[MD] Red, white & blue

[Ant McWatt]

Marsha V referred to an article by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, 
published November 11th:

Republicans were oddly oblivious to the fact that they had turned into a 
Thomas Nast cartoon: an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, 
dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected. Tom 
DeLay and Bob Ney sneaking out of Congress with dollar bills flying out of 
their pockets. Denny Hastert playing Cardinal Bernard Law, shielding Mark 
Foley. Rummy, cocky and obtuse as he presided over an imploding Iraq, while 
failing to give young men and women in the military the armor, support and 
strategy they needed to come home safely. Dick Cheney, vowing bullheadedly 
to move “full speed ahead” on Iraq no matter what the voters decided. W. 
frantically yelling about how Democrats would let the terrorists win, when 
his lame-brained policies had spawned more terrorists.

After 9/11, Americans had responded to bellicosity, drawn to the image, as 
old as the Western frontier myth, of the strong father protecting the home 
from invaders. But this time, many voters, especially women, rejected the 
rough Rovian scare and divide tactics...

Even former members of the administration conceded they were tired of the 
muscle-bound style, longing for a more maternal approach to the globe. “We 
were exporting our anger and our fear, hatred for what had happened,” 
Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, said in a speech in 
Australia, referring to the 9/11 attacks. He said America needed “to turn 
another face to the world and get back to more traditional things, such as 
the export of hope and opportunity and inspiration.”

( http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html?th&emc=th )

Marsha V noted:

"Not too much has been posted about the U.S. election.   But here is someone 
who's got it right."

Ant McWatt comments:

Marsha,

Dowd's article also makes a lot of sense to me.  I wish Nancy Pelosi and the 
other women newly elected in the Senate and the House of Representatives the 
best of luck, they certainly can't do any worse than the neo-cons who can 
hardly be trusted to run a golf cart dealership let alone a country.  
("Extras for your cart, Sir?  How about a chrome ‘roo bar and a missile 
launcher to clear hippies from your local fairway?")

What particularly interested me about the recent US elections was the 
increased use of the "value" word by Democrats (finally they're catching on 
that a “Value politician/voter” doesn’t necessarily mean a Fundamentalist 
Christian concerned with “family values”) and the supposed criticism of 
Nancy Pelosi by the Republicans as representing "San Francisco values".  
Considering the sales of ZMM took off in San Francisco before any where else 
and the city is thought of by Pirsig as one of the most Dynamic 
(intellectual) places in the States, if not the world, I thought it was 
rather a bizarre "criticism".  I'm also glad to see that many, if not the 
majority of Americans now think so too!

Best wishes,

Anthony



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