Anita and I found ourselves behind a dilapidated old blue Chevy van on the way home from Target yesterday. The vehicle, driven by a middle-aged, sullen-looking white dude with a scruffy beard, was adorned with three bumper stickers that we found interesting: “Pray/Vote/Pray,” “Romney/Ryan 2012” and “I Support Stem Cell Research.”
I found these expressions of opinion a little contradictory. I told Anita that advocates for science aren’t known for sitting in church pews and chanting ineffective incantations to unseen, otherworldly deities. She responded that there are a lot of doctors and scientists who embrace religion, who compartmentalize or see no contradiction or are fine with the incongruity.
When Robotron Romney was Governor of Massachusetts in 2005, he vetoed a bill that would have expanded embryonic stem cell research. The flip-flopping equivocator extraordinaire is on record as supporting using adult stem cells and leftover frozen embryos from fertility clinics for research but opposing therapeutic cloning (where scientists create a cloned embryo to harvest stem cells and treat or cure diseases). And Congressman Paul “Eddie Munster” Ryan voted against stem cell research bills in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Crabby Bearded Guy probably wasn’t thinking of test tubes and microscopes when he slapped the Romney/Ryan sticker on his automobile’s rear.
This brief encounter in south Lansing instigated a conversation in which we pinpointed one of the biggest problems facing the United States today: too many people only care about themselves and their loved ones. The sense of community, the idea of a greater good, of thinking about our neighbors and even the plight of those we don’t know when making our electoral choices, seem out of fashion.
We’ve both heard of folks who unabashedly – even rabidly – support out-of-touch conservatives who disparage science and worship He Who Floats on Clouds and Awards Touchdowns and Emmys until someone they know and/or love suffers a spinal cord injury, develops diabetes, is diagnosed with heart disease or exhibits the telltale signs of Alzheimer’s. Then suddenly they revisit their position on science vs. prayer, take a second look, and decide that prayer alone might not work for everybody after all.
We’ve both met people who insist they know what’s best for everyone based only on what’s best for them – and don’t always relent, repent or concede when confronted with new developments and additional information. And this self-centered short-sightedness accompanies them into the voting booth like a young child or a persistent cough.
Crabby Bearded Guy might be one of the most flexible, complex or progressive fellows around. Maybe different people affixed the stickers, maybe they were on it when he bought it, or maybe it wasn’t even his van. We’ll never know.
We’ll also never know if he tried to take any of ‘em off. He might have. It is difficult to remove bumper stickers but it’s not impossible. And it can be difficult to broaden our perspectives, to look beyond our families to the larger community, to what’s best for the nation, to what furthers humankind. But that isn’t impossible either.
Sources: Associated Press, votesmart.org, U.S. News & World Report.
I'm driving home from school when the radio talk
turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit
the here and now of the freeway at rush hour,
travel back into the past, where my mother is reading
to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs
and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte
has died, my mother is crying again, and we're laughing
at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math,
how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief
multiplies the one preceding it, how the author tried
seventeen times to record the words She died alone without crying, seventeen takes and a short walk during
which he called himself ridiculous, a grown man crying
for a spider he'd spun out of the silk thread of invention -
wondrous how those words would come back and make
him cry, and, yes, wondrous to hear my mother's voice
ten years after the day she died - the catch, the rasp,
the gathering up before she could say to us, I'm OK.
It’s funny how one’s preconceived opinions and beliefs dictate reality.
Take last night’s presidential debate at the University of Denver. The talking heads are all saying the pumped-up Romney emerged victorious. Fans of the POTUS are saying his indistinct performance is all part of his secret plan to pounce when the time is right, that he skillfully goaded Robotron into giving him the outrageous sound bites he needs for his upcoming media buys. People are claiming that Romney lied through his pearly whites and that Obama appeared appropriately reserved and presidential. The only thing about which there seems to be universal agreement is that doddering debate moderator Jim Lehrer should have been there but clearly wasn’t.
At first I wasn’t even going to watch. Someone had made the point that few minds would be changed by the dog and pony show and that the candidates never respond to the questions they’re asked anyway. But my wife made the good point that voter turnout could be impacted by the guys' performances, that their supporters could either be fired up or devastated by the way their candidate handled himself. So I poured a fishbowl-sized glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, grabbed a slice of pizza and settled in to watch my choice – the incumbent, in case you don’t know – mop up the stage with his gaffe-prone, disingenuous challenger.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Watching this production, which focused on domestic issues, proved to be a painful way to spend 90 minutes. The president opened with his take on our situation:
“Four years ago we went through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of jobs were lost. The auto industry was on the brink of collapse. The financial system had frozen up. And because of the resilience and the determination of the American people, we've begun to fight our way back. Over the last 30 months, we've seen five million jobs in the private sector created. The auto industry has come roaring back and housing has begun to rise.”
I immediately began wondering just how a financial system can “freeze up,” where and how high housing had risen and why, if the American people are so resilient and determined, we still have so many unmet challenges.
The next thing I knew, Robotron was talking about his view, which was that everything will get infinitely better if we just become energy independent (at which point we’ll gain four million jobs), open up trade in Latin America, crack down on China when they cheat (he didn’t say on what), improve schools (he didn’t say how), balance the budget and champion small business. (We have to champion small business, whatever that means, because according to him, new business startups are at a 30-year low.) He insisted that we must abandon Obama’s commitment to Big, “Trickle Down” Government – with its increased spending, taxing and regulating – if we ever want the sun to rise and the birds to sing again.
I waited for Obama to come out swinging at this point, to really let loose with his superior oratorical skills, to ramp up his energy level and take his smarmy opponent to the woodshed. He chose, however, to maintain his lackluster demeanor and try to curry favor with his enemy, claiming that, “On energy, Governor Romney and I agree that we've got to boost American energy production” and “Governor Romney and I share a deep interest in encouraging small-business growth,” etc. Way to debate like a boss, Barack.
Robotron declared that he had no intention to raise taxes on middle-income families. He promised, in fact, to lower them. He insisted that he wouldn't reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans and that his opponent’s plan to increase the tax rate on successful small businesses from 35 percent to 40 percent would, according to the surely-impartial National Federation of Independent Businesses, cost 700,000 jobs. (He didn’t say how, why or where.)
POTUS pointed out that Robotron was making the same sales pitch that was made in 2001 and 2003, when we ended up with the slowest job growth in 50 years. “We ended up moving from surplus to deficits,” Obama said, “and it all culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
Romney claimed that 32 million Americans were on food stamps when Obama took office and now 47 million require assistance. He announced his intention to kill Big Bird and his buddies by stopping the subsidy to PBS and he worked in the obligatory reference to Our Heavenly Father, saying, “I believe we must maintain our commitment to religious tolerance and freedom in this country…we are endowed by our Creator with the right to pursue happiness as we choose.” I should have pursued happiness by turning off the television at this point but I didn’t.
Now that's clean!
When Robotron declared, “And by the way, I like coal. I'm going to make sure we continue to burn clean coal,” my asthmatic wife and son cheered because they were so happy to learn that there is such a thing as clean coal. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that “clean coal” is in the same category as “frugal spendthrift” and “chaste whore.”
Obama and Romney covered or referenced the Commission on Presidential Debates, Simpson-Bowles (a proposal to slash the federal deficit and lower tax rates), Big Oil and green energy, Solyndra (a California-based solar energy company that had received government loans but ended up filing for bankruptcy and laying off employees), Obamacare, Medicaid and Medicare, shipping jobs overseas, Obama’s dead grandmother and entitlements, Dodd-Frank (a financial regulation/Wall Street reform proposal signed into law by Obama in 2010) and even Osama bin Laden. The uninspiring, detail-rich conversation spurred one of my Facebook pals to post at one point, “Geez, guys! Less wonk, more vision!”
At the end, POTUS even thanked Governor Romney for a terrific debate. Talk about a shellacking!
The next campaign debate will take place on October 11, when Vice President Joe Biden and Wisconsin Congressman Eddie Munster brawl and bicker in Danville, Kentucky. I’d watch it but that’s when I’m scheduled to count how many blades of grass are in my backyard.
When Robotron Romney was Governor of Massachusetts in 2005, he vetoed a bill that would have expanded embryonic stem cell research. The flip-flopping equivocator extraordinaire is on record as supporting using adult stem cells and leftover frozen embryos from fertility clinics for research but opposing therapeutic cloning (where scientists create a cloned embryo to harvest stem cells and treat or cure diseases). And Congressman Paul “Eddie Munster” Ryan voted against stem cell research bills in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
We’ve both met people who insist they know what’s best for everyone based only on what’s best for them – and don’t always relent, repent or concede when confronted with new developments and additional information. And this self-centered short-sightedness accompanies them into the voting booth like a young child or a persistent cough.
