Brilliant Minds are not always on Talk Radio
Picture courtesy of the FCC.gov
With all the hype over Rush Limbaugh and his alleged bashing of the troops it makes me wonder why people blindly follow the words of one person. Talk radio hosts, President Bush, Teddy Kennedy, Move On.Org, Michelle Malkin and the list goes on. Somebody else is telling us all how to think, what to think about any issue and who is the enemy amongst us.
It brings me to the conclusion that our leadership system in America is broken because we as a people are so strongly divided down the middle. There are those Americans on the Right and there are those Americans on the Left side of the political aisle. Stuck in the middle is the swing voter but the base on both sides is consistent. What is the common task or sentiment that all of us can agree on that is realistic? Be you Right leaning or Left leaning, what is the one thing that binds us when an event like 9/11 happens? You are an American without a doubt.
Our nation needs a healing President and the need to feel leadership from our government to it’s people is overwhelming. Our nation is in a political crisis where both parties are talking the same game but neither is offering solutions to bring the country and our people back together again. Blame the left, blame the right, blame anyone but it is not my problem is a scapegoat that you do not want to embrace. This is all of our country and the ones that actually participate in our government are the ones that matter.
On the air waves and around the web the swing is against the right side of the aisle because of the non stop excuses and political gamesmanship of Kings from the fifth century. My way or the highway immediately divided the nation. I voted for it before I was against it divides the nation from the left.
We are a divided people and there is not a Roosevelt or Lincoln on the horizon. I frankly do not get a warm fuzzy feeling from any of the current candidates for President because for the most part all of them are saying we have to stay the course. Bush got us into this mess and he has no plans to fix it so it is the next President’s problem to deal with. For the record, no candidate can predict or insist on a timeline for our troops getting out of Iraq or Afghanistan. Reality is funny like that. In the same respect no candidate can tell the people of America that there is a point in time when our troops are no longer needed in Iraq to hold back the terrorist.
My main point to this post is that you as a voter have a say as to whom is going to be the next President of the United States of America. If you need Rush Limbaugh or even a lowly blogger like myself to tell you what party to vote for then you need to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what you think. Get rid of the sound bites from both sides of the aisle and think about what America really needs in the next election.
From my perspective, I’m tired of seeing all our kids coming home in body bags and flag draped coffins for a people that have no clue as to what freedom really is. Iraq is lost, Afghanistan is lost. Bring our troops home alive and let’s focus on America once more. Put a strong military presence on our borders and that is defending America at home.
Papamoka
Cross posted at Bring It On!
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Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Election 2008, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy, Rush Limbaugh
posted by Papamoka at
9:33 PM
4 Comments:
I agree with your last paragraph but not with your theme that Americans are divided. Perhaps the most politically active Americans are deeply divided, but on most issues most Americans are fairly close. Sociologist and political scientists across the spectrum, from Alan Wolfe to Morris Fiorina, investigated this in the 90's and didn't find much evidence of polarization.
I think your last sentence makes total sense.
I'm afraid that our yearning for a leader to unite us will produce another Hitler.
With all due respect to Tom, I fear that the 90's model may not hold up now. My fear is based on the fact that we are living in a time in which we are easily susceptible to division, as well as manipulation. However, it is my fervent hope that the silent middle is still able to tell the difference between rational discourse and name-calling, for example. Doesn't it give you pause to think about the fact that we twice elected a man as president who has consistently surrounded himself with incompetents, yet there is no outcry from the whole nation? To describe this citizenry as "a people who have no clue," as Papamoka says, is a hard pill to swallow and an even harder point to refute.
Bremer, Brown, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, Rumsfeld - none of them seemed to have the country as a whole in mind in executing their duties; rather, they seemed to be motivated by a fealty to, not the Constitution, but their president, their party or some PNAC-invented "experiment" that involved the disastrous idea of "bringing Democracy ashore" in the Middle East.
President Bush didn't win on ideas or ideals. He won on rhetoric, bully tactics, and fear, especially in '04. And yet, he was elected. I am troubled by the divisiveness, but I'm more troubled by the approach of some who seem to believe that the way to "heal" divisiveness is to find, not a way to compromise, but a way to force everyone into lockstep with their way.
One Republican member of my family once brought me back to reality when they asked, "Why are you so mad at me for something that big-mouth Rush Limbaugh said?" Aha. Because we all, on both sides, paint everyone on the other side with the same brush. We accept that the motives and ideas we see represented by pundits and leaders must be representative of all the people of their party (as dumb as that is). That's why we should all be much more careful who we allow to speak for us, unchallenged.
As for me, I find little use in the simplistic formulaic "Dems = big government and Repubs = small government" and on and on. For me, with every pairing, which side I take will depend on the issue and the circumstances. I have often disagreed with my government under both Republicans and Democrats. But I have never before been as afraid about the state of Democracy in my government as I am currently, and that is why I can more easily identify with what's being written and stated that more often (but not always) issues from the left.
Thanks for this post, and sorry for the tome.
You are more than welcome to post your tome Just Wondering here anytime... Your prose reads like champaign.
I do have to disagree with Micah by the way. (Great site by the way) Yes, we do have a President out of control but we also have a charged up electorate. Hitler came to power in a nation starved by the sins of WWI. America is not that hungry or blind. For that matter, folks like yourself, Just Wondering, Michael Linn Jones and of course yours truly will always be talking and defending what America is really all about.
Thank you all for your comments (Shameless plug about to launch) but don't forget to go and vote for Papamoka as the best political blog on Bloggers Choice Awards.
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