Yekrats.com: Scotto’s Seafud Shanty

Yesterday, I had to alter my normal lunchtime walking route, because I didn’t want to wade through a few dozen people on the pedestrian bridge. They were having a “tea party” event, dumping tea bags into the Wabash river to protest high taxes and Barack Obama.

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Well, today is the last day for Change.org, a social networking site which promises to present ten ideas to the new Barack Obama administration and lobby for them. Today is the last day of voting.

First, the website had a open call for ideas, and those ideas were voted on. The top vote-getters in each category went on to the second round. Among those ideas was a proposal in the Education category to offer Esperanto as a language in American schools. This caused a furor through Esperanto-land, and the proposal passed to the second round.

Despite voting for it, I’m of two minds about this proposal. Anyone that knows me well knows that I think Esperanto is a great tool. I’ve been using it for a little over 10 years now, and have achieved friendships and understanding that would have not been possible before. It has changed my world-view.

That being said, I’m not sure I want this proposal to be among the 10 chosen (despite me voting for it!) Firstly, this is a political site. I don’t want Esperanto thrown into the middle of politics. I can imagine the howls of derision if the Esperanto proposal would be chosen. If it was pushed as in agenda item, I know there would be push-back. Yes, even Esperanto being offered would raise folks’ hackles. America is ruled by English, and I see xenophobia here. Fact is, I don’t want to see Esperanto picked apart by critics, as politics tends to do.

Also, if you look at the list, there’s some important issues there. This is a really messed up world right now. Can I honestly say that lack of Esperanto is among the 10 biggest problems facing this country right now? Absolutely not! Obama is walking into a hornet nest of problems. I honestly think Esperanto is down the list a bit.

A little more background into the proposal for you non-Esperantists. Generally there are two schools of thought in the Esperanto community, though as always things are not quite so black and white. Firstly, there’s finvenkismo, the ideology that look towards the fina venko (”final victory”). The final victory would be everyone has sufficient knowledge of Esperanto so that everyone could do the most basic of communication, for example, asking for a cup of coffee. (”Mi volus kafon, mi petas.”)

On the other side is ra?mismo. Ra?mistoj just enjoy Esperanto for its own sake, and think that finvenkistoj are wasting their time trying to convince other people. Esperanto has already got original literature, music, and culture… so why not just enjoy the language and enrich it for our own pleasure.

So, this proposal is very finvenkist. Getting the backing of a major government would be a finvenkist’s dream! Me, I’m somewhat in the middle between the finvenkist and raumist agendas. While I think Esperanto would indeed help foster communication for the world, I’m pragmatic enough to know that some people just don’t and would never care. To push it would bring other problems which we don’t even see right now. So, straddling the two ideologies, I voted for it, but I think it winning might be worse than the alternative.

Despite it being one of my categories, I don’t like going political in my blog. I’ve noticed that there are two things can really get under people’s skin even talking about disagreements, and one of them is politics. (The other being religion.) So if you disagree with this, I apologize in advance. However, I think it’s important that I let my friends know what I’m doing and the reasons I’m doing them.

That being said, I was really dismayed at McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. Is a former Miss Congeniality/small-time mayor/18-month governor really the most qualified person for the VP job? Would she have been offered the job if she was a man? I highly doubt it. Furthermore, if she’s refusing interviews with the press, is she ready to do her primary duty: to take over for the president if he chokes on a pretzel on day 1?

I was so annoyed at the selection, I decided to volunteer for the Obama/Biden phone bank. Yes, last week I went to the Obama headquarters and called Lafayette residents on their behalf. I plan on continuing to volunteer until the election.

Indiana is close this year. The last poll has Indiana within 2 percentage points of McCain. The current electoral map shows the Obama/Biden ticket with 260 electoral votes with leaners. So, it might just take one little bump to make a significant difference. If I help a little, Indiana’s 11 electoral votes might make the difference.

I encourage everyone to decide on the issues that are important to them, and then look at the sites of the candidates to see how they match up to those issues. I did. Look at the issues page of both candidates. You might think that’s a wise idea for any voter to look over the issues, but not according to the McCain campaign manager, who said the election is “not about issues.”

I think McCain’s selection of Palin, who he only met once and looked at her background only cursorly, show that McCain shoots from the hip. However unqualified Palin is, the fact that McCain made that pandering decision, shows an even greater flaw with him.

Possibly contradicting myself from Sunday, but in the interest of fairness, I found this report which said that Mr. Obama totally dominated the media last week, especially the speech in Berlin. (The article supports what I said on Sunday that not all of it was necessarily pro-Obama, however, but the raw figures says that Obama is getting much more attention.)

However, while McCain was giving speeches in the dairy aisle of a supermarket; Obama was giving a speech in front of 200,000 people. I’m biased, but one seems more “newsy” than the other.

I’ll be glad when the Political “silly season” is over, because I find myself getting annoyed by the media. A bit of a political rant inside. Don tinfoil hats.

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