RE: Why Pro Choice is Bad For Democrats
America is the most powerful empire the world has ever known. Yet our political discourse is dominated by religiously-tinged issues that, while important to some, really don't compare to the truly relevant issues of the day. Abortion is an issue that affects women's health, and strikes some people, as noted in this piece, as immoral. It's an issue people care about and its worth discussing. On a local level.
In the meantime, America contributes a 25% share to greenhouse gases with only 5% of the world's population; we have unleashed a pandora's box of horror in the middle east through Dick Cheney's personal enrichment program known as the Iraq war; the current crop of Presidential candidates have no serious solution to either problem. We also have a nuclear North Korea and an Iran hell-bent on joining the club. Thomas Friedman has been reporting on the death of 4 million people in the Congo. Special interests from big oil, big pharma, mega-agriculture, the prison-industrial complex, the defense industry, the gun lobby, etc., all are taking home our hard-earned tax dollars to either produce record profit or stay afloat. And here at home we've got a large swath of the population that casts its vote entirely based on the abortion Kabuki.
The fact that the American people have allowed our political discourse to be shaped by whatever conspiratorial forces, whether its the sickening Machiavellian maneuverings of Karl Rove, the detested 30 second sound bite that passes for campaign discourse, the cowardice of news organizations who present entertainment rather than real news (try watching CBC's "The National" if you live close enough to the border for an entirely different reality) -- it doesn't matter. It is totally depressing, not to mention a great danger to world peace, that the meaningful discussion of significant issues has been drowned out in a sea of local-level issues like abortion, stem-cell research, and Christmas parades. My feeling is that politicians have tacitly allowed this to happen, because in order to campaign, they need to fill their war chest with money from the special interests who all benefit from the smoke screen created by the focus on these types of issues. Al Gore is right in his new book, and if the American people don't wake up, there's going to be very, very serious consequences.
2 comments:
It is even in the news here in Buenos Aires
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/the_world/note.jsp?idContent=395726&hideIntro=true
Abortion is murder. We murder over one million innocent children annually. The hoax/myth of human beings causing the land to slide into the sea is unproven political rhetoric.
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