Welcome to 2004…should be an interesting year. As in, “may you live in interesting times”. I find the time we live in very interesting, mostly because of the current political climate. One of my pastimes is following the antics of the political scene, and figuring out the underlying motives behind what’s going on. There are the most obvious, of course (well, obvious to me, not necessarily to others) – the economic motives of Bush and friends, working to get rich while deceiving most people about what their actual goals are, the desire for power, and the seeming desire of some to actually make the world a nicer place to live (rare).
Then there are the less obvious but far more interesting ones. What drives Republicans to have swung so far to the religious right? Why are the dems now where the Republicans once were economically? Why are the Republicans so threatened by differeing viewpoints from their own? And my own viewpoints, which have swung all the way to libertarian and from there, somehow, to being almost progressive? (Mostly as a result of seeing how far the unfettered wealthy are willing to take things, and the lack of regard they have for those less fortunate).
Viewpoints are a constant source of fascination to me, in all areas. It’s amazing how often a new scientific discovery is made simply because someone was willing to look at things differently. And then how scorned they are by the old majority for holding a differing viewpoint, until it becomes more and more obvious that the new view is correct. The same seems to happen in so many fields. And how differently the same event can be seen by different people – for me, 9/11 was an example of how disastrous the effect was of Bush’s appointment, knowing he had all but completely cut off funding for investigating terrorist activities before then. How Gore had written a study for increasing airline security, which the Bush admin ignored until 9/11 occured. Yes it was a horrible tragedy, but one that should have been able to be avoided. Now, this administration swings the other way and limits our freedoms and securities at the same time by its oppressiveness and inability to create bet!
ter relations with foreign countries. Yet so few people look to the long term effects – they believe what they are told and refuse to think it through and see where the path we are on leads. Or to see through to what the real goals of this administration are, and how they subvert the truth to further themselves and their friends. Sad, really.