Blogging Through the Obama Years

by Richard Miner

Description In his famous military-industrial complex speech President Eisenhower, arguably the 20th Century's foremost military leader, warned his fellow citizens as follows: "We must never let the weight of this combination [of military and industry] endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." -Pres. Eisenhower, 1961 Today we might add the global business-government complex to the military-industrial complex and come up with a fair statement of what both the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements seem to fear. Both would agree that as citizens we need to compel one or two or all of these overwhelming forces that are shaping our lives, to act responsibly, and both factions might go on to agree that in order to do so we need to become that "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" President Eisenhower urged us to become some 50 years ago. But, how do we become alert and knowledgeable when bombarded by endless warnings and attacked by rapid fire arguments based on facts (or factoids) or on lies (or (half-truths) or on misquotes (or context challenged quotes)? What we are almost forced to do is seek shelter in our favored mental enclaves where we are buttressed in what we already believe by the company of fellow believers. As the author blogged (from early 2007 to late 2012) on what he saw as critical political issues, he attempted to gather facts carefully and to adjust his perspective when necessary. Whether he succeeded at all in modifying his own beliefs over the course of the blogs is for the reader to decide. Modesty dictates the word 'modifying'; completely breaking out of his own ideological bunker would be way too much to ask. The experience of writing these blogs has caused the author to poke his head out of his bunker, though, long enough to look around at other ideas. By now he might even go so far as to say "look, folks, we come from so many backgrounds and we have such a variety of experiences that we should expect smooth sailing agreement to be a remarkable exception, certainly not the rule." Politics in our democracy is not an attempt to achieve anyone's version of ideological purity; politics is the art of reaching messy agreements despite the daunting headwinds of controversy. How can any one side expect what they would consider neat, tight policies from our representative government, if we truly intend to represent so many perspectives in forming those policies? The greatest political sin is making representative democracy seem simpler than it is. As long as arguments are backed by honest attempts to state and back opinions, those arguments deserve a place in our ongoing debate. But, the author firmly believes that when politicians, bloggers, commentators or media personalities resort to slogans, catch phrases, one-liners or tweets, we citizens should pay their appeals no heed. Just send them off to a football game where such calls to our loyalties alone are appropriate.