tiptoeing to understanding
Man, I am having severe allergy problems today. I don't know why exactly though I suspect it may have to do with the fact that it's been raining a lot for the past few days and there's probably some major mold action going on... Where's a late deep frost when you need one?
Anyway, in between naps today I was watching CNN and heard of a poll done in which people were asked whether they see President Bush as a uniter or a divider. Forty-nine percent said that he was a divider, but a full 48% said that they felt that he was a uniter. You know, most polls do not have a correct answer...well, perhaps those that ask "do you believe that Iraq had their hand in on the 9/11 attacks?" or some such thing, but this one is another.
Back during the Clinton presidency, through high school and the first two years of college, I was a very active member of the young republicans, president of the group my senior year in high school, and was very, very spiteful of Bill Clinton. I was glued to the television during the Monicagate scandal and excited as a little girl ready to open a pony-shaped present on her birthday. I read books like The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton: A Political Docu-Drama and listened to Rush Limbaugh almost religiously. That said, I thought I knew what it meant to have a president in office that made my blood boil and almost wish that I lived somewhere else.
That all changed in 2001.
I grew out of the republican thing for whatever reason and voted for Nader in 2000 because he most closely embodied my political beliefs. I didn't let the Gore-ites' cries of "throwing my vote away to Bush" get to me because I really didn't like either of the too guys. Yeah, Gore would've been better, but Bush couldn't be that bad. Hmmph. Though Monday night quarterbacking might tell me that I screwed up (well, not really since Gore won Michigan by six-figures), I don't have a time machine and so don't really blame myself for voting as I did. Heck, short of having a time-machine or even just a two-year ahead pre-edition of the newspapers (like that show that used to be on CBS), I don't think there's much of anything that would've changed my mind on the subject matter.
But now I know, and I know what it feels like to live in a country heading in the precisely opposite direction of where you'd like it to be going. Bush has shown this to me in ways that Clinton could have only dreamed. Now I can't see Bush on the TV (or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Ashcroft for that matter) without audibly expressing choice four letter words and saluting the screen with a violently shaking middle finger. It is my three minutes hate everytime I watch the news. And it is for many, many, many others.
Which brings me back to that poll. Forty-eight percent of Americans view president Bush as a uniter, rather than a divider. That sentence may as well be written as "48% of Americans have their head in the sand" or "48% of Americans are getting an up-close look at their rectum" because they are unashamedly wrong in their assessment of the state of this union...or at least the attitudes of their fellow citizenry. There is a large portion of this country that feels as I do -- that Bush is an idiot who is taking us down a very dangerous path towards dark places we will regret in the very near future. There are plenty of us that very much oppose the war in Iraq (and we're growing with this prisoner abuse scandal that's starting to develop a feel of a possible Tea Pot Dome for president Bush), millions of us that oppose the Patriot Act and Ashcroft's heavy-handed policing style, millions that oppose his tax cuts, his half-trillion (plus) deficit, his environmental deregulations, his favors to corporate America, and all the rest. There are plenty of us Americans that probably have developed blood pressure problems over these past three and a half years and I can tell you from personal experience that it's all a much more intense and sickening feeling than every I had when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
Uniters don't have that sort of affect on people. In California, as CNN also reported, Arnold has an approval rating of 89% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats. That, it could be argued, is a uniter (as much as I hate to admit that the guy is). Bush is so not a uniter. Obviously, however, there are are a large number of Americans who just don't see that...and that, methinks, is one of the reasons that everything seems just so messed up round here.
Anyway, in between naps today I was watching CNN and heard of a poll done in which people were asked whether they see President Bush as a uniter or a divider. Forty-nine percent said that he was a divider, but a full 48% said that they felt that he was a uniter. You know, most polls do not have a correct answer...well, perhaps those that ask "do you believe that Iraq had their hand in on the 9/11 attacks?" or some such thing, but this one is another.
Back during the Clinton presidency, through high school and the first two years of college, I was a very active member of the young republicans, president of the group my senior year in high school, and was very, very spiteful of Bill Clinton. I was glued to the television during the Monicagate scandal and excited as a little girl ready to open a pony-shaped present on her birthday. I read books like The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton: A Political Docu-Drama and listened to Rush Limbaugh almost religiously. That said, I thought I knew what it meant to have a president in office that made my blood boil and almost wish that I lived somewhere else.
That all changed in 2001.
I grew out of the republican thing for whatever reason and voted for Nader in 2000 because he most closely embodied my political beliefs. I didn't let the Gore-ites' cries of "throwing my vote away to Bush" get to me because I really didn't like either of the too guys. Yeah, Gore would've been better, but Bush couldn't be that bad. Hmmph. Though Monday night quarterbacking might tell me that I screwed up (well, not really since Gore won Michigan by six-figures), I don't have a time machine and so don't really blame myself for voting as I did. Heck, short of having a time-machine or even just a two-year ahead pre-edition of the newspapers (like that show that used to be on CBS), I don't think there's much of anything that would've changed my mind on the subject matter.
But now I know, and I know what it feels like to live in a country heading in the precisely opposite direction of where you'd like it to be going. Bush has shown this to me in ways that Clinton could have only dreamed. Now I can't see Bush on the TV (or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Ashcroft for that matter) without audibly expressing choice four letter words and saluting the screen with a violently shaking middle finger. It is my three minutes hate everytime I watch the news. And it is for many, many, many others.
Which brings me back to that poll. Forty-eight percent of Americans view president Bush as a uniter, rather than a divider. That sentence may as well be written as "48% of Americans have their head in the sand" or "48% of Americans are getting an up-close look at their rectum" because they are unashamedly wrong in their assessment of the state of this union...or at least the attitudes of their fellow citizenry. There is a large portion of this country that feels as I do -- that Bush is an idiot who is taking us down a very dangerous path towards dark places we will regret in the very near future. There are plenty of us that very much oppose the war in Iraq (and we're growing with this prisoner abuse scandal that's starting to develop a feel of a possible Tea Pot Dome for president Bush), millions of us that oppose the Patriot Act and Ashcroft's heavy-handed policing style, millions that oppose his tax cuts, his half-trillion (plus) deficit, his environmental deregulations, his favors to corporate America, and all the rest. There are plenty of us Americans that probably have developed blood pressure problems over these past three and a half years and I can tell you from personal experience that it's all a much more intense and sickening feeling than every I had when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
Uniters don't have that sort of affect on people. In California, as CNN also reported, Arnold has an approval rating of 89% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats. That, it could be argued, is a uniter (as much as I hate to admit that the guy is). Bush is so not a uniter. Obviously, however, there are are a large number of Americans who just don't see that...and that, methinks, is one of the reasons that everything seems just so messed up round here.
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