About a year ago, I was talking with one of my friends, and she told me of an experience her sister had with a famous TV personality. At that time, I said that I would be waiting for more evidence to come out - and it did.
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This week, if Bill Cosby's reputation isn't shot, it soon will be, given everything being published in the media. Oh, how the mighty hath fallen! When the talk about Cosby mentions him giving pills to women, and the President (in no uncertain terms) defines what rape is, I do not expect that this man will be able to rescue his reputation. But stranger things have happened before.
Years ago, 3 term Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC was convicted on drug charges, and after serving his time, was elected to a 4th term as mayor. It is amazing how many people with criminal records have been elected to public office - in the United States, and elsewhere. It's as if we expect our politicians to be criminals, and don't demand much more from them.
In many ways, we get what we deserve - we often vote out of tribal loyalty, and then complain when things don't change. I will never vote a straight party line ticket. But I will vote against a party line. Let's say that I am pro choice. In this case, I would not automatically rule out a GOP candidate who has shown himself to be pro-choice. And if I were pro-life, I'd consider a Democrat who is pro-life. In short, I don't let the two-party system define me, and I hope that it defines the choices of fewer people in the long run.
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Why is it that the two party has worked so well for so long, and then failed so miserably in recent times? In the past, both major parties had an equal balance between conservatives and liberals - in regard to social agenda. There was only a mild bias towards or against business in each party, and one that wouldn't stop people like Theodore Roosevelt from acting against the worst of business excesses. Today, as a result of Nixon's GOP "Southern Strategy", there are fewer social liberals in the GOP , as well as fewer social conservatives in the Democratic party. This has forced the Supreme Court to be the arbiter of major social decisions - much more so today, than in the past.
In a way, the Supreme Court's role as an arbiter is a good thing. The two political parties reflect two extremes in our society which can never be reconciled. One side believes that the social order must be maintained, no matter how unjust it is to any one individual or group. And the other side believes that the rights of the individual (when in doubt) trumps that of the larger community. This divide can be defined in other ways, such a slow/fast lever defining the rate of societal change. And it has been defined as a rural vs. urban divide. But with each of these definitions, very few things bind the two sides of society together.
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If we look at the Bush ("W") and Obama administrations, a casual observer can see the hypocrisy in both tribes. And it's hard to get anything useful done when the leadership of the country is delegitimized by calling the person a criminal (as int he case of Bush) or an illegal alien (as in the case of Obama). Both tribes are equally responsible for this problem, as they have made anyone who makes an overture to people in the opposing party into pariahs.
Yet, when we look back at Bush's presidency (I think he was a poor president), one finds someone more than willing to appease his party's base. Did he get much done? Not as much as it may seem, as we (luckily) had a Democratic congress to check and balance his political instincts. (And now, the GOP can check and balance Obama's excesses.) His legacy, as I see it, will be the unrestrained and unnuanced response to terrorism, and not bothering to finance his wars properly - as we did in all of our country's other wars. (Does anyone remember WW2 war bonds?) To me, it was the Bush administration who was responsible for the unchecked loss of domestic privacy (with unwarranted searches and seizures), the unchecked use of torture (waterboarding, etc.), and the 2008 financial system "almost" collapse. The public (and much of the GOP) is right to consider him a pariah....
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My question is: Who should be a pariah? Is it just any person who commits a heinous act for which he/she should be ostracized from polite society? Or, does tribal loyalty have a part in answering that question. I feel that Bush was a decent man who was playing in the wrong league - and allowed a lot of bad things to happen. Should he be a pariah? One thing I know, I will not be watching any reruns of Bill Cosby's shows anytime soon....
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