So 'hopeful' yet 'cynic' wnats to know how to 'define low'; as in how 'low' can we go?

Well in this neck-of-the-woods, low means...
Record low voter turnout

Which is pretty low... I suppose. Depending on whether one is 'hopeful' or 'cynic'al that is. :smile:

On 2001-11-06 21:18, Marc Lamb wrote:
So 'hopeful' yet 'cynic' wnats to know how to 'define low'; as in how 'low' can we go?

Well in this neck-of-the-woods, low means...
Record low voter turnout

Which is pretty low... I suppose. Depending on whether one is 'hopeful' or 'cynic'al that is. :smile:

Always both, Marc, always both! :smile:

I ask because I think we use a self-deceiving definition of 'low turnout' in our elections, especially the Federal and State ones, but probably the local ones as well.

In any electorate at any level, there are going to be registered voters who just aren't going to vote no matter what. It could be Captain Good vs. Dr. Evil, and they'd not show up at the polls.

Some are too lazy, some won't even have noticed that there is an election, and some are still hoping that Calvin Coolidge will run again. Some will be motorvotor registrants, the vast majority of whom didn't show up at election time.

So realistically, you can disregard a good chunk of the registered voters. A better definition would be: what percentage of the people who voted in a given regular election last time showed up this time?

Thus, if 25% of the registered voters showed up for the mayoral race the last three times, then a 30% turnout is 'heavy turnout' by a more reasonable definition. It means more people than usual cared for some reason.
That 25 to 30% probably is a much bigger percentage of the voters who might ever show up in the real world, anyway.

In the last several presidential elections, people have complained about low turnout, but it's the same people each election turning out, and the same one's not turning out, so why do we keep complaining that Mr. Blank, who hasn't voted since 1976, didn't vote this year? Why would we expect him to vote this year?

I wonder what percentage of the total voting rolls are motorvotor registrants?

a 4T moment

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1107/p15s1-ussc.html

I'll confess, the whole 'motorvoter' thing really bothered me for a while (a liberal push to get those hands in my wallet).

But, quite frankly, I think dead folks in Chicago show up more than these folks on election day. Inspiration... now that's the key, the key to unlock the door, the door to a more 'hopeful' world in a 'cynic'al culture.

IMHO. :smile:

"With a surprising small 34.21 percent of registered voters turning out for Tuesday's general election in....."

Times Independent...Southeastern Utah

We usually turn out in the 57% and above ..Politics are one of the only activities going this time of year in small towns.

Leadership and economic growth were the issues.....and taking care of the elderly.

Baby Boomers took both City
Council seats and Mayor. First time we've had a Boomer as Mayor.

On 2001-11-07 21:08, Marc Lamb wrote:
I'll confess, the whole 'motorvoter' thing really bothered me for a while (a liberal push to get those hands in my wallet).

But, quite frankly, I think dead folks in Chicago show up more than these folks on election day. Inspiration... now that's the key, the key to unlock the door, the door to a more 'hopeful' world in a 'cynic'al culture.

IMHO. :smile:

Exactly my point, about the turnout. The people who want to vote were already voting, but motorvotor had people registered who were never going to vote anyway. I don't think our electoral turnout is actually all that low, compared to a realistic assessment of the potential voting pool.

Well, these certainly look 4T-ish to me:

http://www.masslive.com/newsflash/in...ash-washington

and this little gem:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/2001...edition_1.html

Just a personal observation....We went to the area of our community where motor voter has increased the voter registration (small town, very easy to do)...had our candidates go door to door..hand out literature...and on election day posted signs saying "remember to vote today", and guess what? Increase in turn-out of course. Good ole grass roots politics.

On 2001-11-08 22:24, cbailey wrote:
Just a personal observation....We went to the area of our community where motor voter has increased the voter registration (small town, very easy to do)...had our candidates go door to door..hand out literature...and on election day posted signs saying "remember to vote today", and guess what? Increase in turn-out of course. Good ole grass roots politics.

Of course. One of the reasons that the core constituencies, especially on the social issues, for each party are so influential is that they provide a big chunk of the people willing to knock on doors, hand our fliers, drive people to the polls, etc.

One of my students just sent me this link re:
Network decisions not to air GW's address live during prime time.

3T?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kevin1952 on 2001-11-09 05:58 ]</font>

On 2001-11-09 05:58, Kevin1952 wrote:
One of my students just sent me this link re:
Network decisions not to air GW's address live during prime time.

3T?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kevin1952 on 2001-11-09 05:58 ]</font>

I have to say that I was surprised that only ABC carried this in my area. I wonder if it was because Bush was speaking to a live audience, which made it seem more like a political rally. Had he been speaking from the Oval Office, maybe things would have been different.

(I watched Survivor, by the way)

Kiff '61

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1109-06.htm

<font color="blue">Shifted Personal Priorities Create National Identity Crisis
by Jonathon Fuqua

FOR MANY of us, a vague dissatisfaction separate from terrorism or grief has settled in.
Without a doubt, most Americans are still recovering from the concussive events that have taken place since the morning of Sept. 11.

Nevertheless, facets of our troubled thoughts seem a separate issue. Like branches on the same evolutionary tree, they're different beasts that share a similar ancestry.

With all that has happened, many of us have sought to strip away the unnecessary layers of our lives in a search for the essential. Somewhere, beneath the padding and the artifice, is the person whom we wish to be, the one who finds contentment in the smaller proceedings of existence.

However, that search somehow seems in direct opposition to our government's persistent pleas for us to keep shopping so as to prevent terrorist acts from altering our lifestyle. The truth is, in many ways we want to change. For most of us, Sept. 11 was the biggest shared tragedy we've ever experienced. Why shouldn't it awaken us to wrong-headed tenets we held as truth before?

No offense to our sagging economy, but before our collective loss, many of us worked hard at our jobs and spent wildly outside of them, convinced, somehow, that the purchase of fancy objects would equate to happiness. This, we have learned, is not necessarily so. Consumption can augment but does not create happiness. Happiness comes from elsewhere.

Before, we sought to buy houses and cars loaded with amenities, small fortresses that enabled us to ignore the outside world. We believed, consciously or unconsciously, that every man, or at least every family, was an island. Our islands now brush against the shore.

More than disposable wealth, we now seek our own versions of spiritual contentedness, and that has little to do with spending and everything to do with the interactions we share daily, the people we meet and the communities in which we live and travel.

In truth, after what has occurred, we would like everyone we interact with to be more humane and decent, more giving and polite. But in cities, kids continue to kill one another while the cashier at your local gas station still doesn't look at you when he slides your change through the slot in the scratched bullet-proof barrier.

Without a doubt, America is worth defending. It is an exhilarating, beautiful country stocked with similar citizens. But it is also hard to deny that, at least in some quarters, the dream has gotten away from us.

Maybe when businesses dismissed lifetime employees to increase profit, we became a country of cynics. Maybe an innumerable combination of events altered our way of thinking. No matter; at some point a few decades back, we began to care less about our neighbors and whether they thought us rude or ruthless or arrogant.

Therefore, we are treated as we treat others, and a few mutually horrific events can't wash that away. We have lived lives insulated from others by cushy objects. We have often chosen material goods over daily experience, cynicism over hope. These are hard things to defend.

So a new and distinct sadness gnaws at us even as we work to control our apprehensions. When the government urges Americans to maintain our lifestyles, we hesitate. We aren't exactly sure that we should. Maybe a fragment of our new sadness extends from the fact that as the events of Sept. 11 grow more distant, people are falling into old patterns, and those don't feel right anymore.

In fact, maybe we are a country that should seek a little change. </font>

On 2001-11-09 07:02, Kiff '61 wrote:

On 2001-11-09 05:58, Kevin1952 wrote:
One of my students just sent me this link re:
Network decisions not to air GW's address live during prime time.

3T?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kevin1952 on 2001-11-09 05:58 ]</font>

I have to say that I was surprised that only ABC carried this in my area. I wonder if it was because Bush was speaking to a live audience, which made it seem more like a political rally. Had he been speaking from the Oval Office, maybe things would have been different.

(I watched Survivor, by the way)

Kiff '61

I just cruised over to this site to post the same thing from an article:

"But not all the major networks carried the president's speech. While ABC, parent company of ABCNEWS.com, joined CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNBC in airing his remarks, CBS and NBC decided not to interrupt their sweeps-week programming.

CBS aired an episode of Survivor , while NBC aired Friends ."

Yes, this is not 4T behavior, is it?

Madscientist...thank you very much for your posting of the Jonathon Fuqua article. He sums up very well the dissonance that I feel in myself between whatever the new way of doing things is or may become, and the gravitational pull towards the pre-September 11 life that was the dominant lifeview which we associated with a late Third turning.
I feel a desire to do things that have more significance than merely being an economic stimulus for the local or national retail sector. Yet we are encouraged to buy, to go out to dine, to get on with our lives.
Peggy Noonan, in her article for Nov. 9, compares this time we're in now to the "Phony War" 1939-40, in which the British knew mentally that they were now in a war, but there was no physical reality to it just yet. This, of course, changed in May 1940 when Hitler attacked France, but until then it seemed that everything was as it had been before Sept. 1939.
There's a dissonance now between unraveling values at large in society and the fourth turning attitudes which many of us are aware are going to be needed for our survival. I've been wishing that there was something like the Home Guard for older people like me to be a part of so that I could at least go to a meeting once a week to plan disaster preparedness. I think Bush mentioned an increase in Civil Defense last night in his speech but it doesn't seem to have gotten much media attention.

Bush supports expanding Americorps to 250,000. Now that's 4T.

My son, an Xer was a member of Americorps for a year...during the Unraveling..The project he was involved with was a restoration of a destroyed area of land near our community (the town dump was actually part of the tract.) The restoration was so successful that the entire geographic area built a whole tourist economy around it...mountain biking.

Although the project was a huge success, the time was not quite right, and Americorps, or the Clinton Administration for that matter, was never given any credit, or attention, for creating this asset. Xers who participated should have been given more recognition for their contribution,....but like I said, the time was not right.

In my local dollar store, they are selling posters of the nighttime NYC skyline (taken pre-911). Of course, the WTC is all lit up.

Have you seen these? If so, do they remind you of posters of the Titanic?

I guess the association (Titanic doomed ship = WTC doomed buildings) is supporting Marc's theory that we're still in 3T! :lol:

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jenny Genser on 2001-11-12 09:48 ]</font>

Proof that we be 4T
After the plane crash, everyone round here went into survival mode and we all braced immediately for another massive dose of terrorism. Fortunately, it was only a plane crash. A year ago, this crash would have been mourned over but shrugged off. Now people are on the seat of thier pants for even the smallest things.

On 2001-11-12 20:21, JayN wrote:
Proof that we be 4T
After the plane crash, everyone round here went into survival mode and we all braced immediately for another massive dose of terrorism. Fortunately, it was only a plane crash. A year ago, this crash would have been mourned over but shrugged off. Now people are on the seat of thier pants for even the smallest things.

My thoughts on the matter exactly. I watch the news coverage from Atlanta, where I spent the weekend. If a plane had simply crashed on Sept. 10 or before, there's no way that NYC would have gone into total lock-down.

Speaking of Atlanta......we drove ten hours down from Columbus and ten hours back. In Kentucky, Tennesse and Georgia there was HARDLY A CONFEDERATE FLAG IN SIGHT!!! Nothing but Old Glory flying from horizon to horizon. I was impressed. Could it be that this 4T will finally heal the rift between North and South that never quite closed after two saecula? Perhaps so.

Also, has anyone noticed that since 9-11, every other big news event seems connected (and possibly *is* connected) to terrorist attack on that day? Anthrax...now the plane crash in NYC. A year ago, these three events would have been regarded as completely separate, and not perceived as related in the national mindset.

On 2001-11-13 17:41, Susan Brombacher wrote:
Also, has anyone noticed that since 9-11, every other big news event seems connected (and possibly *is* connected) to terrorist attack on that day? Anthrax...now the plane crash in NYC. A year ago, these three events would have been regarded as completely separate, and not perceived as related in the national mindset.

Yes, I have noticed that. Will everything that goes wrong be linked to the attacks?

On 2001-11-13 17:45, madscientist wrote:

Yes, I have noticed that. Will everything that goes wrong be linked to the attacks?

Slip on da soap in da shower? Blame it on bin Laden.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stonewall Patton on 2001-11-13 21:56 ]</font>

Don't tell me conspiracy theory is suddenly fashionable?

But in truth, the media is NOT associating the plane crash with terrorism, except in the negative, to reassure us. Has anyone come up with the likely explanation that it was intentional sabotage?

There have been reports made by people allegedly on Long Island that they saw a missile launched from a rooftop. Maybe a hoax, maybe not. But one thing for sure, we know that whatever the government says is not necessarily the truth. I figured by now they would have given us a prepared response that it was a "spark in the center fuel tank."

The Washington Post views victory in light of armchair generals and pundits.


Yet "already we see some members of Congress and some in the administration sliding back toward business as usual, playing politics with airport security, larding spending bills with egregious waste, protecting pet law-enforcement projects that have nothing to do with the fight against terror."

Comment from the peanut gallery:

Since when is a 'representative democracy' supposed to stop arguing over this and that?

When we are no longer a 'representative democracy', that's when.

I think they call it 'beltway' disease, and it affects those parts of the brain one uses in order to think.

On 2001-11-13 18:51, Stonewall Patton wrote:
There have been reports made by people allegedly on Long Island that they saw a missile launched from a rooftop. Maybe a hoax, maybe not. But one thing for sure, we know that whatever the government says is not necessarily the truth. I figured by now they would have given us a prepared response that it was a "spark in the center fuel tank."

....by which Mr. Patton is presumably alluding to the crash of Flight 900 off Long Island in July 1996, and the myriad "conspiracy theories" surrounding the disaster. Ummm....yeah, right.

It's not that I believe that our government is above committing questionable or evil acts, and covering them up-- we've seen evidence to the contrary with Watergate, the Kennedy assasination, the various Clinton-gates, and those nuclear tests back in the 50s.

But WHY??? -- for what possible purpose??? -- would the U.S. Navy deliberately shoot down a civilian aircraft and kill all those innocent people? Or, if was a terrible accident, like the time the USS Vincennes shot down that Iranian Airbus A300 over the Persian Gulf, why is it that the media (you know, those "liberal" guys?) never produced a parade of credible witnesses that saw it all happen-- as they did in the Gulf? For that matter, why would the Navy conduct anti-aircraft tests off the NYC coastline, right next to the flight path from JFK-- a disaster waiting to happen-- rather than in the middle of the Atlantic? And if that center-fuel tank explosion was a terrorist attack after all, why in God's name would the government have covered THAT up?

None of those "theories" made any sense five years ago....nor will they now in the wake of the latest airline crash in Queens. If the Feds conclude that this weekend's disaster was not terrorism, but a tragic mechanical mishap, I'm inclined to believe them, for in the wake of 9/11 they certainly would have no reason at all to cover it up.