in response to a howard dean speech i saw last night

[budullewraagh]

last night i had the opportunity to see howard dean speak. i found him to be remarkably reasonable and insightful.

 

he first spoke of the importance of running for office. according to him, most of the people in lower political positions have minimal if any prior experience. he told the story of his cousin, a democrat who was elected to a position in utah, the most conservative state. he won because there was a scandal, but now he has the opportunity to gain back some left support in a very conservative state. also, he mentioned how in alabama (i think it was alabama, or another southern state) a black lesbian woman was elected. now she may be able to influence people to be more tolerant.

 

dean also compared anti-homosexual sentiment in this country to racism experienced before the civil rights movement. back in the day, many caucasians were afraid of swimming in the same pool as a child of african descent for fear of becoming diseased. it turned out that doing so would not really yield a problem. dean explained how the homosexual community is currently experiencing the same rediculous opposition, despite their being the same as everybody else, with the one difference being sexual preference. according to surveys, the importance of various issues among 95% of heterosexuals and homosexuals were ranked the same.

 

speaking of divisive issues, dean explained that the right has chosen to emphasize the issues of "guns, god, gays and abortion" to divide and conquer. dean called for themes from the left to emerge, such as education and economics, to counter these divisive themes. he cited a flaw in kerry's campaign as being the fact that kerry conformed with the republicans and emphasized the same issues as the republicans. what we need, he said, are two separate parties rather than two republican parties.

 

also, while speaking of issues, dean mentioned how the media has become more of an entertainment source than an actual news source. many very important points to speeches are left out because they are not divisive and they are thus less thought-provoking. i found an example of this in my local newspaper this morning. the majority of the article explained dean's criticisms of the republican party, which were actually not very many. most of the time he spoke of other things, but after reading the article, one would think that dean was just venting at the right.

 

i happened to get some nice pics. for the sake of saving bandwidth i'll only post one tho:

 

 

comments anybody?

[Sayonara]

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