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Return to the Center
Posted on August 21, 2003 in Book of Days Citizenship
Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.
Today’s topic: Write about an overheard remark.
I eavesdrop all the time when I am in restaurants, cafes, stores. Tonight I went to a discussion group at Barnes and Noble. The topic was a comparison of the books Treason and Living History. Even the conservatives professed that they did not like Ann Coulter’s attitude and had enjoyed reading Hillary’s book more.
Coulter does not reflect the attitudes of the conservatives I talk to around here. This isn’t to say that we don’t disagree: we discuss the issues, not fling attacks at each other. It’s “this is what I think, this is what I feel.”
The problem that happens here on the web, I think, with both liberals and conservatives is that we play to the crowd — just like Coulter. Many blogs strive to entertain (including this one, I admit) rather than inform (I do try to back up what I say with facts). What I discovered is that American society is not so polarized as it seems at first glance. If we ignore the news and the radio, I believe, we can talk things over, work them out.
I am about as socialist and as libertarian as you can get. But there’s value in governing the country around its true center, around compromise, give and take, continual reevaluation of our policies. What has happened is that a small clique of ultra-right wing extremists are struggling to develop a new center — around the person of George W. Bush, who any intelligent American should reject as a uniting point due to his incompetence, his avarice, his influence peddling, his lying, and that fact that he stands well to the right of the center.
Rather than make conservatives into leftists, I think our goal should be to bring them to the center and work with us. (Chief among my political values is representation of our diversity in our decision-making and intelligent, workable compromise.)
Sorry for the skimpiness of these thoughts. Sorry that I haven’t spoken about my love of eavesdropping. The heat has given me a headache. This is the last night without air conditioning.
Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.
Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: You picked up a hitchhiker.
