A Purple America in a Grey World

In a digital universion full of blogs why I am adding another? Surely, it's just another drop of water in the ocean; so why bother? To be honest, I'm not sure. I think partly it's because I feel that our government doesn't represent me. I also think it's partly because I don't feel like I have a political community.

There is something lagging in the blogosphere and, to me, that's a sense of relationship, clustering, or grouping of similar ideas and points of view. The tools for peering into the world of blogs are so limited, or at least they appear that way to me. Perhaps there may some day be a better way to add my voice to a chorus but for now, I'm just going to be another voice in the digital wilderness.

I'm frustrated and I'm disaffected with the state of politics, public discourse, popular culture and personal responsibility in America today. I have never felt comfortable with the Democrats but the Republicans have really alienated me since the 2000 election. Basically, I always thought of myself as an Independent -- someone who was socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

Let me start by throwing a dart at the political dartboard: I think the labor unions are woefully out of touch with the realities of today and by playing a zero-sum game with business, they are slowly killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Needless-to-say, I see many business interests as being rather short-sighted in their behavior as well. In between, we have government making it even more complicated.

However, to talk about labor, business and government only is equally short-sighted on my part...and I think this may be the crux of the matter. Life is just complicated. Yes, it has become more complicated over the years but some of that is our own doing. In some ways, we have just become more aware of the complications thanks to more and quicker sources of information and a "smaller" world.

In any issue there often are many players as opposed to the two sides we often see presented. They can be the poor, the wealthy or the working class; those with children or those without; those who would preserve, conserve, use or exploit the environment; the rural, the suburban or the urban; the educated or the less educated; and of course, we have the whole universe of religious belief.

This is a complex world but why aren't the issues addressed in a manner that honors that complexity? Why do we allow very important issues to be distilled down to shrill characterizations that create polarizing points of view? To this end, I am particularly upset with the leading voices of the Republican party who insult me with their rhetoric...and I fear the Democrats are not far behind, though I respected John Kerry for (at least sometimes) trying to avoid the grand simplifications of the Bush-Cheney 2004 election campaign.

I voted for Kerry not so much because I was for Kerry but that I was against Bush. By the time we got to the 2004 election, I felt the Republicans were trying to make me into a Democrat and I resented that. In my mind Bush and Cheney were using black and white strokes to peddle fear and pander to the American ego and short-term self-interest. At least, I thought, Kerry wrestled with the massive zone of gray in between those polar end-caps.

To me, the 2004 election was emblematic of the problem that eats at me today. Bush-Cheney simplified the world in to us and them, black and white, good and evil, safety and terror; yet, I was none of those and I was all of those. Kerry struggled to navigate the space in-between and it seemed America was unconfortable with that.

It almost seems like there is a denial of our very own humanity. Isn't the human condition about the contradiction of life; the navigation of the uncomfortable space between who we'd like to be and who we really are; the toleration of life's imperfection and messiness?

I could drone on and on but this is probably a safe place to stop. As you can see, I'm not a professional writer and the words I write come more from a stream of thought rather than an organized outline. I hope, for any of you who happen to find this blog, that you will tolerate my rambling nature and offer your own thoughts in response to mine. I only ask that when you do, that you seek to find middle ground with me rather than staking out an endzone.

I thought about ending this post with some information about me but when I realized it would just be a list of demographic details, I had second thoughts. Does it really matter who I am? From where I came? How much or where I was educated? Whether I am straight or gay? Married? A parent? Religious or not?

Is it really the messenger or the message?

Aren't we really a Purple America trying to survive in a Grey World?

Thanks for listening.