Blogging Across The Great Divide
As regards our local and national political situation, may I suggest that we stop for a moment in our blogging and reflect. I find that continued preaching to the choir in this echo chamber of blogs, while perhaps some sort of reparative therapy, does little to move any us towards a better future.
Some might suggest that blogging would open up a whole new avenue for constructive conversation, adding a new and immediate network to bind us as a people. Instead it seems to coalesce into the polarity of two camps – likes cats hissing at each other.
The world outside, however, keeps going on, while we are hurling epithets across the divide, unable to find common ground, and distracted from looming crises that will impact all regardless of their position on the political spectrum.
The current mess is not so much the doing of one man, George Bush, as ineffective, inarticulate, and incurious as he is – it is the fault of “we the people”. We elected him – twice. Our democracy is an experiment in governing where the power to govern was assumed by the electorate. It is we who have failed America – by not taking on the mantle of that responsibility. By not participating, by not being informed, by not accepting this stewardship responsibility. And into that vacuum have eagerly stepped both incompetent career politicians and greedy interest groups.
In a way blogs are a new opportunity for the individual voice and the individual common sense to again percolate back up to our governance. But until we can begin to communicate across this red/blue divide with reasoned respectful dialog rather than by emotional rants, the opportunity will be lost.
Some might suggest that blogging would open up a whole new avenue for constructive conversation, adding a new and immediate network to bind us as a people. Instead it seems to coalesce into the polarity of two camps – likes cats hissing at each other.
The world outside, however, keeps going on, while we are hurling epithets across the divide, unable to find common ground, and distracted from looming crises that will impact all regardless of their position on the political spectrum.
The current mess is not so much the doing of one man, George Bush, as ineffective, inarticulate, and incurious as he is – it is the fault of “we the people”. We elected him – twice. Our democracy is an experiment in governing where the power to govern was assumed by the electorate. It is we who have failed America – by not taking on the mantle of that responsibility. By not participating, by not being informed, by not accepting this stewardship responsibility. And into that vacuum have eagerly stepped both incompetent career politicians and greedy interest groups.
In a way blogs are a new opportunity for the individual voice and the individual common sense to again percolate back up to our governance. But until we can begin to communicate across this red/blue divide with reasoned respectful dialog rather than by emotional rants, the opportunity will be lost.
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