11.7-8.06: Election day

From the NY Times:

Studies suggest that people who speak in tongues rarely suffer from mental problems. [See religious faithful and evolution post.] A recent study of nearly 1,000 evangelical Christians in England found that those who engaged in the practice were more emotionally stable than those who did not.

Went to vote at the elementary school on 11th Street and my name was mysteriously not on the list. I did a write-in instead — hope they don’t throw it out. As someone who doesn’t trust this government one inch I wouldn’t put it past them.

Glancing at the headlines this AM I see the Dems have at least taken a few seats back, maybe enough to give them a majority vote in the house. I sang “This Land Is Your Land” to myself as I rode my bike downtown — I got choked up and started to cry. Maybe it will be the people’s land again, someday.

I sense that the balance of power in the house and senate and the rollback of the neocon agenda is only part of the job ahead, as the country has been inundated with bully culture, the culture of greed, for at least a dozen years. For many young professionals, that’s all they know in their working lives — the attitude of winner takes all, bigger smashes smaller and do it if you can get away with it. It might take a while to allow another more humane culture of getting along and nurturing each other and benefiting from each other’s skills and knowledge to rise from the ashes. At present ashes are pretty much all there is. Social animals know better than this — they seem to instinctively know that there are limits to what the bosses and the alpha males can get away with, and that cooperation within the group is how the group survives. Checks and balances — something that’s been missing for a while.

I sense this culture every day, on the streets and in the media. Every time a cop car from my local precinct runs a red light or speeds down a one way street the wrong way (just because they can, no other reason) and every time an SUV with darkened windows muscles other cars, bikers, old ladies and kids out of way — sometimes narrowly missing pedestrians as they run a red light — well, it’s all been sanctioned by Bush and Cheney and the senators and congressmen who allied themselves with these bastards. They reflect and encourage one another. Push in line, build your building right in front of someone else’s, destroy a neighborhood, be a winner, a survivor. To me, those reality shows “teach” bully culture — that’s the lesson that is imparted — and that includes ones like Laguna Beach, which seems to promote backstabbing, lying, duplicitous behavior and entitlement — all in a world where no one works.

If these are the Republican ideals (and judging by the rampant corruption and entitlement in congress and elsewhere one would have to say it is) then changing the politicians will not clean the sheets. Not overnight.

Op-Eds in the various armed forces newspapers have called for Rummy’s removal. At last. They themselves — the military — cannot directly effect political change, but surely in the pragmatic interest of protecting the boys they will send an incredibly strong message. As someone who lived through the Vietnam era and grew up suspicious of the military (I thought of them always as the bad guys, the ones who justified agent orange, massacres and outright lying) in this case they are appearing as the voice of reason. Reason from their POV. They sense that they, the military, at least know how to do their job, and they stake their lives on it — and Rummy and the others have proven that they are incompetent and are jeopardizing the lives of thousands if not hundreds of thousands.