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blogging at the speed of life
Sometimes it’s a very tough thing to do to blog consistently, and as I’ve shown over the past few months I’m quite poor at it. It seems when you blog at the speed of life the number of blog posts works in an inverse proportion to the amount of free time I have. Who have thought it? Anyways, I have today and tomorrow off (well I left work early today, and batman premiers tomorrow, so I’ll be sleeping all day waking up at 4 PM and then going to stand in line) so life is at a standstill for me. Thus I am able to post a few quick thoughts before things start to pick up again.
Iran
First, it seems that the Bush administration is backing down from its previous condition that it will not talk to Iran unless if fully quits its nuclear program. (link) Our third highest ranking diplomat (how do you rank diplomats anyways?) will be meeting with an Iranian envoy (and other nations) on Saturday. This coming after Iran test fired their new long rang missiles capable of hitting Israeli targets, so I’m going to guess the two events are related.
I see this going one of two ways… It can turn into a foreign policy victory for the US (Iran agree’s it stop nuclear proliferation), and show that preconditions are not needed to diplomatically resolve issues. Or the talks can fail to produce results and open the door for the next President (or the current one) to say that diplomacy does not work and live war is the only solution to the disengagement of the Iranian nuculear program.
With the sucess of the North Korea anti-nuke campaign acheived through talks rather than force, it is my deepest hope that the same can be acheived here, and if we do reach such a point, we need to take a look at all the other “unstable” countries who carry around nukes (cough Israel, Pakistan, India) and furthur deconstruct and destroy our own minutemen nuclear brigade. I’m doubtful that these latter actions will happen as it seems that our Big Stick policy is firmly implanted in our heads, but we shall hope for the future.
Oil and such
So the news that oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is throwing in with those crazy environmentalists by building the worlds largest wind farm, with enough energy to power 1,000,000 homes. Yes, One Million Homes. (Link), thats a pretty good sounding chunk of renewable energy. At a 6 billion dollar price tag there is a chance that the deal could fall through, but the news that an oil tycoon is seeing the potential of renewable energy is great news indeed.
Mass Transit (and a wag of the finger to my state)
So, while CNN reports on the massive increases in the number of mass transit in other cities and states nationwide (link), in a straw poll placed in yesterdays primaries in Georgia, the expansion of our Mass Transit system (MARTA) was shot down. The vote was split deeply along party lines, from what I heard on the local news last night Republicans shot it down by a 55 to 45 percent margin, while the democrats voted in favor by 70 to 30 percent (note: more Republicans turned out that Democrats). It’s a travesty that the ninth largest state in the US has such a pathetic mass transit system. The good news from the vote is that actual percentage difference was much closer to 50/50 than when the straw poll had been set up several times prior, perhaps an official November poll question will yield different results.
Is it Possible to Transcend Partisanship
*I wrote this a few days ago, but published it as a page instead of a post**
Many of the literature put out by Emergent church figures calls for a transcendental approach to partisan politics, they call for a departure from the left and right (liberal and conservative for the brits) political spectrums to find a happy solid ground in the middle. This sounds like a good idea in theory, but is it really possible to play it out in practice.
The more time I spend thinking about this upcoming election season I realize that in all likelihood I’ll be voting primarily for democrats (actually it’s most likely solely for democrats). When talking to friends over the past few months I’ve always said that I want to be independant of party lines, and I would vote for either side depending on where they stood in relation to where my value system is. That, again, sounds like a good idea, but come November, if I were to take a picture of my Ballot would it tell an entirely different story?
The fact is, when it comes down to voting along the values/ideals that I hold the Democratic candidates are much closer to my heart. While I wholly abhor abortion, that issue is seemingly the only Republican ideal that I can agree with, other issues, like healthcare (where we need focus on prevention and universality), war, gun control (I support the Brady Laws), and immigration reform, I side with the left.
So how then can one claim to be free from partisanship when one normally (or in all cases) sides with one group over the other? I know that we don’t want a(nother) Religious Left or Religious Right movement, but should we call a spade a spade and admit that most of us in this Emergent/emerging movement are going to side with the Left? Or do we continue the rhetoric that makes us seem transcendent and better than we truly are?
Maybe it’s just me, and everyone else is really able to separate themselves from left or right. But I think if we are honest with ourselves and do a proper evaluation we’ll see that our hearts truly side with the Left.
Pushback. Critique. Agree. I’m curious to know what you think.