Contributed by: filbert Monday, October 02 2006 @ 07:50 AM CST
Cicero, at Winds of Change[*1] , writes of his dissatisfaction at both of the major political parties:
My option as a voter appears to be a false choice. Either I can voteRepublican, lest we ignore the war on terror, or I can vote Democrat,lest we lose the planet to the sun. Our political culture is coarse andcramped with soundbites that have overshadowed eloquent debate. Thereare no Daniel Websters anymore, riveting packed galleries in the Senatechamber with soaring rhetoric expounding on the great issues of theage. No Lincoln-Douglas debates. After Martin Luther King wasassassinated, Robert Kennedy stood on the back of a truck inIndianapolis quoting Aeschylus on the meaning of grief to angry blackAmericans. No more.
There are few genuine debates taking place in congress. There islittle eloquence. There is mostly position-taking and attack. We findmostly ‘where’s the beef’ and ‘gotchya’ politics. We’ve come nowhereafter five years of war. If anything, we’ve devolved.
We do appear doomed to at best two more years of tiresome gotcha politics. At worst, should the Democrats regain control of even one of the houses of Congress this November, we’re looking at a non-stop parade of McCarthy-style witchhunts of the Bush Administraton.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world will not stop plotting, scheming, seething, fighting, killing, dying. “Are we safer today than we were on 9/11” is a question based on a false premise. How safe were we on 9/10? How safe were we on 9/12? They were coming for us on 9/10. They’re still coming.
We’ve lept onto the back of the tiger. We have no choice now but to ride it, because if we get off, the tiger will turn around and bite.