Consensus Based Decision making ho

Hey guys, what's up.  I was watching Barack Obama talk to congress last night and it was pretty neat to see him use the rhetoric of sustainability that he did.  Now I'm not one to ever trust an American politician but its at least refreshing to hear a shying away from the focus on fear mongering that plagued the last 8 years. I was particularly impressed with Obama's pledges to invest money now to ensure stability in the future.  That's real adhesion to the sustainability code.  

It's interesting, because I was watching this documentary about Michael Moore last night called "Manufacturing Dissent" and there was a part focusing on his support of certain presidential candidates.  Anyways, it looked like he worked pretty hard in the 2004 election race to try to get John Kerry to inhibit a second Bush term, but we all know how that ended up.  It'd  be really interesting to see what would have happened had Kerry come out on top.  Would he have been touting the same lines of action that Obama is now?  Where would the US be heading now?  Could the economic crisis have been diverted or dissipated?

Being someone who has no idea how American politics work, I was struck by certain aspects of the speech.  For one, there were several instances where many members of the house rose in ovation of whatever Obama had said.  However a distinct section of the crowd refused to stand. Time and time again, one half of the crowd would stand and the other would remain sitting. It is this polarizing of opinions and issues that seems so ridiculous about politics.  It was funny because only when Obama spoke of trying to turn America back into a world leader did the other half of the crowd join in on the standing ovation.  I guess they had to show they care about America's hegemony and I guess that's what's so unsettling about American politics is that virtually the only thing both parties can agree upon is that America should be dominating the world.

But even with the additional parties that exist here in Canada, true embodiment of national sentiment is not achieved.  This was most obvious recently with the abortion of the proposed coalition between the liberals, NDP and the bloc.  Even though this coalition would have had policies vastly preferable to conservative policies, in the eyes of those who had voted for any of constituent parties, many opposed such a conjunction purely on the basis of ONE position of the bloc.  It just goes to show how hard it is to bring people together on a consensus when everyone's all ready pre-divided based on party affiliation.  

But how does one foster a decision making process based on consensus and community involvement in a country as populous and vastly spread out as Canada?

Who knows?

down and out in new orleans

I recently watched a movie, "When the Levees Broke", and it really exposes A great deal about the US and the American people themselves. I'm not sure what Spike Lee's intentions were but it's a very interesting movie.

On the one hand it gives an uncensored glimpse of the abhorred corruption, classicism and over bureaucracy of the united states governement, while on the other it sheds light on the extent to which the people are unable draw an association between their hallowed freedom (to act out of their own self interest) and the very corruption that cost them their houses and lives. Many interviews show people exclaiming that they thought they lived in the land of the free, or that they thought their government was supposed to look out for them. Well their government was doing exactly what everybody else does in an economy based on self interest: maximizing their dollars spent.
Near the end of the movie, there was a focus on how little had been done to clean up the wreckage several months after the storm. Many people were shown complaing that fuck all had been accomplished. I find it interesting that no one was saying they had tried to help clean up or wanted to help cleanup. Everybody just wanted everything done for them. I just think that sums up the inherent flaw in that society: people feel like they should have all these freedoms and services and not have to do anything for any body else.

I also feel that this movie highlighted the degradation of social capital that has taken place in certain parts of that country. Louisiana ranks as one of the lowests states in terms of social capital while New York is average to above average in the social capital department. This is interesting because some parallels were made in "When the Levees Broke" between Katrina, which was a shit show, and 9/11, which saw tons of people flock to support the victims including the mayor of the city. In New York, people were risking their lives to claw people out from under giant slabs of concrete while in Louisiana one town posted armed guards on a birdge to restrict people from fleeing to safety. Whether or not this corelation between social capital and disaster response is any bodies' guess but then isn't there a saying: "the best way to judge a society is how they treat their worst off"? Well I think the Katrina incident gave us a pretty clear indication of how Louisiana treats its worst off.