Month: January 2005

I wrote something over at John of Argghhh!!! (remember: one “r”, two “g”s and three “h”s) and then got trackback to the comment. Here is what I wrote:

These times your country are living in are perhaps too “interesting”, under the logic of that Chinese curse. One thing we up here have up on you in recent history is experience with division. The calls to “unity” remind me of the Quebec separatist era of 1965 to 1995 – which has largely and surprisingly dissipated, perhaps if only for a time.

The ideological divide is obvious to all. Yesterday, during NPR’s call-in after the inauguration one particular caller, phoning-in on the dedicated “Republican line”, was so full of anger and hate at his perception of the anger and hate of the Democrats/liberals it really got me to wondering. Up here, due to our looser and dynamic confederation, the provinces right now have greater autonomy than the feds impose overall control (this shifts decade to decade) compared to your states and feds. We do not now expect national “unity” anymore so much as a working peace. What makes that possible, however, is one province, Ontario with roughly 40% of the entire population which plays national trump card. You lack that fluke of history and also lack the Parliament. So the anger expressed in that 1-2% swing in the national vote becomes the main story as states have too little power to effectively form blocks on issues as might be expressed in a Parliamentary form of democracy. Gridlock.

There must be a better outcome than the triumph of 51% over 49%. It really can’t be enough to say the 49% are now wrong anymore than that other 49% was in 1992 when your Federal goverance was reversed and the then minority was subject to ridicule. I fear, however, if the attitude of that caller is indicative of the common mood. When asked what he would give to foster greater unity he said he would give “my value to the liberals as well as a place at my church” – of course only if they would sub-ordinate themselves. Little dignity and individual autonomy in that. How would a person who saw things in the 49% be the slightest bit attracted to that pew? The core of mutual disrespect is a bad situation.

So what to do? After the very close call of Quebec separatism in 1995, we worked towards a greater asymetrical arrangement where provinces got to express themselves more indiviually. But that donesn’t really appear possible for the US now. If I were a US liberal, I would focus on the local and the state level and forget for this term and likely the next the prospect of running Washington. My goal would be swinging states back and that takes time. Either that or creating enclaves much as the South and Prairie states have in the liberal eras – move to New York, Oregon.

Neither of those outcomes are, however, “unity”. Is the best you can expect is successive slim majorities one way or another?

My trackbacker at Random Fate, a blog I have not read before, then wrote this:

An observation from Canada

Alan, a Canadian, left an long, excellent comment to a post at Argghhh!, where John points to a discussion by Silfray Hraka on selective quotations. At the risk of falling prey to selectively quoting, here is the key point that I liked from the comment at Argghhh!:

There must be a better outcome than the triumph of 51% over 49%. It really can’t be enough to say the 49% are now wrong anymore than that other 49% was in 1992 when your Federal goverance was reversed and the then minority was subject to ridicule. I fear, however, if the attitude of that caller is indicative of the common mood. When asked what he would give to foster greater unity he said he would give “my value to the liberals as well as a place at my church” – of course only if they would sub-ordinate themselves. Little dignity and individual autonomy in that. How would a person who saw things in the 49% be the slightest bit attracted to that pew? The core of mutual disrespect is a bad situation.

In other words, if we refuse to respect those who don’t see the world the same as we do, how can expect things to be any different than they are now, with little discussion but instead opponents shouting past each other, accomplishing nothing but adding noise and anger?

Read the entire comment (it’s the first one after John’s post), but be sure to read the discussion that John pointed to first which is also well worth reading.

The internet is an interesting thing. What I wrote originally was a comment gone somewhat mad – I had originally thought I was going to post one sentence. But I like what I wrote and John doesn’t mind so I posted. What I really like about it all is that it is four degrees of separation between the article written in the Washington Monthly, to the post at Silfray Hraka, to the post at John’s, to my comment at John’s, to the post at Random Fate. Is that four degrees or five?

One thing we do not have in the internet is a means to track these connections other than the sometimes trackback with is linear rather than a net. It would be interesting to be able to have gathered organically the other comments which have spun off the original article in the Washington Monthly. If the original article could have unique tags ascribed to it by the author, then this would be possible but some sort of tag reader would have to be created that could display the hub article and all the related discussions down separate spokes. Could that be created?

…and am I really “left an long”?