The Chris Moeller Archives

This little piggy

One of the powerful motivators of life is ego-stroking from others. In confounding ways, we often become the person others expect us to be.

During the winter of 2004, I was experiencing what I thought was a resurgence of my faith in the Democratic Party. Looking back a year and a half later, it's evident that what was really occurring was the planting of my first seeds of independence from both political parties.
I was in attendence one night at a Howard Dean rally in an auditorium at the state fairgrounds. The state caucus was only days away, and people like Dave Barry and Stephen Colbert were wandering almost unnoticed through the crowd. A political reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer approached me quite randomly and started asking about the political climate in the state and my opinion of Dean's chances. I don't recall what I told him about Dean, but I'm quite sure I would look like an idiot today if confronted with those comments. (I do remember being very pissed off about John Kerry and Dick Gephardt, and telling him I wouldn't vote for a Washington Democrat.)

Anyway, he asked me at one point, whether I thought Iowa should have the first in-the-nation caucus, and I answered him with a flat no. It made no sense to me, I said, that such a small group of party activists should carry so much power in the process. Then the guy told me I was the first person in Iowa to answer him that way. Really? I said. Wow.

His comment made me feel really good about myself, not just because he had singled me out, but because the words coming out of my mouth had felt so selfless. They weren't, of course. I benefit so indirectly and so little from Iowa's first in the nation electoral status that the whole issue is utterly moot in my life.
From that point on, though, I started shifting my political focus away from the rhetoric of party and us-versus-them labels to the action of justice and social reform. It felt so good to stop having to defend sleazeballs like Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to begin opening a line of communication with well-meaning people of different political stripes.

I thought of the politics of greed, self-interest, and empty rhetoric this afternoon after reading this.

posted by CM @ 4:59 PM