tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24777080.post116334194960484227..comments2023-05-01T03:24:29.064-07:00Comments on The Blog @ Araujo Arts: Weekend Wrap-up 11-12-2006John P. Araujohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01854443973281504313noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24777080.post-1163440680536526982006-11-13T09:58:00.000-08:002006-11-13T09:58:00.000-08:00John, here's my honest appraisal of the whole 'par...John, here's my honest appraisal of the whole 'party thing':<BR/><BR/>The democratic party is predicated in moving away from the status quo, while the republican party is predicated in preserving it.<BR/><BR/>When most people were in a position of suffering, they wanted social change. They wanted better working conditions, better pay, reliable and quality food and water, safe communities, social justice, etc, etc, etc.<BR/><BR/>Now that we are in such an affluent nation, the vast majority of people are content with the status quo, leaving the democratic party with only the most extreme forms of social change to glom onto.<BR/><BR/>Think of it. The last major social issue for the democratic party was the environment. The republicans saw the environmentalists as radicals. Now that we have so much social change in that area, it has become the status quo, stripping the democratic party of that issue. What are they left with? What social change can they pursue?<BR/><BR/>Abortion and homosexuality.<BR/><BR/>The democratic party is feeding on scraps of issues. Unhealthy scraps at that. If abortion and homosexuality became mainstream, the democratic party would be filled with people focused on even more extreme social change than that. Probably people after human cloning or lowering the age of consent for marriage (child molestation).<BR/><BR/>It is only when the status quo people mess up, as with the well-intentioned but mistaken war in Iraq, that the democrats have something real to fight against. Without that struggle, the democrats have nothing to rally them.<BR/><BR/>Ultimately, we are only democratic when we have something about the status quo that we are unhappy with. "Back when" everyone was unhappy. These days, far fewer are unhappy.<BR/><BR/>The republicans have the problem that sitting on a status quo tends to blind people as to what they actually have. The human brain is poor at detecting the qualities of a situation that doesn't change.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com