From: trumpins@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (Barbara Trumpinski)
Subject: Re: More elections, a victory...
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 12:02:20 GMT
Keywords: discrimination, hatred, intolerance



>>kitten raises her glass, downs her champagne, and flings the glass
>>into the fireplace..."and may i add that here in illinois we elected
>>the first black woman senator...to carol mosely braun! and all the
>>other women, minorities, gays and others who will be represented for
>>the first time!"

michael says:

>	"Um... Kitten?  There's something about the way you phrased
>that that makes me a little uncomfortable.  You referred to `women,
>minorities, gays and others who will be represented for the first
>time'.  While I certainly think that a legislature which more closely
>reflected the makeup of the country would be a good thing as such
>(though preferably with above average intelligence, wisdom, and
>leadership if I actually got my druthers), I'm worried about an
>increasing tendency to suppose that one can only be properly
>represented by 'one of one's own'-- defined in terms of ethnic
>background, sex, orientation, or any number of other characteristics
>which don't really have anything inherently to do with one's political
>views.  (Which is not to say that political views are randomly
>distributed, but I hope you'll agree there's a difference between
>voting for Candidate X because you agree with her on family leave and
>voting for her because she's a woman.)

[   ]

>	"I've always thought that the ideal was to judge people "by the
>content of their character" and politicians by their politics.  The
>reason that it seems wrong to me to have a Congress composed solely of white
>males is that there _are_ qualified, competent people all across the
>political spectrum who _aren't_ white males, and the near-total lack of
>them in high office suggests systematic bias, which means we're
>probably getting, on-average, worse people than we might otherwise.
>(Of course, as per the recent probability discussion, it's
>theoretically possible that by some amazing coincidence, all the best
>possible politicians have been white males.  But when I see results of
>a hundred coin flips come up heads, _I_ for one assume that the coin
>is fixed.  :-) )  But I didn't think that the problem was that disadvantaged
>groups weren't _represented_.

[  ]

>	"Kitten, I do apologize for using your remarks to launch
>myself onto a soapbox.  But the fission of the country into seperate
>communities is a continuing trend which worries me.  In the end, if
>people consider themselves members of small groups first and members
>of a larger whole second, then I think we're in trouble.  Being proud
>of one's heritage and gender and such is one thing, and is I think a
>good thing-- but to consider them more important than ideas and ideals
>endangers the foundations of a country in which all the citizens are
>supposed to be politically equal, and suggests that we are in fact not
>a single nation, but many nations playing a zero-sum game, in which
>the only way to help one is to hurt another.  (Let me make clear that

[   ]

>	"In any case, though, I'll second your toast to Carol Mosely
>Braun.  Not because I like her-- had I been voting in Illinois, I
>probably would have voted against her, because she and I do _not_ see
>eye to eye on politics.  But I'll raise my glass to the fact that a
>state in which a large majority is white and nearly half are men, a
>majority of those people chose to vote for the politics, and not the
>race and sex of the candidate.  Their politics aren't mine, and I
>suspect that I'll have reason to disagree with Ms. Braun over time, as
>part in parcel with my rather gloomy opinion of the future of the
>federal government for the next four or more (probably more) years.
>But the fact that they did _not_ vote against her because of her race
>or sex is a good sign.  (And it would be still better if I weren't
>certain that thousands of vote choices, for her and against her, were
>made on that basis. :-( )

kitten, who generally has tended to stay out of political discussions
because of statements like the one she made above, agrees with
michael.  "you can put that drink on my tab...i agree.  it would be
wrong to vote for an incompetent candidate just because (s)he
happened to be a part of the same minority as the voter...it's just
that i have seen SO many incompetent rich white men who got elected
just on the basis that they were rich, white and male....and could
afford the time and effort to be politicians...."

--
***************************************************************************
conan the librarian a.k.a. kitten           /\ /\  barbara ann 
"my life's a soap opera, isn't yours?"      {=.=}
                                              ~   trumpins@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu 
"love is the wild card of existance"
                          rita mae brown

Newsgroups: alt.callahans