周二白天写了这个,结果喜儿又回来了。
现在两边已经阵线分明:支持喜儿的是老女拉啤(老人,女人,拉丁裔,白人蓝领)。支持马儿的是青男黑藤(青年,男人,黑人,白人白领)。从现在的票数看来,喜儿肯定超不过马儿了,但马儿也没法过半,最后只能是党机器划道了。当然,这种胶着情况下,两人合作一正一副的可能性就比较大了,讨价还价也只能这个出路了。 今天听NPR DR SHOW,有德,俄两州选民打电话进来,所目睹大批共和党选民投喜儿,看来林保的鼓动再起作用。本来这次R党分裂,局势极有利于D。结果自己这样,再让大象给倒乱一把,又给弄悬了。右派向来组织度,纪律性比左派强,这次又是如此了。一叹。
免费午餐是没有地,马儿还真得在斗争中成长了。
火红的太阳当头照
朝霞映满了半边天
迎面走来了人两个那
一个是老貌一个青年啊哈。
有人还记得这个段子吗?每个国家都有老年,有中年,有青年,有少年,每个不同的年龄段回有不同的生理特点,思想特点,也就会有不同的政治理念和诉求。今天就让我们摸摸不同年龄的美国在这次选举中会各自做什么样的选择。
1。 后冷战时代的长期和平繁荣对美国人,特别是中年以下心态的影响自从冷战结束以后,美国和全球同此凉热,持续和平繁荣。(说句题外话,中国为打破冷战平衡立了大功,一举帮助美国击败社会主义阵营,得到的和平红利也最多,成为冷战结束最大的赢家到也功有应得。)虽然有911,但对米国人生活的影响非常小,真正是马照跑,股照炒。
二十几年的和平和没有真正的敌国,使得一代新人在阶级斗争基本熄灭的环境下成长起来。这一代人的心态和前几代人有了重大区别。他们更乐观,更愿意于他人合作,既没有六七十年代的反叛和对立,也没有五十年代对共产共妻的恐惧。他们听到和看到是一次次的奇迹,曾经让父兄辈胆寒的苏联居然一枪不放轰然解体,两个穷小子撺八撺八,把自己和别人的家庭录像放一起居然就发了横财。真是没有做不到,只有想不到。
这样一代人和老汉,喜儿这一代艰苦奋斗,互相打斗出来的人生观是非常不同的。他们的自信心之强是前所未有的(现在中土年轻一辈也如此),他们自信的有没有道理且先放一边,但因为这个自信,他们对马儿的演讲之接受就是喜儿和老汉无法理解的,代沟太深了。在老一辈看来的大话,在他们看来蛮平常,而老一辈的党派之见和所谓党派原则,在他们看来只有分裂国家的副作用,没有把事干成的正作用。
因此这一辈人(现在四十以下)要比上一辈更可能超越党派来选举。面对这样的下一辈,共和党的老汉和民主党的喜儿,经验都只能当教训了。再加上美国本来就是崇尚年轻文化的国家,特别是在年轻人中间,老汉是没法和让年轻人看做自己一员的马儿竞争的。
这里想特别说下华裔支持喜儿多的原因之一是中美文化的区别,中国人的传统是服老,念旧,胡子越长越有道理,再加上克林顿时期的好日子,让人怀念,所以更多人支持喜儿,推崇老汉。但美国人尚新,忘旧,故此马儿更有吸引力。
2。老龄化社会对政治的影响
随着美国婴儿潮时代接近退休年龄,美国已经稳步走入老龄化社会。不同年龄的人对社会的要求会不一样,老龄化的社会自然会影响政治的走向。总的来说,老人的社会观念比较传统,保守,或者说比较右,但老人的经济观念往往却比较左。人在青年和中年时年富力强,能拼能赚,这个时候往往自信很强,对社会要求比较少,也是赋税比较重的时候,因此在经济上容易倾向于低赋税的右派经济。但老年时期对社会服务,特别是医疗服务的要求大大地增加了,而个人税赋又比较少了,因此会倾向于社会主义成分浓些的左派经济。
因此简单说老龄化的社会会使经济政策左转。这也是有利于民主党的,但并不一定有助于马儿,却更有助于喜儿或者老汉,人对和自己有近似性的政治人物的认同还是本能的。
今天是德州和俄州初选,喜儿能否守住阵地,在此一举。如果喜儿这次坚持住了,或者说大选时老汉能赢,说明的一个重要问题就是老龄社会的美国老人举足轻重。简单说,国家往哪里去,老人说了算,婴儿潮一代在退休以后依然会左右美国的政局,让美国也跟着他们退休。
日本已经老了,欧洲也老了,美国一直是个年轻国家,美国终于也随着婴儿潮时代一起老了吗?且让我们拭目以待
- posted on 03/07/2008
谢谢码这么多字。还真是摸到了大象的胳膊、鼻子什么的。
星期二的选举结果对奥巴马来说不算坏,但是他前面连赢十多场,把拥护他选民的心态给调高了,还是有些失落感。大家很容易就忘了,奥巴马一直都是在追赶前面领跑人,群众以为自己在领跑。
近距离看选举,每个参选人所代表的是一种社会势力。选举的过程也是各种势力对抗的过程。从月亮上往下看,都算自然法则的一部分。布什也是群众选出来的,媒体忽悠的也好,民心所向的也好,都是这个国家自己生出来的总统,是这个国家自己的宿命。
阳光的一代长大之后是否能够用阳光通领国家,还得看阳光是否能够融化传统的钢筋水泥。求变,是因为看到了危机,也是对现状不满的一种发泄。求不变,是一种惰性,也是一种茫然。美国可以选择不变,美国之外的世界一直在变,这里以不变应万变。也是一种舒适的自由落体运动,世上没有永动机。
今天最有意思的新闻是说,各国人民都很关注奥巴马的状况,在美国的印度人相比较起中国人来也很积极支持奥巴马。那么中国人是否也在关心这件事情呢,来自香港的消息说,香港的政治工作者正在积极研究奥巴马的竞选方式,希望学习他的经验,洋为中用,实践民主。我再次被中华民族的好学精神吓了一跳。 - Re: 瞎子摸象:从美国的变化摸马儿当选的可能性之三posted on 03/08/2008
苦瓜 wrote:
近距离看选举,每个参选人所代表的是一种社会势力。选举的过程也是各种势力对抗的过程。从月亮上往下看,都算自然法则的一部分。布什也是群众选出来的,媒体忽悠的也好,民心所向的也好,都是这个国家自己生出来的总统,是这个国家自己的宿命。
高兴看到理性回归的苦瓜:)) 奥巴马选不上,你也不会赌气搬家吧? - posted on 03/08/2008
1:
http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1sp.php3?tkey=1203550146
2:
http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1sp.php3?tkey=1204064507
这篇谈的蛮有道理的。中国人会节省,过日子精打细算,就想买一送一合算,其实,选的是喜儿的老公,而不是喜儿。
今天,msn interviewed Rolling Stone杂志,新的一期是Obama做封面,称为NewHope, 这个杂志很少这样做,只是在92年时为Bill Clinton 做了类似的封面。这是年轻人的希望和梦想。msn问为什麽不做Hillary, 回答是她这次质量之低,风度之差太让年轻的一代失望。 - posted on 03/08/2008
Obama is/was the leftist among the candidates, now he is a rock star. Wow.
The picture of him is obviously 'lighter', in contrast with the 'darker' one Clinton campaign put out and criticized. When the youth and the educated ones look at the candidates, they don't see the colors. Rolling stone being the right-most one or at least among the rightmost ones, however, sees the color. Or I should say, more aura than the color.
Rolling stone is "not just about music, but also the things and attitudes that the music embraces." By 1971 it had become the leading rock music and counterculture publication. Does a magazine devoted to music, liberal politics need to play the color card? Or is it sending another message? What is this subtitle supposed to mean: "Obama: the Machinery of Hope." ?
- posted on 03/08/2008
Rolling Stone's endorsement of Barack Obama:
A New Hope
JANN S. WENNER
The tides of history are rising higher and faster these days. Read them right and ride them, or be crushed. And then along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent — with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you — it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary.
I first learned of Barack Obama from a man who was at the highest level of George W. Bush's political organization through two presidential campaigns. He described the first-term senator from Illinois as "a walking hope machine" and told me that he would not work for any Republican candidate in 2008 if Obama was nominated. He challenged me to read Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father.
The book was a revelation. Here was a man whose honesty about himself and understanding of the human condition are both deep and compassionate. Born to a white mother and an African father, he was raised in multiracial Hawaii and for several years in Indonesia. He drifted through some druggy teenage years — no apologies! — before emerging as a star at Harvard Law School. He chose to work as a community organizer in the projects of Chicago rather than join the wealthy insider world of corporate law. And as a young adult, he searched, in the distant villages of Kenya, for the father and family he never knew.
As I read all this, so elegantly written, my mind kept rolling over: Might it be possible? Is there some fate by which we could have this man as president of the United States?
Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him "frankly, naive" for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign — one that whupped America's most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign — from Day One — than Senator Clinton. And at no point did he go negative with personal attacks or character assassination; as much as they might have been justified, they didn't even seem tempting to him.
Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.
All this was made clearer by the contrast with Hillary Clinton, a capable and personable senator who has run the kind of campaign that reminds us of what makes us so discouraged about our politics. Her campaign certainly proved her experience didn't count for much: She was a bad manager and a bad strategist who naturally and easily engaged in the politics of distraction, trivialization and personal attack. She never convinced us that her vote for the war in Iraq was anything other than a strategic political calculation that placed her presidential ambitions above the horrifying consequences of a war. Her calibrated course corrections over the past three years were painful. Like John Kerry — who also voted for the war while planning a presidential run — it helped cost her that goal.
Although Obama declined to attack her personally for her vote for the war in Iraq, he did call it, devastatingly enough, a clear demonstration of her so-called experience and "judgment." He has also spoken forcefully about the need to break the grip of lobbyists — at a time when Clinton is the largest recipient of drug-company donations of anyone in Congress. Clinton could not address this issue at all, and neither will John McCain, who is equally a player in Washington's lobbyist culture.
Obama also denounced the Republican campaign of fear. Early in the campaign, John Edwards took the lead, calling the War on Terror a campaign slogan, not a policy. Obama rejected the subtle imagery of false patriotism by not wearing a flag pin in his lapel, and he dismissed the broader notion that the Democratic Party had to find a way to buy into this entire load of fear-mongering War on Terror bullshit — to out-Republican the Republicans — and thus become, in his description of Hillary Clinton's macho posturing on foreign policy, little more than "Bush-Cheney lite."
The similarities between John Kennedy and Barack Obama come to mind easily: the youth, the magnetism, the natural grace, the eloquence, the wit, the intelligence, the hope of a new generation.
But it might be more to the point to view Obama as Lincolnesque in his own origins, his sobriety and what history now demands.
We have a deeply divided nation, driven apart by economic policies that have deliberately created the largest income disparities in our history, with stunning tax breaks for the wealthiest and subsidies for giant industries. The income of the average citizen is stagnant, and his quality of life continues to slowly erode from inflation.
We are embittered and hobbled by the unnecessary and failed war in Iraq. We have been worn down by long years of fear- and hate-filled political strategies, assaults on constitutional freedoms, and levels of greed and cynicism, that — once seen for what they are — no people of moral values or ethics can tolerate.
A new president must heal these divides, must at long last face the hypocrisy and inequity of unprecedented government handouts to oil giants, hedge-fund barons, agriculture combines and drug companies. At the same time, the new president must transform our lethal energy economy — replacing oil and coal and the ethanol fraud with green alternatives and strict rain-forest preservation and tough international standards — before the planet becomes inhospitable for most human life. Although Obama has been slow to address global warming, I feel confident that his intelligence and morality will lead him clearly on this issue.
We need to recover the spiritual and moral direction that should describe our country and ourselves. We see this in Obama, and we see the promise he represents to bring factions together, to achieve again the unity that drives great change and faces difficult, and inconvenient, truths and peril.
We need to send a message to ourselves and to the world that we truly do stand for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And in electing an African-American, we also profoundly renounce an ugliness and violence in our national character that have been further stoked by our president in these last eight years.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama challenges America to rise up, to do what so many of us long to do: to summon "the better angels of our nature."
- posted on 03/08/2008
老瓦 wrote:
高兴看到理性回归的苦瓜:)) 奥巴马选不上,你也不会赌气搬家吧?
你被蒙蔽了啊,老瓦。我写那些激动的文字的时候是理性的,是做选战宣传。现在是愤怒的,需要自我治疗。
本来是不关心政治的,关心之后才发现很多不知道的东西。比方说,政治圈里很多女人真是能干,但绝不是希拉里。听说政治是肮脏的,但近距离观察希拉里的这种肮脏,我有一种精神上被强奸的感觉。
奥巴马的一名顾问因为说希拉里是monster而辞职。网友问:为什么一个人必须辞职才能说蜘蛛是蜘蛛?我把这些代价看成是挑战现有政治丑恶一面所付出的代价,包括我所受的折磨。我真的不是那么在乎让奥巴马当总统,一个那么好的人,让人当总统也是害人家(这是我在文学城上看到的一句话)。让我倍受折磨的是希拉里耍流氓时的那种得意,本地方言叫做bully。她的行为,让我一下子回到成长的年代,走在上学的路上被小流氓调戏的那种痛苦轰然而至。我知道自己对付不了那些小流氓,以此类推,我担心人们善良的愿望对付不了希拉里。
千万别用政治就是流氓这句话来劝我。童年的我在新华书店看书,明知道小流氓把手伸进我的衣服口袋偷钱,我必须一动不动地等他把钱偷走,否则,出了书店的门,我会被尾随而遭致更大的灾难。在那种环境里挣扎着长大,就是因为周围的人、包括我的父母都认为流氓就是流氓,没有人向流氓宣战,没有人给孩子提供保护。离开那个地方几十年我一直没有再回去过,对那个地方我心里至今充满了恐惧。我是不是也让自己的孩子在另一种恐惧中长大?
今天早上一出门,就听到旧金山市长刚从德州回来,他去帮助希拉里助选了。这个油头粉面的投机分子,太混了。这位市长上任以来,除了十项全能的丑闻事件排着队地从办公室的门缝里往外流,就剩下政治上的钻营了。今天记者问他,旧金山市是奥巴马的大本营,你这举动是不是有点儿玄乎?他倒不避讳跟希拉里套近乎。他急需一个希拉里式的妻子,去年初,这位市长的竞选总指挥兼顾问因妻子与该市长有染而痛苦辞职。
中午,走在旧金山的街上,没有一丝云彩的天空在我眼里呈现出一片深黑色。
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