[extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at gmail.com
Tue Nov 9 19:07:06 UTC 2004


When we speak of California you are already speaking of around 13% of
the population of the country.  Not exactly a negligible out-of-touch
little sanctuary as nearly portrayed.

I do not understand how anyone with open eyes to the many errors and
horrors of the last four years attributable to Bush and his
administration could possibly vote for the man.   I think that is a
very fair question that has nothing in the least to do with "living in
a cultural bubble".   I don't see how being in one of the swing states
such as Ohio would make the decision to vote for a president with one
of the worse records in our history more rational.

I find that portraying those who don't understand what if any rational
decision making was behind this win as living in some out of touch
bubble is itself not in the least helpful to understanding and just
adds more polarization.

- samantha



On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 18:56:01 -0600, Greg Burch <gregburch at gregburch.net> wrote:
> I've kept my mouth shut here (but certainly not elsewhere -- on my blog, for instance) since the election.  I've seen that the Europeans and the Americans who voted for Bush need to vent: They're tired and scared.  But I can't go on without registering that things like this article are part of the problem.  It's hysterical nonsense from people who live entirely encased in a cultural bubble that includes zero contact with anyone with whom they disagree.  Frankly, all the preaching about tolerance and diversity from people who live in such bubbles seems ironic at least and outright hypocritical at worst.  How many times have I read and heard in the last few days that people in New York and San Francisco and Seattle and London and Brussels can't understand how America elected Bush?  They can't understand because they have no intercourse with the people who voted for Bush.  Their conception of huge swaths of American culture is a shallow caricature that would be funny if it wasn!
> 't so sad.
> 
> I'm an atheist.  I'm a libertarian.  I don't suffer from a lack of literacy or even education; I know that humans evolved over a period of billions of years -- imagine that!  I didn't have to vote for Bush because I live in the capital of Red State America, Houston, Texas, so I had the luxury of voting symbolically for the libertarians.  But if I'd lived in Florida or Ohio, I'd have voted for Bush.  My liberty to be irreligious and follow Enlightenment values has not been curtailed and, contrary to what one would think from reading the New York Times, the LA Times, watching all but one of the major American news networks or reading basically all of the press in Europe, my liberty to be irreligious is not in immediate danger.
> 
> GB
> http://gregburch.net/burchismo.html
>



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