No Case For Akaka
Ed Case should stop while he’s ahead -- way ahead. You can’t showcase the differences any more than that one “debate” last night did. Yet Ed Case could get better -- while Akaka doesn't look like he can. That’s the choice of the Democrats this election cycle.
Can they revive the sentimentalities for one more time, one last hurrah -- or do they move into the 21st century before it is too late? Clearly, Ed Case is the future of the Democratic Party in Hawaii -- or they have no future and only a past they hope to revive every two years, for one more time -- before nobody shows up.
Akaka was the standard bearer and voice of all the liberal causes -- and those arguments seemed real tired and clichéd. What hadn’t been heard from the Democrat quarters for a long time, was the voice of moderation and reconciliation with the greater global movement; the Hawaii Democrat Party had become isolationist and out of touch -- to a very extreme degree.
Case brought out the fact that as a congressional representative, it was his responsibility to represent all the people of the country -- and not just the provincial interests of the Hawaii Democratic Party. What a mind-blowing concept!
If they reject their best, what are they saying about the Democratic Party so emphatically? It’s already happened in Connecticut -- where the leftist fringe has tried to hijack the Democratic Party, only to realize that the Party is not the final word on their election.
But there’s no one who tuned into last night’s debate who cannot have been clearly impressed that Ed Case has a vision for the future of the Democratic Party in the world -- while Dan Akaka only has a vision for the past of the Democratic Party in Hawaii, they hope can be repeated interminably.
As a partisan Republican, one almost has to hope for an Akaka victory -- knowing it means the end of the Democratic Party in Hawaii -- because they have already committed themselves to that outcome. Ed Case definitely takes that party and probably the whole political culture a step forward -- just as Linda Lingle did for the Republicans.
I think most Republicans in Hawaii would like Ed Case more than they would Dan Akaka -- but really, I think, Democrats have to decide for themselves on the future of their party -- not only here in Hawaii but all over the country. There are lots of Democratic leaders willing to lead us back to the 1960s -- but few with a vision of leadership into the 21st century.
I could be mistaken about this, but I think that’s where the greater future lies for everyone. Such people are known as “leaders.”
posted by Mike Hu @ 7:52 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
It’s kind of amusing but sad to watch the political spin machines of both candidates going into hyperdrive to make us believe whatever they want us to believe -- now that the actuality is over.
That’s been the single greatest weakness in Hawaii society and culture -- the casualty of the integrity of information, controlled by the powers that be and wish to remain so, the special interest groups, and those “professionals” who will do whatever people will pay them to do -- including lying, cheating and stealing. And then they will say, “Why not me? Everybody else does it.”
And so the newspapers will do these articles on how the cost of living justifies whatever people “have to do” -- I suppose to keep their jobs. But as the photos with their bylines belie, they cannot keep their own self-respect, and look like people heavily medicated to lose all their sensibilities. That’s why most of these people work in the shadow of anonymity -- that is the foundation of the old media.
The new media is really about being fully known -- and on that basis, being able to know others, because it is a two-way information superhighway. That’s what the old media mindset doesn’t get -- and really is the distinguishing quality between the old and the new media mentality, and not just the technology. That is the most misunderstood aspect of the new culture emerging -- that it genuinely levels the playing field -- which is very threatening and upsetting to those who have traditionally wielded all the control, because they controlled the means of information -- pretty nearly exclusively.
The decline of the newspapers and network television are the most obvious signposts of this diminishing influence and control of the public (collective) consciousness. But the dissemination of information is also very different -- because it doesn’t emerge one day in full bloom and the next has disappeared. It is ideas that take root -- and then grows in the mysterious way that authentic life does, beyond anyone’s control.
That freaks out the control freaks among us -- whose very being is about manipulating everybody else. Many of these authoritarian personalities were disproportionately attracted to mass communications. Many also populate the prisons in this country and are known for their characteristic profile as “manipulators.”
Post a Comment
<< Home