Purple America

We are a couple of weeks past the election and it is time to take a closer look at how divided our country really is or when the truth is told, is not. There is no right wing conservative Christian mandate for our President to follow. It seems that the left leaning media and the Democratic National Committee have finally stolen a play out of the right’s playbook. I call it “scare the hell out of them.” It appears those with a liberal bias are starting on a fast track with this strategy. Tell America that this election; Presidential, House and Senate, has given the right wing political machine card blanche to force their agenda down every Americans throat, whether they agree with it or not. Hey it worked for the right. The common right wing rhetoric on radio talk shows before the election sounded a lot like, “I’m going to vote for the person the terrorists don’t want to win. You know the terrorists want John Kerry to win?” Or one of my favorites, “John Kerry is going to allow all those gay people to get married.” Well it sure did “get out” the republican vote. A local radio station in my area had a live remote on election Tuesday from a precinct where a 74 year-old woman was voting for the first time in her life. The radio station was running a contest for first time voters to win a limo ride to the polls on Election Day. I’m not sure if this woman voted for the President, but it is highly likely her being from the “greatest generation” and all. So how do the liberals scare up some votes for ’06 and ’08? They tell America all their civil liberties are soon to be taken away from them by the evil theocracy. Will it work as well for them as it did for their counterparts? I hope not. These tactics keep politics as usual. If the two parties just swap this strategy back and forth nothing will ever get accomplished in Washington.

Let me be clear, there is no mandate! How can I say that when the map is clear-cut red and blue? With the majority being “RED”? I stumbled onto this map while surfing the net. It is a much better view of our nation then the standard “red & blue” maps we are accustomed to seeing on news shows and in the publications we have been reading over the past couple of weeks. The nation is more a shade of purple then it is either red or either blue. There are two observations that I did not hear anyone in the media making concerning these maps. First, each of those squares is based on a population density. So even though it appears to be an overwhelming victory for those that attach themselves to the color red, the reality is that red square in the middle Nebraska that looks like such a huge area, has just as many people in it as one of those small blue areas in the north east corner of Illinois (Chicago). On top of that not everyone in those red precincts voted for Bush. Nor did everyone in the blue areas vote for Kerry. The country is purple. Yes, at this point there are only two sides to choose from, but the country isn’t as cut and dry divided, as either side would like us to believe. Second is that those maps only account for the Americans that voted on November 2nd, 2004. There is an estimated 295 million people living in the United States of America. When you subtract all those under the age of 18, you wind up with 221 million potential voters in our country. The total votes cast on Election Day where 115,809,878. This means the margin of victory is actually less than 4% of eligible voters in the United States. To say that the majority of America is solidly behind the President and his moral agenda is not true. President Bush was actually re-elected to office by little more than 25% of eligible voters across the country. Hardly a mandate.

“If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” I’ve heard this for the past 16 years of my eligible voting life. I'm not complaining about the outcome of the elcetion. I pretty much knew the American people would be screwed no matter who won the election. It's the spin people put on actually facts that makes me mad. Let's tell the truth on why only half of this country votes. Give me a candidate worth voting for and I will. Could that be the reason why only half the country votes? Not because they are apathetic or lazy, but because the candidates we are given to chose from are not acceptable choices. We heard from pundits about why the youth vote didn’t show up for this election. They are experts in politics and I am certainly not. I am an expert in dealing with young people and they are not. Students can smell a fake a mile a way. If you attempt to become a part of their world with outh being authentic you will fail. You couldn’t really call either of the candidates from this election “authentic”. For that matter is there anyone in Washington that is? And the youth of America knows this. That is why they do not vote.

As my friends and I talk, there is a sense that this country is headed for some type of revolution. Whether it comes to us through a political revolution, an economic one or societal one; it is coming. The choice we all need to make is which side of the revolution we want to be on. That is the beauty of the free will God gives us, we get to use it!