Sherry Chandler » Quite a week!
Quite a week!
Dear readers,
I’ve had an exhausting but very satisfying week.
Tuesday: I don’t need to say anything about this election that isn’t already being said better by various writers and commentators. I confess to indulging in a little schadenfreude. I even watched a Bush press conference all the way through (first time in six years). But mostly I’m just relieved to be able to have a little faith in our processes again, to think that after all the United States of America is not a country that condones torture and the abuse of human rights, not a country that can be snookered forever by character assassination and meanness in politics. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln was right, after all, when he said you can’t fool all the people all the time.
That said, I do recommend a couple of analyses: Sidney Blumenthal’s Fall of the House of Kitsch at Salon (you’ll probably have to sit through a commercial) and Tom Engelhardt’s Outlaw Empire Meets the Wave.
Wednesday: After the jangle and noise of the election, the Connections reading came as oil on troubled waters. The audience was small but appreciative, the atmosphere quiet and warm. The poems — well, they were some of my favorite local poets writing at their best. The artwork is outstanding. I urge those of you who live locally to make the effort to view it. The exhibit is up through the Gallery Hop next Friday.
Thursday: Molly Peacock.
Really, nothing more need be said. The woman’s spiritual joy and creative energy permeates a room and is, fortunately for me, catching.
So, political and spiritual balance restored and creative wells refilled, I will now rise from this computer to face the challenges of an ordinarily extraordinary Friday.
Namaste.
One additional note. Molly said that working in form gives her permission to use emotional content without being labelled “merely confessional.” This remark echoes one I heard Andrew Hudgins make several years ago. Only I think he used the word “dangerous.” It’s what got me started trying to wrap my head around form. Form is not constricting but freeing.
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3 Comments
1. Ernie Stamper replies at 11th November 2006, 10:12 am :
It was quite a week, and I am licking my sores! However, it must be noted (as some in the media have already) that despite a fumbling and bumbling execution by Republicans in many arenas, the conservative agenda has been successful. In order to gain plurality in the Congress, the Democrats had to run many conservative candidates, and moderate Republicans were not rewarded by victory. This was a winning strategy for this off-year election, but can, and will, the liberals in the Democratic party allow a candidate for President to be selected that can elected by an apparently more conservative minded electorate?
Ernie Stamper
2. sherry replies at 11th November 2006, 11:39 am :
Ernie! I’m glad to see you back in this conversation. I thought you’d written me off as incorrigible months ago.
As for the can and will of it, I guess time will tell. The argument can be made that the victorious Democrats were not that conservative and I’ll let others make it, most notably Ezra Kline at The American Prospect.
This argument may depend, metaphorically, upon the meaning of “is.” That is to say, how do you define a conservative and a liberal. Neither of these positions is monolithic, though Karl Rove would have had us believe otherwise. I see as many ways of being the one as of being the other. You don’t have to go to the extremes.
So I celebrate this election because it is a defeat for the notion that we are a polarized red/blue America. As Kevin Drum points out (here and here), the Democrats made across-the-board gains in this election: young, old, religious, black, white, Latino, etc. No single interest group gave them the election.
I celebrate it because it returns checks and balances to our Federal government.
I celebrate it because it repudiates the Rovian politics of character assassination and fear-mongering.
I celebrate it because it shows that we are not a nation hunkered down in fear of a mysterious enemy but one that is willing to affirm what we stand for.
A Hindu physician with whom I work remarked to me yesterday that America does not operate on respect. He see us as a people who choose leaders for their shrewdness and success but not for respect for their character.
I’d like to prove him wrong.
3. Ernie Stamper replies at 12th November 2006, 9:06 am :
For another view of this, and one that stimulated my comment, see Charles Krauthammer’s piece, entitled Only a Minor Earthquake (I hope this HTML hyperlink works on your blog, as it does with other forums).
I agree with you Re: the comment on respect. I immediately thought of the word “venerable” in word association with his use of “respect”, and looked it up — one can be venerable out of respect for “age, wisdom or character”. As our generation is finding out, rapidly, respect for age is “long gone” as it applies to us, although we cling to it as it applies to our parents’ generation. Character, however, must be important, otherwise so much money would not be spent to tear it down! Wisdom as an attribute, is elusive, even in hindsight, but I don’t think it will ever be established by the ballot box, or by hordes of poll takers.
Ernie Stamper
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