"In politics we learn the most from those who disagree with us..."

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest; but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy



Purple Nation? What's that? Good question.

Neither Red nor Blue. In other words, not knee-jerk liberal Democrat or jerk Republican. But certainly not some foggy third way either.

In recent years partisan politics in America has become superimposed on cultural identity and life style choices. You know - whether you go to church or not, or whether you drive a Volvo or a pickup, or where you live. This promotes a false political consciousness that we hope to remedy here.

There are both myths and truths to this Red-Blue dichotomy and we'd like to distinguish between the two. So, please, read on, join the discussion, contribute your point of view.

Diversity of opinion is encouraged...

Thursday, July 3, 2008

No We Can't?

Dan Henninger cites the example of the WTC 9/11 site in NYC to show how dysfunctional our self-validating democratic politics has become (article here). He writes:
Given a choice between unity and politics, we chose the indulgent pleasures of politics.
...as a case study of system malfunction, the Port Authority report on unbuilt Ground Zero is a warning shot to our acrimonious national politics. A can-do tradition is losing ground to can't-possibly-do. Barack Obama's appeal rests heavily on the belief that he'll bring back can-do. He's one man. The answer lies deeper, with a people who have to choose between politics that moves its system forward or a politics that just wants to have fun.

This is what this blog and the companion website are all about. The self-indulgence of our politics has cost us dearly and will continue to until we, the voters, choose otherwise. There are two additional resources I recommend to readers to delve past the nonsense about how we vote: Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort and this new website I've added to my blogroll: New Geography.
Drop your biases and explore...
Posted by at

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope you had a great Fourth of July!!

July 5, 2008 at 12:57 PM
Policritic said...

Thanks. You too!

July 5, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I get your point. The WSJ article, among other things, blamed government for not fixing the world center site, blamed Clinton and Obama for criticizing Bush's policies... typical politics of the right, I think. If I had to point to one problem with WTC, it was Pataki's "we will show the terrorists we will not be pushed around" rhetoric that created the conditions for lots of over the top, triumphant plans that were impossible to pull off. As far as I am concerned, Dems 2, GOP 0. So much for your "third way/not third way" website.

July 6, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Policritic said...

These are "typical politics of the right, I think"? The WSJ article condemned this as the politics of our age, neither right nor left. Actually, Henninger blamed the typical politics of special group interests who demand to be heard. In his words:

"That is because productive decision making has fallen as a public value below "being heard." Even being heard is no longer enough. The "stakeholders" have to prevail, somehow assuming that the process – or a complex project like this – will endure endless blows. Meanwhile, construction of the wholly private, 52-story 7 World Trade Center building was done in 2006."

You choose to characterize this as the "politics of the right," whereas I agree with Henninger that it is the politics of self-indulgence, independent of ideology and partisanship. Besides, NYC is hardly a bastion of right-wing politics and the mayor has eschewed partisan politics as an independent.

Thanks for your comment, though I beg to differ.

July 6, 2008 at 6:16 PM

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