https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
There's no such thing as a perfect system but democracy is a brave attempt to make the best of a bad situation.
As my friend Sarge pointed out in a previous post we try to maintain a democratic system here at the Club which is why we do not generally discuss party politics.
In my opinion party politics are counterproductive to a proper democratic system but you have to make the best of what you have and so we agree to disagree without recourse to acrimonious debate.
I, for example, championed Joe Biden against the opinion of my wife's Democratic disagreement (since she still championed the hopeless cause of Hillary Clinton, who I regarded as an accident waiting to happen) but to be honest my vote for Joe was partly because of the impression I gathered from his talk with Jay Leno and how bad could a Corvette owner be anyway?
However my main argument for Joe was that his long and blameless record of public service plus Obama's choice of him as V.P. probably meant that he would be a wise and cunning strategist, which he apparently has proved by the state of the economy though I'm no authority on this.
Okay, to return to the original story, as mentioned above my wife is a dyed in the wool Democrat who will not readily accept anyone whose politics are different to hers.
She grew up in a setting of Jewish activists, her father was a proponent of civil liberties, he marched with Martin Luther King and so she is biased in no uncertain terms and frankly doesn't think much of my political opinions either. She is also a long time member of the Three Parks Democratic Club (whose logo she designed).
I have never supported any political party, I take after my father whose views on politics in general was unflattering to say the least and frankly I have more faith in the concept of a monarchy like Britain's than any other system although I keep that view private in general.
The title of this message board should be enough of a clue for the visitor, besides which I am 76 years old and a virtual dinosaur, so don't expect anything radical or enlightened.
I'm also tolerant of people's idiosyncracies which I find interesting because of my natural curiousity and so generally tend to make friends rather than enemies which is germane to the basis of this story, so to continue...
Once settled in VA and accepted by the local community, I began to understand the apparent dichotomy between public and privately expressed opinions, particularly those relating to the taboo areas which are largely inherited and thus entrenched but generally not recognized for the insidious influence they are.
So the same people that used the N epithet freely amongst themselves were not potential members of the KKK and indeed would often hold the apparent contradictory opinions of being fiercely loyal towards those N's they knew and respected yet apparently dismissive of those they did not.
I quickly learned to keep my opinions to myself until I understood the lie of the land and once I did, I found myself increasingly sympathetic towards people that my wife would tend to dismiss out of hand simply because they were Republicans and therefore beneath contempt, or so it might appear.
Mind you we're old enough to have been turned off by the antics of Nixon and Bush jr. so bear that in mind.
Also, to be fair, my wife is an RN whose job was to monitor the health of patients under home care and to ensure the care was being properly administered. So of course she encountered all sorts of people with views opposite to her own but that did not affect her professional opinion and she only expressed her anti Republican views to me.
Which, if you stop to think about it, is no more nor less than what I expressed above as regards how my neighbours presented one face to the public and another in private.
That's where the trouble starts because those who want to drive out all the past sins of the Confederacy, fail to take into account how entrenched those attitudes are.
So though they might pay lip service to the slogans of change that doesn't mean the message has been assimilated and some of the changes were too radical to be accepted, such as removing the statues of Confederates who, it should be remembered, were ancestors of some of the current population and how would you feel if your great grandfathers monument was destroyed?
I always thought that flying the Confederate flag was simply asking for trouble because its like waving red rags to a bull and its hard enough keeping the beast corralled as it is!
The proponents of change tried and are still trying to do too much too soon, in my opinion and the worst aspect of all is the so called 'Christian' fundamentalism.
I remember the impact that Billy Grahams 1954 Crusade had in England which is not a fertile soil for fanaticism and his successful worldwide crusades must have alerted many manipulative persons to the potential for abuse and misuse.
Religion truly is the opiate of the masses as some revolutionary once declared and the real problem our society and human civilisation faces is to find some way of teaching the susceptible 'worshippers' of whatever so called divinity they follow that its a lie, a fairy story, something perpetuated because of its potential to control the naiive.
If you want to pretend that Santa Claus exists I have no problem with this harmless myth and I have no problem with those who insist that there is a God whatever his or her name. What I do have a problem with is those that take advantage of that otherwise harmless belief.
I belonged to several churches myself but only as a member of their choir because I like to sing and thats all there was to it once I'd finally realised how much of the services was pure bullshit which anyone can easily discover for themselves if they are willing to do the research.
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