Political Narratives

Human existence, like each personal life, is a Great Drama and a series of smaller dramas. So the human mind always looks for the “story line” or narrative. This applies to politics. In 2008, a number of narratives compete for explanatory and illuminative influence.
1. Fight for Reproductive and Gay Rights. This narrative controls the Democrats and gained a huge victory with Obama who promised Planned Parenthood that his first act would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.
2. Battle for the Family and the Holy Innocents. This story has been the most consistent theme of John Paul and Benedict and unites obedient Catholics with the Evangelicals (Huckabee/Palin) who have become the core of the Republican Party.
3. Economic Justice for the Poor. This continues to be a ruling narrative of the Democrats (health care, tax cuts for the middle class, stronger safety net) even though self-declared liberals are now more wealthy than conservatives who have increasingly become a party of rural, countercultural, lower-education and smaller-income populists.
4. Defense of Free Markets and Limited Government. This is a second pillar of the Republican Party and was rejected by the electorate who favors government intervention in the face of a threatening depression.
5. Rejection of the Militarism, Unilateralism, and Arrogance (of the departing administration.). This reaction is as strong from the smaller Paleoconservative Right as from the Left and prepared the way for the Obama victory.
6. Danger of Islamofascism. This fear helped elect Bush in 2004 is in decline due to distaste for the Iraq conflict and a safe period since 2001 (possibly due to the vigilance of the Bush administration?).

At least four less dominant narratives also compete:
1. Climate Change. Recent evidence indicates the earth is actually getting colder so that the phrase “global warming” may be inaccurate. Nevertheless, Al Gore has aroused considerable anxiety among Democrats about human-initiated climate change; Republicans remain untroubled.
2. Invasion of the Aliens. Alarm about illegal immigrants is the anxiety of choice among uneducated, lower income, more provincial, less cosmopolitan conservative Republicans. The more sophisticated, internationalist views advanced by Bush and McCain cost them dearly in political support.
3. Alternate energies. This was the “null curriculum” of the oil-loving Bush administration and will have to be a large part of our future.
4. Demography. This story line is far more important in Europe-now-becoming-Eurasia with the influx of Moslems and the decline of the Caucasian race. For the USA, however, demographics is destiny as well. Lowered birth rates among the affluent presage generational conflicts in the near future and will probably require a continued influx of inexpensive Latin labor. In the long term, seculars with their low birth rates will lose influence to more religious groups: Muslims, Evangelicals, and orthodox Catholics.
The current Democrat Party aligns the odd-numbered narratives above while the Republican Party unites the even-numbered ones.

This blog is
- Fiercely committed to the Battle for the Family and the Holy Innocents;
- Moderate and pragmatic on the balance between Justice for the Poor and Freedom of the Markets as well as the competition between diplomacy and strength on the international front.
- Mildly skeptical about global warming and the feasibility of alternate energy sources in the near future.
- Fascinated by demographic developments and warmly sympathetic to our Latin guests from the South.

The recent election was clearly a victory for governmental intervention in the economy and for more diplomacy and less use of force internationally. It advances the causes of sexual freedom, climate change, and alternate energies. The President-elect has patronizingly dismissed the cultural wars as “so 90s.” Should he push FOCA, as promised, he will find himself embroiled in an explosive cultural battle just when he needs a united country to face the economic crisis.