It’s been a long time TMV. I would make some lame excuse about being too busy to comment on the political debates that are taking a strangle hold on the (ever short term) American conscience or the conscience of my own country, Great Britain (we are also slap bang in election season).
I am feeling rather disillusioned with politics from both sides of the pond. It’s all a little bit too predictable and boring.
As much as President Obama hoped to be the post-partisan president, that’s not going to happen. Even if there was to be a terrorist attack to the scale of 9/11, which saw a level of bi-partisanship not seen in America since maybe the death of JFK or MLK, I have the sneaking suspicion that there would be a narrative of Obama being too weak, too wet behind the ears, too liberal, too un-America or too complicit with the actions to the terrorist to defend America properly.
Before people switch off to my train of thinking – please tell me that you haven’t heard any of the above narratives being floated around the mainstream media? As much as Bush was attacked by left (and yes liberals, the truthers belong to your side of the isle and I remember a lot of Bush-Hitler signs during his two terms), I don’t think there has been a president in modern history, who has been willed to fail by a sizable amount of the American public as Obama has.
The rhetoric used during the past year’s Health-Care debate has been amazing. To be an interested outsider and study the rhetoric, the debate and how the American public respond to the debate has been, well amazing. Death panels, unplug Grandma , socialist, Stanlist, Marxism, un-American, re-load, Nazism and my personal foreign regime – all these phrases used to describe a legislative agenda of a democratically elected President, a President who was elected by a majority of Americans, a President who campaigned heavily on this very same piece of legislation. Amazing.
So what now for America? How is this crippling partisanship going to effect the super power of the 20th century? Does the partisanship shown during the healthcare debate index towards how major legislation is going to progress in America from now on?
The answer is I don’t know, but worryingly is the image America is portraying to the rest of the world.
The political system of America was once the envy of the world. “How is it that a country as large and as diverse as America was able to exchange power so smoothly without major fractures or friction? “ The answer is that it can’t. I believe it portrays weakness, a weakness which will be weighing on the Presidents neck every time he goes abroad, or has international summits from now until his re-election.
This is why I believe that forums like the Moderate Voice are very important. In fact I would go further to suggest that forums like the Moderate Voice are the only tonic to what is today’s ‘mainstream’ partisan media which peddles the political equivalent of crack cocaine to the left and right. There needs to be an outlet which celebrates the fact that the world is not black and white, left or right – the world is actually grey – and that’s alright.
The middle will be the saviour of America in these dark partisan hours which threaten to swallow the moral compass of the great social experiment.
Just a normal everyday bloke writing about films.