Straight On 'til Morning

If there's something to be said about political discourse in the United States, its this; people love their tribes. They love being in one camp vs. the other. Not all but some people are tied to the gut with love for their own teams and hard-boiled derision for the other. I always open my eyes wide with surprise whenever I hear a growl of "COME ON!!!" in local bars as their Quarterback races toward a touchdown. But as time wears on during my time living here, my surprise wanes.

On television, the big three news networks are built on similar principles. CNN taking a moderate approach much like its sister TIME Magazine, MSNBC taking on the left-liberal "watchdog" approach as the right Fox News bulldog mauls them with half-truths, distortions and their own version of political correctness; didn't you know that America is a conservative country and liberals are meant to govern in its shadow? Standing before a wall of books in a local Borders store, politics seems to boil down to partisan nit-picking, vituperative retort or self-congratulation with little to no regard for what ideas may benefit the country. Not once since I have been here have I heard a Fox News commentator commending a Democratic politician for a good idea, nor have I heard the same platitudes coming from an MSNBC journalist for a Republican.

I remember in high school during my International Studies class, we had a tireless and unabashed conservative as our teacher. Since I was entering my political education post-9/11, the Iraq War was about to begin. As a neo-realist, he believed the war was just and necessary. However, one remark he made remains as clear as day in my mind; I remember he said something along the lines of:

"The division between the two parties aren't so sharp that they'll fuck up the country. Sure, some people are dissatisfied with [former PM] Howard. But you'll find just as many people upset about Mark Latham if he was Prime Minister."

This viewpoint made the most sense - in a two party system, the prevailing party must capture the center to win government. President Obama promised tax cuts for 95% of Americans during his campaign and likewise Kevin Rudd promised to run as an "economic conservative." Even David Cameron, current UK Conservative Party leader has been described as a "moderate."

For coverage of news here, its a matter of holding up who is "more wrong" to intense scrutiny rather than asking what the facts are and analyzing what the intended and actual effects may be.

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Warning: Politicians Talking

Outside my apartment in Atlanta, GA, there's a small post with a fluorescent marker on the top. It reads "WARNING: UNDERGROUND FIBER OPTIC CABLE." I kind of laughed first off, considering that the only people afraid of Fiber Optic cables are Telstra and the Australian Federal Government. In the US, people lament that their Internet services are sub-standard at best, saying that Asian powers such as South Korea and Japan have got the right idea and are beating them over the heads with it. That may be true; however, if the US are blind, then Australia is blind, deaf, lame and crippled from the waist down when it comes to providing internet - wireless or otherwise - to its citizens.

As huge billboards proclaim that "4G is now in Atlanta" most of Australia can't even manage to lay claim to having workable 3G services in urban areas at even half-affordable prices. Working with the Australian Domain Name Administrator earlier this year, more commonly known as auDA, we had to facepalm ourselves almost constantly every time the Government announced a new "initiative" regarding communications and the internet. We recoiled at how embarrassing our "firm" was presiding over the fair use of domain names when next to no-one could put anything on their websites that people could access with their supposed "broadband" connections (which may or may not be capped. Why do we cap data transfer? Like the IT Crowd chides Jen for wondering why "the internet" feels so light; it doesn't weigh anything.)

First there was the whole content filtering debacle and now the government costs Australian business money by flaking on even the most obvious infrastructure upgrades (Fiber to the home, for instance) that will futureproof domestic communications, even while wireless services catch up to fill the gaps, eventually becoming the standard for rural and regional centers. If the world thought Australia was a joke before, we might as run around with clown masks on now.

If Conroy and co. ever get a clue, please let me know so I can call up Julia and congratulate them myself.
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And now it's raining and thundering so much here I can't remember a time when I saw such a thing.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

Taking it like a Champ

Talking to people in and around Atlanta, one dude who clearly wasn't a fan of Dubya did have an admiration for him insofar that (and I paraphrase)

"No matter what dumbass idea he* had, even if it was going to wreck the country, he always stuck to his guns. If he said he was going to do something, he did it."

As startling as that striking observation was, determination as a character trait isn't considered a flaw; on the contrary, its something that most would consider a strength. Although misplaced in so many ways the way George W. Bush used it during his term, President Obama isn't displaying the same kind of iron-willed fortitude as his predecessor, allowing the right-wing to scare out moderates by putting words in his mouth and the left to grow increasingly dissatisfied with his performance to date. So we have an appearance of indecision, sheepish policy statements and general confusion among some of those who are acting more hysterically than others.

Of course the standard "special interests rule this town" argument can still be applicable to the debate, but if the Obama administration wanted everyone to have affordable health insurance, he would finagle a way for everyone to get it, instead of having conservative pundits showing an uncharacteristic regard for the environment by lamenting at the amount of paper wasted every time they take out a copy of it to show how large and complicated it looks (In comparison to what, we shall never know.)

It seems that some of the respect for Obama would be restored for him if he did a little more of this instead of umming and ahhing.

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*Its also worth noting that the same friend I quoted also used "A load of Dubya Bush" as a synonym for "bullshit."

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http://twitter.com/crushtor