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One State, Two State -- Red State, Blue State
Submitted by amy on September 8, 2005 - 6:58am.
Red versus Blue. Those colors never used to matter, did they? That’s rhetorical, but I’ll answer it: they didn’t. They were shorthand, and they were temporary. Yes, they represented something, but it was understood that beyond this shorthand were whole ideologies, complexities, gray areas.
Enter the turmoil of 2000 and its stomach churning repetition in 2004. The Media—by which I primarily mean cable and network television--- latched onto the colors like they meant something. All of a sudden, you and I were playing for one team and the guy down the street was playing for the other. All of a sudden it was Homecoming and even the kids who ate lunch huddled alone in a corner were rooting for the football team, crying foul on every call against us, giving the old Ivy League cheer time after time when it was clear the home team was going to lose.
Now we are bombarded on a daily basis by the idea that who we voted is who we are; that right down to the particulars of our lifestyle we are entirely different from, and utterly superior to, that distant red-dyed "other." We take the media-assigned colors on as the colors of our team. Even in our voters’ pamphlets and on our ballots, we see the divisiveness game in play: Democratic candidates are always blue; Republican candidates are always red. People email BetterDonkey.org and ask us what the poop our problem is; why won’t we get with the program and put on the uniform of Blue?
Well. Guess what. This mentality is not helping. This mentality is leading people to comment that “Blue Staters” shouldn’t send donations to alleviate crises in “Red States.” This mentality is playing right into the hands of Karl Rove and all his minions. See, true liberal and conservative ideologies—as I’ve mentioned once before—are about different ways of solving the same problem. Liberals believe in collective responsibility for social welfare; Conservatives believe in individual responsibility for social welfare… but both believe in responsibility. Now at the hands of the neo-cons we find ourselves enduring the era of individual irresponsibility. The gutting of government. The last living funded mandate, demanding for you to believe that there’s not enough for everyone and the only solution is to claw your way to the top—commandments to love thy neighbor be damned—because if you don’t help yourself first some Caddy-driving welfare mother will be eating steak and laughing in your face.
Red State Blue State is the mentality of the permanent divide, when the truth is that we are One Nation. One. Color-coding us obscures the reality that we all want the best for our families, we all want to live out our dreams, we all want a future worth our work. This is not a future served by division-mongering liberals pledging allegiance to the non-existant ideology of "Blue," any more than it’s served by the organized decimation of our social welfare system. This is a future served by you and me getting off our asses, rolling up our sleeves, and reshaping government in the image of something greater than ourselves.
Resources for doing just that:
Progressive Majority Washington
Operation Democracy
and an organization you may have heard of called... BetterDonkey.org
Don't Give In to the “This Land was Made for Me, Not You” Game
Red versus Blue. Those colors never used to matter, did they? That’s rhetorical, but I’ll answer it: they didn’t. They were shorthand, and they were temporary. Yes, they represented something, but it was understood that beyond this shorthand were whole ideologies, complexities, gray areas.
Enter the turmoil of 2000 and its stomach churning repetition in 2004. The Media—by which I primarily mean cable and network television--- latched onto the colors like they meant something. All of a sudden, you and I were playing for one team and the guy down the street was playing for the other. All of a sudden it was Homecoming and even the kids who ate lunch huddled alone in a corner were rooting for the football team, crying foul on every call against us, giving the old Ivy League cheer time after time when it was clear the home team was going to lose.
Now we are bombarded on a daily basis by the idea that who we voted is who we are; that right down to the particulars of our lifestyle we are entirely different from, and utterly superior to, that distant red-dyed "other." We take the media-assigned colors on as the colors of our team. Even in our voters’ pamphlets and on our ballots, we see the divisiveness game in play: Democratic candidates are always blue; Republican candidates are always red. People email BetterDonkey.org and ask us what the poop our problem is; why won’t we get with the program and put on the uniform of Blue?
Well. Guess what. This mentality is not helping. This mentality is leading people to comment that “Blue Staters” shouldn’t send donations to alleviate crises in “Red States.” This mentality is playing right into the hands of Karl Rove and all his minions. See, true liberal and conservative ideologies—as I’ve mentioned once before—are about different ways of solving the same problem. Liberals believe in collective responsibility for social welfare; Conservatives believe in individual responsibility for social welfare… but both believe in responsibility. Now at the hands of the neo-cons we find ourselves enduring the era of individual irresponsibility. The gutting of government. The last living funded mandate, demanding for you to believe that there’s not enough for everyone and the only solution is to claw your way to the top—commandments to love thy neighbor be damned—because if you don’t help yourself first some Caddy-driving welfare mother will be eating steak and laughing in your face.
Red State Blue State is the mentality of the permanent divide, when the truth is that we are One Nation. One. Color-coding us obscures the reality that we all want the best for our families, we all want to live out our dreams, we all want a future worth our work. This is not a future served by division-mongering liberals pledging allegiance to the non-existant ideology of "Blue," any more than it’s served by the organized decimation of our social welfare system. This is a future served by you and me getting off our asses, rolling up our sleeves, and reshaping government in the image of something greater than ourselves.
Resources for doing just that:
Progressive Majority Washington
Operation Democracy
and an organization you may have heard of called... BetterDonkey.org
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