"Voting and the Plague of Memory"

[Dale]

My newspaper column for this week...

http://mountaineagle.com/view/full_st...

[Carol]

Hear! Hear! My sentiments exactly.

[Lynn]

Excellent, Dale!

[Sherry, Doyenne]

So very true!!!!

[Dale]

Thanks for the encouraging words, folks! BTW, a friend and I do a political podcast called "Blue in Dixie." You can download it free from iTunes, or listen at this link: http://www.walkerweb.net/new/index.ph...

[Ann D]

Thanks for calling it like it is, Dale. I couldn't agree with you more.

[Sara]

Thanks, Dale--I'm on tenterhooks this morning--hopeful and inspired by the final speech in Des Moines, but still . . . I needed your reminder that this is crucial. And possible!

[Carol]

It is what it is. We can have 4 years of sanity or 4 years of insanity.

[Sherry, Doyenne]

The trouble is, I'm afraid, it won't be just four years of insanity. It will put into place years of decline. On a book note, I liked Cloud Atlas so much and talked about it so much that Tom is reading it. He just finished the futuristic bit when corporations run the earth. Tom said he thought that part was brilliant and he was afraid that if Romney won and more folks like him, that's what it would turn into.

[Dale]

Sherry: I haven't started "Cloud Atlas," but the novel I just finished--"The Water Thief"--is set in a future dystopia where corporations run the earth. Throw in the world of "Hunger Games," and I'd say the fiction-writing Zeitgeist is trying to tell us something.

[Sara]

Exactly, Sherry. I'm listening to Clare Danes read The Handmaid's Tale--at least 20 years after I read it when it first came out--and the amazing thing is that Atwood was even more prescient than I first thought. Brilliant and scary.

[Tiffany]

do i have to choose between these two candidates?

[Dale]

Sara: Amen to "Handmaid's Tale," and I can imagine how well Danes reads it. Come to think of it, Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go" had a dystopian theme. Also Lois Lowry's YA novel "The Giver," that blew me away. I just saw that Lowry's got a new novel out, and it's a continuation of the theme. Dark, dark. And prescient.

[Danielle]

So glad to be reading your article the day after the election, so that I can just enjoy your points without feeling growing panic in my gut as I contemplate other outcomes. Beautifully written piece. Thanks.

[Sue]

I second Danielle'e comment. You said it all so well Dale. Funny how we're supposed to pretend that the world started anew Jan 20, 2009 instead of on the slippery slope begun 8 years earlier.

[Featherbooks]

Thoughtful, smart piece of writing. Thank you.

[Dale]

Thanks, Sue, Featherbooks, & Danielle. I feel a huge relief after the election. I get angry when I start remembering GWB's outrageous abuses. When he was pushing the Patriot Act through and aides told him it might be unconstitutional, he shouted at them, "The Constitution is just a g**damned piece of paper!" but when a black president took office, the GOP turned into Constitutional originalists overnight. I don't think the damage from those years will be repaired in my lifetime.

[Sue]

I agree with you Dale.The effects of Bush's 8 years will be with us for years in recovery from wars, soldiers with broken or lost lives, this country's infrastructure allowed to fall apart, while the band played on.

[Jane]

Dale,
I am a little late commenting but I very much appreciate your column. A question I keep asking that is never answered is "How can you start two wars, cut taxes, and expect not to go into debt?" During the Eisenhower years, the tax rates were much higher because the country was busy paying off the debt of WWII.