It is interesting to me to see how much support Hillary Clinton is drawing from women, including a prominent one in my own house whose vote I apparently canceled out in the primary. The presence or lack of a penis on a politician has never been a defining issue with me. I do think that blind ambition somehow just looks worse on the distaff set. Women have told me that they are less inclined to start wars and more apt to get along but somehow I don't think that the results would be much different. Remember the old battle axe Margaret Thatcher? If anything, when women are elevated to the seats of power, they tend to have to outmacho the men.
Obama raises a different issue into the equation - race. Long the skeleton in the closet, pollsters have figured out that people say that race is never an issue but tend to vote rather differently. But Obama breaks the mold in this election, getting wide support across racial and partisan boundaries and I have some thoughts on the reason why. Call it the Tiger Woods syndrome. We want to have our leaders resemble ourselves and a multiracial candidate (or sports hero) has just enough of our genetic stock to make them palatable. Perhaps we will see a mulatto hermaphrodite in the next cycle and really test my theory.
I am always piqued when my republican friends suggest what a great candidate Joe Lieberman would be, for instance as a vice presidential running mate for McCain. Why wouldn't I love that they ask, for god sakes he's a jew. Our shared lack of a foreskin notwithstanding, I think he's a turncoat asshole who should go away. Why would I support a man who turned his back on his own once progressive agenda a la Zell Miller. What does his religion mean to me? Lieberman's super pious brand of judaism and my own twisted view of the cosmos are poles apart.
Speaking of tribalism and hypocrisy lets turn to the arabs. The Palestinians have been launching Qassam and Katushya missiles into Israel from Gaza. There is widespread support for this in the occupied territories. A recent supporter in the paper termed them harmless fireworks. Israel fights back and they are accused of collective punishment and harangued from all sides. Yet the radical islamic groups feel that it is perfectly fine to hijack the Achille Lauro ship and kill all the jewish passengers, bomb synagogues in Argentina and otherwise target "Zionist entities" around the world. Is that not collective punishment? I've got an idea - stop fucking bombing Israel and live your life in peace.
2 comments:
yeh the thatcher metaphor could prove to be true
but your take on the palestinian situation doesn't take into account the refugees or the way they have been walled in like animals. Their "missles" are more like fireworks which exist to only give hope to the under trodden and the forgotten while isreals retaliation is still somewhere around 100 dead people (christians and muslims) per every dead jew.
100 to one...
So unfortunately with those kinds of numbers you should't wonder why isreal still doesn't have popular international support..
pro peace
not war
beans not bombs!!!
signed the
unorthodox majority
who still believe in the wonderment of a secular world
Isaac - thanks for responding. Israel- not Isreal, a common misspelling but easily remedied. I lived in Israel for a year and a half and have been exposed to those fireworks (and Scuds as well) and you don't know what you are talking about. Those sparklers pack a wallop.
They have been "walled in like animals" because they refuse to stop turning themselves into suicide bombs and to stop killing their neighbors. They have been continually offered two nation solutions and have refused all offerings, preferring instead to keep the dream alive of pushing all of the "jews into the sea."
I think that the people count statistic you raise is another specious canard - Israel's responses have been fairly well targeted to avoid collateral damage - read your history books about Syria's destruction of the town of Hama or Jordan's brutal destruction of the palestinians during Black September if you want to see real genocide.
And it sounds terrible but I must make the point that a defensive response to a terrorist act has a higher moral weight than terrorist violence. Still a very tragic situation.
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