doesn’t want, or isn’t prepared to have when it’s okay to own a gun? Is it fair to have middle-classed people finance a disproportionate fair of the government’s budget? Is it fair to send young people off to fight a war so that our leaders enrich themselves without sharing that wealth?
Bush tapped into the psyche of those who already were susceptible to the “These Are the Last Days and Times” vibe and made them believe that America was vulnerable to another attack by unseen and unknown terrorists. He took us back to crayons with his color-coded alert system.
Worse, we allowed him to polarize the country with matador red-cape issues: abortion and “gay marriage.” Like those issues created income, security or safety.
And the Democrats? All they needed was a candidate with just a minute bit of emotion or intelligence. But Kerry blew it. He never defined himself, never resolved the question that he was a “flip-flopper” and never went on the offensive. Those failures said more about a Kerry presidency than Bush’s attacks.
The Democrats are so lame right now. They have no fight, no strong central message, and no proactive efforts. It’s just passive participation in the rape.
But then again, why vote for a Democrat who sounds like a Republican when you can get the real thing?
“How much more evidence do the citizens need that the election was sabotaged by trickery and greed? And if this is so and who we got didn’t win, let’s do the whole election over again! The obvious key to the whole charade would be to run down all of the games they played.”
Word came out that there may have been voting irregularities in this election. More votes were cast than the amount of total registered voters in an Ohio county. Votes disappeared in Florida. People in charge of voting also co-chaired Republican presidential campaigns. Vote counts that don’t match exit polls. So often the media alluded to the election being called because of national security problems. The curiously-timed video from Osama Bin Laden threatening another attack. Flyers in non-White neighborhoods “warning” that parking tickets had to be paid or clean credit reports had before being allowed to vote. “Errors” in party affiliation registration and felony arrest and/or conviction status. Longer than eight waits before being allowed to vote. “Leaked” reports that electronic votes were not reliable when electronic voting was the only voting option.
Ever wonder who was behind these schemes?
“Four more years. Fo’ more years. Fo’ mo’ years! Fo’ mo’ years of that!”
Assuming the vote count was accurate, the country suffered a bad-case of ostrich-ism on November 4, 2004. Thinking beyond the next four years, anyone who cares has got to ask: How do we turn this thing around? First, to the extent we are stuck with a two-party system, these Democrats have to begin to stand for something. They need to stop trying to appease everyone, define themselves and not apologize for it. The only way Democrats will control the argument is to define it- a good start would be to make these Republicans apologize for being greedy and intolerant.
In any event, we deserve better than what was offered as choices for leadership. Most of us agree with this notion. Either we chose the lesser of two evils or sat the vote out altogether. Knowing this to be the case without demanding a better model means we are all guilty for the state of the nation as it is.
DeAngelo Starnes is an attorney and writer who resides in Denver, CO. He invites constructive feedback at deangelo_starnes@hotmail.com.
The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors or the staff. The Washington Informer is published weekly and submissions are welcomed. The editors reserve the right to edit all submissions for grammer and length. Submissions should be sent via email to feedback@washingtoninformer. com (Subject: Commentary); by fax to 202-574-3785; or by mail to Commentary, The Washington Informer, 3117 Martin Luther King, Jr. Ave., SE Washington, DC.
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