A very alarming characteristic of our student body has surfaced since the Nov. 2 elections. In numerous conversations and classes, I have heard, time and again, that voting for George W. Bush was the mistake of a fool, that those who voted for him were either tricked by a masterful campaign of lies, or hold no real understanding of what is “good” for our country (ignoring the highly subjective nature of that word). If, as a progressive community with access to amazing educational resources, we are willing to settle for such a superficial explanation of the factors that placed George W. Bush in the White House for a second term, it might be time to question weather our reputation as a politically conscious institution is still deserved.
In a wespeak from last Friday, Max Greene gave a striking example of this trend when he declared that voting for George W. Bush “just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever”. Max would have us believe that “Billionaires and Intolerance won this election and unless you side with one of them, you were duped.”
Not only is that patently false, but it reflects a disturbing misunderstanding of this nation’s character. These statements are intellectually lazy, and they suggest a thinly veiled contempt for 60 million people. Many of us would like to dismiss Bush supporters as ignorant, bible-thumping jingoists with no substantive understanding of the issues our nation faces. But that is not the case. I was born and raised in Arizona, and I know plenty of good, smart people, neither rich nor racist, who voted Republican.
I believe that our generation has an enormous task before it. No doubt, this election represented a colossal step backwards for many of the causes we fight for on this campus. The Bush administration stands on the wrong side of gay marriage and stem cell research, and the idea that our foreign policy might continue to be one of unilateral pre-emption is alarming, to say the least.
If we are serious about reversing the damage this president has done, our first order of business must be a comprehensive understanding as to why his message was the more appealing one. You can say it was “moral values” or Dick Cheney’s scare tactics, but, in the end, those excuses will only get you so far.
Four years from now, we are going to repeat this cycle all over again. If we hope to win that election and reverse some of the damage done, we are going to have to persuade a good portion of those 60 million to vote differently. That will never happen if we continue to question their intelligence and ability to see what we see.
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