Mass-Distraction
It's amazing how the national issue-of-the-month, same-sex
marriage, seems to have gobbled up so much of our collective
attention lately. Trying to look at this as if from the future,
we believe the issue's history - what we're experiencing as
its news overload now - will ultimately mirror that of the
other civil rights issues which over time, we've come to see
as basic human rights issues- the abolition of slavery, voting
rights for women, racial integration, the passage of the Americans
with Disabilities Act-changes which our society has long since
accepted as part of what makes our country the richly diverse
and open society that it is. This month's issue, we think,
is one of those issues, where equal protection under the law
will in time be affirmed for yet another group of citizens,
however it unfolds. Ultimately we think, that will happen
both through the courts including the federal courts, and
at the state level, where it's historically and rightly
belonged.
Where it doesn't belong is where President Bush has chosen
to place it: front and center in the latest of his administration's
attempts to bulldoze the wall built by Thomas Jefferson between
Church and State in America. It's a wall that's protected
our freedoms well, and it's stood the test of time for good
reason. But once again -the forth time by our count- it's
under assault from the Bush Administration. In our view the
president's call for a constitutional amendment on same-sex
marriage isn't just an attempt to deny some Americans their
right to equal protection. It isn't just an attempt to shore
up his core support base by pandering to the religious right.
What it is though, is a direct attempt to legislate American
society based on someone's interpretation of religious scripture.
That is an extreme and historically unprecedented agenda,
and we see it as an attempt to enshrine religious-based intolerance
as one of our fundamental constitutional principles. In one
hyphenated word, we think it's un-American.
Since we don't think the President's un-American, for us it
raises what we think is a legitimate question: Why is our
country even having this dialogue? Sure, it would be good
to resolve the inequities for those relative few the issue
would affect. But it's not New Paltz mayor Jason West that
put the issue on the national radar; it's President Bush who
did. We think the obvious answer to the why question is that
it's all now part of a great big presidential election campaign.
And we think it's pretty disgraceful when issues that are
profoundly personal and historically religious -like marriage
- are being used as tools of mass-distraction to keep the
national dialogue from focusing on our country's real issues
and how we're handling them. We do think that's what's going
on, and we expect to see plenty more of it between now and
November.
The real issues are the same as they've almost always been:
national security, the country's economic performance, foreign
policy and global stability, public health and education,
the environment, personal and civil rights, and the government's
own agenda which is to say, whose interests it's working most
effectively for. We think the Bush administration has a record
on most of these issues that's going to be difficult to defend
convincingly, especially with gas prices rising and four million
jobs lost or exported. That's why we're expecting that distraction
and misdirection will occupy an increasing larger share of
the national dialogue as we move toward November's election.
It's hard to know what forms it'll take, though anything that's
emotionally charged, that exacerbates cultural differences
or pulls out deep seated antagonisms is likely to play prominently.
With tons of soft money available for TV commercials, we should
expect the worst. And it's started already, with the president's
media team having laid claim to images of 9-11 for the reelection
campaign, over the protests of the victim's families.
Of the distractions available, the big gun to pull of course,
is war, but we don't think that's likely to happen before
the election. Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
are all too smart to get stuck answering questions about Wagging
The Dog. And the fact is that the threat of domestic terrorism
seems to have a similar net impact; nearly as effective as
a war in bringing people together around the commander-in-chief.
Post 9-11, fear's what's been selling. And the harder it's
sold, the more we're likely to buy and the less we're likely
to ask the price.
We have been paying a price in this country to protect ourselves
from the threats of terrorism that we're justifiably afraid
of. And the cost has been very high in terms of our individual
and civil liberties and the constitutional protections which
have been our birthright as Americans. The best protection
we have for those rights is each other: people paying attention
to what's happening, and taking some personal responsibility
for the way things work out. As this national election
season starts in earnest, we hope most everyone will be engaging
what's said with some good critical thinking about what's
important and what's not, and an eye towards sifting what's
substantive from what's just distraction.
