Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 4:38:07 PM     It looks to me like Democrats fear Republican pugnaciousness and lack of a culture of compassion, and the willingness to reduce the world to rubble to achieve some unspoken goal of family, money, and local control. But equally the Republicans fear the Democratic tendency to fill the world with bureaucracy and coercive programs that reduce the world to housing, health systems and education, also in the name of some unspoken vision of compassion, and abstract equity. The dems fear the blood of war and capital punishment, the republicans fear the blood of abortion and the bloodless death of bureaucratic enslavement. In this mix, for the Republicans business bureaucracy is OK, but state bureaucracy is bad. For the democrats, its the reverse. What is striking is that they are so hateful toward the perceived excesses of the other, and each provides plenty of evidence for such excesses, and hence the hatred seems rational. But in the whole system there is more to hate than to appreciate, embrace, and help develop. I remember at Berkeley in the early 60's the incredible gestapo tactics of the John Birch society and the Young republicans, and the Leninist meeting control of the SDS. Both were PC in dress, rep ties vs Ginsburg beards, scotch vs wine and grass, but both tough, much more convinced than convincing. It was a harbinger. We live in an entropic society. ********