US election & other stuff
This is partly repeating a comment prompted by a recent post by juleske.
Like many people I was felt a bit of anger at the US election result. "How can 60 million people be so dumb?" was an actual headline on one of our tabloid newspapers over here and it wasn't too far away from summing up the feelings of a lot of people. I truly could not understand why a person would vote for Bush over Kerry. In part though this is because I don't identify with the things Bush stood for. I don't believe in mixing religion and government, I do believe in fiscal responsibility and I don't believe in going to war under false pretenses.
The thing is, I truly believe that we (the UK, Europe in general) don't understand America. The truth of the matter is that more than half of that country DO have strong christian beliefs, they don't want to see gay marriages etc, and they don't care as much about the fact that they were lied to over the reasons for going to war as they do about the fact that they feel like they are doing something about the "war on terror". They care more about these things than they do about their own unemployment or national debt.
Now it's all very well for the people to be dismissed as bigotted warmongers or whatever but at the end of the day if you turn around to them and say "you're dumb, and your opinions are ridiculously out-dated" are they really going to think "Oh, yeah, you're right!"? If you want to change their minds you need to understand why they hold these opinions and then find ways to appeal to their beliefs. Instead of saying "You can't let your religious beliefs interfere with Government" when they clearly WANT government to reflect their beliefs why not just say "We know your beliefs are important to you so here's a candidate who preaches Christian ideals such as tolerance, honesty, togetherness, etc".
The recent election was clearly incredibly divisive, and I believe that's down to both the Parties. I didn't pay incredibly close attention to the US election as it's difficult to do so over here but it seems to me that Kerry said "I believe in X, Bush believes in Y. X will bring you a better America". Bush's campaign was the same. Why didn't anyone say "If you believe in X you should vote for me because... and if you believe in Y you should ALSO vote for me because..."? Both candidates appealed only to their voters and it became a campaign to see who could get a greater number of their people to the polls. When a lot of the people voting for Kerry are the disenfranchised younger voters then he's probably not winning.
You might argue that Bush doesn't represent the majority view in America but the election result demonstrates that he does. If you want to change a country you can't just appeal to the people who already agree with you. You can't just sit amongst your friends discussing how stupid and misguided all these people are who voted for Bush. You have to find a way to appeal to the people who disagree with you. Kerry completely failed to do that. I hope the next Democratic candidate doesn't make the same mistake.
Like many people I was felt a bit of anger at the US election result. "How can 60 million people be so dumb?" was an actual headline on one of our tabloid newspapers over here and it wasn't too far away from summing up the feelings of a lot of people. I truly could not understand why a person would vote for Bush over Kerry. In part though this is because I don't identify with the things Bush stood for. I don't believe in mixing religion and government, I do believe in fiscal responsibility and I don't believe in going to war under false pretenses.
The thing is, I truly believe that we (the UK, Europe in general) don't understand America. The truth of the matter is that more than half of that country DO have strong christian beliefs, they don't want to see gay marriages etc, and they don't care as much about the fact that they were lied to over the reasons for going to war as they do about the fact that they feel like they are doing something about the "war on terror". They care more about these things than they do about their own unemployment or national debt.
Now it's all very well for the people to be dismissed as bigotted warmongers or whatever but at the end of the day if you turn around to them and say "you're dumb, and your opinions are ridiculously out-dated" are they really going to think "Oh, yeah, you're right!"? If you want to change their minds you need to understand why they hold these opinions and then find ways to appeal to their beliefs. Instead of saying "You can't let your religious beliefs interfere with Government" when they clearly WANT government to reflect their beliefs why not just say "We know your beliefs are important to you so here's a candidate who preaches Christian ideals such as tolerance, honesty, togetherness, etc".
The recent election was clearly incredibly divisive, and I believe that's down to both the Parties. I didn't pay incredibly close attention to the US election as it's difficult to do so over here but it seems to me that Kerry said "I believe in X, Bush believes in Y. X will bring you a better America". Bush's campaign was the same. Why didn't anyone say "If you believe in X you should vote for me because... and if you believe in Y you should ALSO vote for me because..."? Both candidates appealed only to their voters and it became a campaign to see who could get a greater number of their people to the polls. When a lot of the people voting for Kerry are the disenfranchised younger voters then he's probably not winning.
You might argue that Bush doesn't represent the majority view in America but the election result demonstrates that he does. If you want to change a country you can't just appeal to the people who already agree with you. You can't just sit amongst your friends discussing how stupid and misguided all these people are who voted for Bush. You have to find a way to appeal to the people who disagree with you. Kerry completely failed to do that. I hope the next Democratic candidate doesn't make the same mistake.