Unique is an overused word. It should only be used to describe things like Vinalhaven’s political caucusing because this island community caucuses Republicans and Democrats together, simultaneously, in the same room, and has for nearly a decade. That’s unique!
Admittedly the Democrats are much more organized and energized, particularly this year, and so they kind of run the show. Still the Republicans are invited and they don’t caucus elsewhere. Customary attendance is a dozen or so Democrats and half that many Republicans but this year the degree to which the caucus was again unique was equaled by the degree to which it was also typical, typical of the country’s reflective and regretful mood as it considers the lost lives and lost liberties visited on us by the Bush administration. Consider:
1) The number of Democrats attending this year’s island caucus was greater by threefold than past attendance, typical of changing proportions nationwide.
2) Greens and Independents, post-Nader realists now four years later and dismissive of suggestions that he might try again, showed up in significant numbers to register as Democrats, typical of a nationwide realignment.
3) Only a couple of Republicans attended, typical of the GOP’s de-energized condition nationwide.
4) Both of those Republicans, myself included, were for Kerry, typical of the significant number of truly compassionate but embarrassed and ashamed conservatives nationwide.
5) The energy of the assembly was inspiring, and its resolve was one of unanimity, typical of a long-awaited and finally arrived nationwide Democratic sense of purpose.
We were told Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, weapons that represented a threat to us. Neither was true. We were told Iraq was the next front in the war on terrorism because it had direct ties to Al Qaeda. That was not true either. We, Congress and the rest of us, were persuaded to go to war because we were lied to. In the process we have killed thousands of innocent Iraqis and hundreds of our own and maimed or destroyed the lives of many more on both sides.
We have stupidly and childishly alienated friends and allies around the world, people whose allegiance would be invaluable, good people who are paying the price for having failed to fall in behind Bush the beleaguer.
We have, in allowing Vice President Cheney to continue in office while Halliburton and other war-dependent industries profit shamelessly on the backs and in the blood of our dead and theirs, turned the usual need to “avoid even the appearance of impropriety” into a joke.
We propose to take enough money to eliminate starvation in our own country, wipe out AIDS worldwide, provide national health care to every American who needs it, and end homelessness, and go to Mars with it instead.
I am still a Republican but I am thinking about becoming an anarchist. For the time being, however, I am going to simply vote for Kerry.
Phil Crossman is a resident of Vinalhaven.