[Vision2020] Mandate shmandate

[Joan Opyr]

Dan writes:

"Look at it another way, Carl.  I don't remember what the score was at
the last superbowl, But I know the Patriots won.  Nor do I remember the
scores of any of the games of the world series, but I do know the Red
Sox won . . . A win is a win."


Here's the problem with your analogy Dan: when the Patriots win, Green Bay fans like myself are not obliged to take off our cheese hats and step in line behind a "Patriot Mandate."  Sports wins and political wins are not the same thing.  I can live with the Patriots as Superbowl champs; it has no effect on my daily life.  I cannot live with Mr. Bush's plans to privatize part of Social Security; I can't live with his poor planning and execution of the war in Iraq; I can't live with his erosion of the wall between church and state, his tax cuts for the wealthy, his abstinence-only sex education, his radical judicial nominees, his gay-bashing, Jerry Falwell-pleasing social policies, or with the massive federal budget deficit that my children's children will be struggling to pay off in twenty and thirty and forty years time.

A win is a win in football or baseball, but winning in politics by .8% means that you need to compromise with the 56 million who think your agenda is basically a load of codswollop.  If I don't want to look at the stinkin' Patriots, I can switch off my TV set and pretend I'm eating cheddar with the good guys in Wisconsin.  If I don't like what Mr. Bush has planned for my country and my future, then I have to fight him as best I can by joining forces with that half of the country who did not vote for him.  I have to remind him every minute of every day what Woody Guthrie sang not so long ago:

This land is my land,
This land is your land,
>From California to the New York Island.
>From the Redwood forests
To the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Come on, Dan -- sing it with me!   

Of course, when I was a kid on the school bus, we used to sing: "This land is my land, it is not your land.  I've got a shotgun, and you ain't got one.  If you don't get off, I'll blow your head off.  This land was made for me not you."  Say, do you think George W. and I rode the same bus??

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment      Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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