You may be smart and right but your explanations may be too complicated for most of the rest of us to understand.  An example is how brilliant it was to get us to ACCEPT the simplification of the divisiveness in the American body politic to a choice of two colors as simple as black and white but in this instance, Red and Blue.  By themselves the colors are just two of the three that make up the American image of themselves. Red is often the color of insurgency and used solely in the Communist flags of the old Soviet Russia, China and the few small remaining hold outs. Red was seized upon as the color of conservatism and Blue was left for the fringes of liberalism by common consent.  It is interesting to see how easily we accept referring to the Red hegemony and the Blue hold outs in the past election where, once again, there was no landslide except in the imaginations of those looking at a map that looked as though all but a few bits of America was Red.

This simplification in visual terms is but the inevitable outcome of the way simple concepts dominated the battle for minds for the last four years. Over the first G.W. Bush Administration there was a battle for the fundamentalist program to Christianize thinking in America and get everyone to agree that abortion was wrong and that homosexual unions were an abomination. A galaxy of other ideas, such as the “flip-flop” accusation against Kerry, and simple reversal of his boast of a young military hero by a massive Swift Boat campaign fixed in everyone’s minds the simple idea that even if he wasn’t the best candidate, G.W. Bush was better than J.F. Kerry. Simplification works and suspicion of smoke smoldering makes everyone think of FIRE!

Florida is now counted as a RED state although it is manifestly not true. Its vote went for Bush but the northern half should be red.  In fact, and this has been demonstrated by cooler heads, the illusion of red covering every county rides right over the pockets of Blue that do not count in our Electoral College system. In this past election there seems to be no doubt that the popular vote barely went to Bush but go to him it did.  The simplification of colors helps to seal the idea that there is a red center of this country with only a lunatic fringe of blue sophisticates who still adhere to liberal thinking.

Our thinking processes work best with simple concepts.  We usually adopt short names to brand huge ideas.  Right now, “democracy” is definitely the simple word of choice to describe how the Bush Administration is going to change the world. Once, the idea was that Communism (which was RED) would ideologically win the world.  Now it is the democracy which America exemplifies that will, in its RED ness color the drab second, third and fourth world nations. They are feeling blue right now.