The news lately has been pretty much dominated by the recent elections, and I’ve noticed an interesting trend; The language used to describe our government is very adversarial. When listening to reporters, candidates, and Mr. Bush, there seems to be a well-defined sense of Us vs. Them in reference to democrats and republicans. Mr. Bush, in his speech yesterday, made comments like, “We’ll try to find common ground”, “find a way to work together”, and “attempt to find common goals.” All of these comments were made with a distinct Heavy Sigh and Shaking of the Head tone of voice. Why is there such a disconnect between parties, or I guess the word is “partisanship”? Why does one individual’s political affiliation immediately make them feel that members of the other party are a hoarde of untrustworthy idiots? Why does political affiliation matter anyway? Shouldn’t it be about the individual’s ability to contribute? The fact that one person being a democrat causes fear, ire, and hatred in the hearts of republicans just seems juvenile.

Also of interest lately are the reports of dirty politics. While this is nothing new, this is the first year that it’s had an effect on me. There have always been attack ads and candidate bashing, but these stories strike me as a bit over the top. For instance, during the last election many voters of one party received postcards in the mail stating that, due to overwhelming voter registration, they were to delay their trip to the polls until Wednesday as to not bottleneck the system. This year poll workers arrived to open the polling locations to find the doors padlocked, evidently by some candidate who felt that his or her chances of being elected were slim. Likely thinking, “If they can’t vote, they can’t vote for the other guy.” It seems that The Great Election Caper of 2004 was just the beginning.

If the branches and/or parties of our own government see each other as mortal enemies, how can we expect them to effectively represent our country with a unified voice? Hell, how can we expect them to get anything done at all when most of their time is spent growling at each other?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.