Monday, August 10, 2009

Letter to GOPUSA.com Owner and Editor

I've been getting the daily dose of headlines from a site that states that its goal is to remind the Republican Party of their conservative base. Other than an article that questioned Sarah Palin's decision to resign early from her governorship, for which he was roundly criticized, most of the articles are typical "red meat" for the conservative base. Here is a letter I wrote to the editor:

I guess from your bio that you are well set in your ways, adhering closely to dogma, so I don't believe any feedback I may give you will cause you to rethink anything to say or do. However, I'm an optimist at heart, so here goes.
The biggest change that I saw that Barack Obama brought was a deep knowledge that problems we have today do not have simple causes and their solutions cannot be achieved by one-dimensional and dogmatic thinking. President Bush saw the world as very black and white, good and evil, so the shift in approach was very refreshing.
I believe that both Democrats and Republicans suffer from the same kind of linear thinking that most people have, so it's no wonder that Obama is having a tough time with both sides of the aisle. What I don't really get is the value-add that you think your site provides to the dialogue and discussion, unless you are not really interested in having either. Highlighting extremes of behavior or isolated events and then attempting to infer/imply that these represent everything that a person or policy or group have to offer is just plain demagoguery and only serves to allow the most base of our human instincts to flourish - outrage, anger and contempt to name a few - and not the best aspects which include reason, humility and compassion.
I have done software development for large diverse groups for more that 15 years and from that experience I can say that the best solutions come from having all stakeholders at the table, all offering what they can to find a solution. I see that Obama has attempted many times to have Repuplicans be part of the decision-making processs, but instead of stepping up to do so they have instead chosen to remain on the sidelines, whining, griping and sniping. A solution to healthcare in this country is not going to work if it is Democrat or Republican. No one of us has a lock on the Truth. We can only discover what works by working together on all this. Having people at Town Halls yelling from the back of the rooms to shout over speakers is just bad form - my mother - and yours, I would hope - would disapprove of such brutish behavior. This is not a sign of general discontent being voiced, it is a sign of poor upbringing.

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