Sigh

[selenite0]

Sometimes I wonder if there's any chance I'm going to last in a Unitarian church. Yesterday morning I went to the pre-service adult forum talk. They had a poli sci prof talking about voter turn-out. His handout listed the categories of registered voters who don't usually vote by demographic attributes. I was amused to see I fell into the "Irritables" category--news junkies who don't vote or vote for third parties. Given that I have yet to vote for a major-party candidate for president that describes me pretty well.

Turns out that's the group the prof hates the most. Not just for their views, though he did some mocking of those, but because they'll vote their conscience. This is apparently a travesty of voting, which is about "gaining power, taking power away from other people, exercising power." Great. Not only am I disagreeing with these folks on most issues, but actually wanting to discuss issues instead of us-vs-them makes me a bad guy. Sheesh.

I actually wanted to discuss the issue, my viewpoint being that if we had candidates who came closer to our positions instead of driving us away with barrages of ads we'd vote more, but instead I just kept my mouth shut. If I'm not going to get listened to there's no point in drawing flack.

Comments

[patgund.livejournal.com]

"Turns out that's the group the prof hates the most. Not just for their views, though he did some mocking of those, but because they'll vote their conscience. This is apparently a travesty of voting, which is about "gaining power, taking power away from other people, exercising power." Great. Not only am I disagreeing with these folks on most issues, but actually wanting to discuss issues instead of us-vs-them makes me a bad guy. Sheesh."

I think my comment to him would have been either (Polite) "Gee, I'm sorry that's how politics run on your home world, but here, we try to aspire to a higher standard than who gets power and who doesn't", or (Impolite) "Gee I'm sorry you have your head that far up your ass. Maybe you like the power games, but I find I sleep better at night when I vote for my conscience."

Ivory Tower Political "Science" twits. Don't care what political stripe they are, they're almost all clueless.

Third Party...

[meerkat1.livejournal.com]

Hey I am leaning 3rd party this year... if only I could find a decent 3rd party!!!! {sigh} I need a 4th or 5th place to stand...

My conscience starts screaming no matter who I think of this round.
This is the worst political cycle I have ever lived though inside my own mind.

Oh and that prof... is a jerk.

Re: Third Party...

[bkseiver.livejournal.com]

At least you didn't have to choose between KKK leader David Duke and good-ol boy Edwin Edwards (now residing in federal prison) for governor! That was my low point.

(Laura's Mom)

Dreaming...

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think all those ads and the elaborate campaigning shouldn't be legal. That would take the money requirement out of running for office, and candidates wouldn't be bought by their sponsors. It also takes out the popularity-contest aspect--imagine if we knew nothing about candidates but their names, resumes, and stances on various issues. This could be published on the web and in various print media, and then we could vote based on actual pertinent info, instead of a publicity image.

Re: Dreaming...

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I like that. At least for Congress. The problem with President is the big question of "How will you handle the big crisis that hasn't happened yet?" and that's mostly a personality question.

Unitarian churches ...

[btripp.livejournal.com]

We had to "disassociate" ourselves from our local U.U. church (in which we had been quite active) after the start of the Iraq war. Almost over-night the church community went from a supportive "doctrinally neutral" environment to being something reminiscent of a Berkeley chapter of A.N.S.W.E.R.! I got very tired very quickly of having to fight off the knee-jerk neo-Stalinist lefties ... and it became quite apparent that if one was NOT a left-leaning card-carrying Democrat (I'm a right-leaning card-carrying Libertarian) one was pretty much not welcome in that community.

I soon after joined CFUU (the Conservative Forum for U.U.'s), but sadly discovered that this group (CFUU primarily exists as a Yahoo! Group, supplemented by an occasional newsletter) is inexplicably dominated by Biblical Fundamentalists (one would think the Fundies could find better things to do with their time than to pretend to be U.U.'s!).

Anyway ... it is obviously no surprise to me that a speaker at a U.U. meeting would try to ostracize anybody who wasn't toeing the "move-on" line!


(http://www.btripp.com)

Re: Unitarian churches ...

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what we're afraid of.

It's not as bad as that one, at least, there hasn't been much open discussion of the war.

Yesterday's sermon was on Iraq--the pastor took the stand that he didn't want the war, but now we have to stick around until we've finished the job, out of respect for our lost troops as well as for the good of the Iraqis. A heavy emphasis on "justice", which is good but is sometimes in tension with "freedom", which is my priority. I can live with "you break it, you bought it" even if it's a very different philosophy than "we can only be safe in a free world".

I do have a big problem with Kerry's "Break it, glue it together, hope somebody gives me $0.25 for it at the garage sale" plan for Iraq. So the question of whether I can be accepted as someone who plans on voting for Bush remains. I'm having a meeting with the pastor tonight, I figure I might as well straight-out ask them.