This Entry Is About Generational Politics

[hertinkness]

If you don't want to hear it, here's a video featuring a very sleepy beagle.

I was watching CNN today while I was at the gym, mostly because it was on. Now, unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past six months plus, you can probably guess they're doing live election coverage, and even a news junkie like me is getting sick of it.

As I tread the mill for my thirty minutes, I was thinking about the candidates, their good points and bad points. McCain has been a soldier who has actually experienced war, and I think that much of the recent bluster is him pandering to the chickenhawk vote; he's better on the environment than most Republicans (even though that's like being the healthiest person in the cancer ward), and I think I could live with America under him. I wouldn't necessarily like it, but I wouldn't be looking for grad school opportunities in Canada like I did last time. Still, his economic policies suck- wouldn't you get the same effect as a tax cut for a longer period of time if you just raised the minimum wage?- I hate that he doesn't have a plan that doesn't involve "status quo" for health care, and I am extremely worried about his civil rights issues (and I include reproductive rights as civil rights, in case you're wondering).

Then I thought about Hillary- good policies, though I am uncomfortable about her health care plan. I don't think that having everyone buy coverage through insurance companies that already rip them off is going to change anything, and a mandate will make it impossible to pass. And the first woman president! That would be so cool for that to happen in my lifetime! But- and I know people are going to get mad at me for saying this- she would have never been considered as presidential material if her husband's name wasn't William Jefferson. In fact, I don't think anyone would have known her name. I'd like a Madam President, but I would prefer one that didn't have to ride her husband's coattails, and there are women like that out there. As uncomfortable as it makes me to say this, that's one of the reasons why I didn't vote for her in the primary.

And as most of you know, I am a proponent of Obama. I like his plans for health care and for Iraq, and while his environmental policies need work, he's the only one that's even considered reforming student and professional immigration, which will help my friends and colleagues. I am dismayed at some of the personal life issues that have been brought up- "sweetie"-gate, Rezko-gate, Weathermen-gate, Wright-gate- but I can see how those can happen. You have lunch with an English professor. You go to church and even though you disagree with 85% of the words coming out of your priest's mouth during the sermon, you sit through it anyway because you're not there to worship the priest. Someone turns out to be completely different than you thought. You use a damn colloquialism in an inappropriate situation, and someone blows it way out of proportion. Anyone not done one of these before?

Anyone?

And as I was watching CNN, I saw another distinction. McCain and Clinton are both of the previous generation of leaders, and... betrayed is too strong a word, but that generation of leaders were not faithful to the promise of this country.

The United States of America has done so much. My grandparents saved the free world and ended the Holocaust, coming back just in time to rebuild the world's economy. The next generation secured voting rights, civil rights, and freedom of expression, and still found time to land a man on the moon. The generation after integrated the workplaces of the US, and fought to clean our rivers and air. And then we got the Eighties, and Reaganomics, and then Bushanomics and the Persian Gulf War. Clinton got his blowjob on a relatively halfway decent presidency, and do I really need to tell you what a shithole this country has turned into the past eight years?

Where are the things I was promised? Why has our space program stalled? Why are we still fighting stupid, pointless wars over a resource we should have long since abandoned for something better? Why are we dumping mountains into stream valleys? And where the frack is my DSV?!?

The previous generation did not just sit on their hands, but the leaders have failed, descending into bickering and airing dirty laundry instead of leading. And the previous generation doesn't seem to have the energy to do anything about it other than stare at CNN. But the previous generation gave my generation life- and now it's up to us to do something with it.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Comments

[ziabandito555.livejournal.com]

Obama also has a lot of good urban renewal policies i Support such as reforms in mass transit.

I'd support a Janet Napolitano run for the presidency but thats me.

Well keep in mind one thing that previous generation of leaders did. they were crucial for the formation of the internet as we know it. They turned the hardware and infrastructure the right way at the right time and created the laws and governing boars that helped create the dot com boom. Both Clintons was crucial to that period as was Gore. Though I do understand a bit of anger. the baby boomers and gen xers really dropped the ball hard with Bush.

[angry-geologist.livejournal.com]

I didn't really know about his urban renewal policies- I had focused a bit more on his rural plans to bolster rural doctors. But hey, that's gravy.

Janet Napolitano is one, and Kathleen Sebelius is another. I kind of wish she wasn't from Kansas- living on flat ground too much does something to a person's head. I think that's how we can explain Texas. But she seems like one that would support energy initiatives and public education.

And you're right about the internet. The Clinton administration had a lot to do with the environment for that to really grow. It's really unfortunate that the dot com boom turned into a bust, but what are you going to do?

[ziabandito555.livejournal.com]

Well he keeps those sort of buried. some have claimed becuase urban renewal is code word for helping black people and he wants to appear as neutral as possible. They are good ones though.

rural doctors is a big issue can you point me to his areas i haven;t heard them.

I think people who live in that area, I'm one of them, just see all that space and open land and wonder what people mean by crowding or dwindling resources. People will tend to trust their eyes more then other people. It all seems so abstract to say how many live in NYC or Los Angeles or Chicago

Still I think A lot of people put that aside when they live outside of those states for a short bit.

Sebelius would be fantastic as well.

Well economies rise and fall thats their nature like many things and the dot com world had become saturated and over extended. Now it is normalizing. Still yes the Clintons helped form it and made sure a lot of people could access it.

[angry-geologist.livejournal.com]

He wants to develop a loan forgiveness program for doctors and nurses who go to underserved areas- that would benefit inner cities as well as the boonies, but I don't see anything wrong with that. He also wants to invest in rural infrastructure, particularly rural broadband, which is sorely, sorely needed. Up until about this time last year, my parents still had to rely on dialup, and they're really not even that far out.

It's not just the space and land- you get the same thing in mountains, just folded up a bit. It's something else... maybe because a lot of that land is used as cropland? It's like they see so much of the same thing everyday, that they don't pay attention, either to the land or to people. Maybe not that extreme... murgh... trying to explain this is like trying to explain snow to someone who has never been outside of the Amazon rainforest.

[ziabandito555.livejournal.com]

That is some good policy design there.

I've lived all around the country, going to college in Minnesota, and my home city is Albuquerque I think i can understand some things about places such as Kansas. I think i see what you're trying to get at.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I think you need to clarify one point. McCain comes from the generation before Clinton. He was born in the late thirties (twenty years less two days before me, in fact), she was born in the late forties (a bit more than eleven years after him). McCain graduated from the Naval Academy just before I turned two. I'm from the mid-to-late end of the baby boom, Clinton from the early end. McCain's first memories should include Pearl Harbour.

Clinton comes from the generation that was energised by the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. McCain from the more conformist generation that supported going into Vietnam and that believed in the need to confront the Communist Menace everywhere. (Accepting these both as generalisations, and subject to the ecological fallacy.)

They come from different environments, socially and historically, and need to be viewed differently. That's all. I'm not disagreeing that they both represent policies that have, to a large degree, failed. I'm just saying that they're not both from one generation.

[angry-geologist.livejournal.com]

You're right about that, of course. It just gets so easy sometimes to lump failed policies together.

[zenkitty-714.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to add, because I agree with you entirely. We must, at least, *become* the ones we have been waiting for, because we can't wait any longer.