Joan Ryan on the two Americas
[For the record: I have an American flag hanging on the window of my apartment’s front door, and on another window in the same room. It is my flag, too!
Per the column… the truth is, that we don’t live on the same planet. There are two competing versions of “reality” and two competing value systems, and the other appears to have won, although its adherents don’t seem to have a solid grasp on what their candidate actually represents. –Thomas]
We barely recognize each other
- Joan Ryan
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Like others in the Bay Area, I was huddled with friends around the television set Tuesday night, my son pressing a blue-donkey or red-elephant sticker on each state as the returns rolled in. As we held out hope for Ohio, one friend related a story that, in retrospect, helped me understand Bush’s convincing victory as well as any I have heard.
A young man, my friend said, was walking door to door on her street a few weeks ago to raise money for the Kerry-Edwards ticket. When he knocked on the door of one house, the owner responded to the young man in a huff.
“I’m a Republican!'’ she said. “Didn’t you see my flag?'’
That, in the end, is what it boiled down to.
Somehow, as Bush and his party cut taxes to the rich, sent young Americans to their deaths in a war based on untruths (and managed with stunning incompetence), reneged on its financial commitment to education, and plunged the nation into crushing debt, they became symbols of morality and patriotism. They sold themselves as the party of God and country, offering comfort to people who wouldn’t need comforting if the Bush administration had not created the very problems for which it then offered spiritual refuge.
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