Arun, over at Angry Asian Buddhist, posted the following about our recent elections here in the U.S.:
The Buddhist blogs indeed have been following the election—but with a special emphasis on white male candidates. Sift back through this season’s articles to see Tricycle reminisce about Jerry Brown, while Shambhala Sun swoons over Eric Schneiderman.
Four years ago, there was some excitement around Representatives Mazie Hirono and Hank Johnson, both of them Democrats who identify as Buddhists. Both held their seats last night. But if you’ve only been following Shambhala Sun and Tricycle, you’ll have missed out on Democrat Colleen Hanabusa, who took back Hawaii’s First congressional district from the Republicans, defeating Charles Djou. Oh, and she’s Buddhist too.
Just take that in for a moment. Next year’s Hawaiian congressional delegation to the House will be a team of Asian American Buddhist women!
It's always interesting to me what happens when you look beyond the major trend of an election, and see things like this going on. Another blogger also mentioned on his Facebook page that over 100 openly gay folks were elected to various positions around the nation. It's a good reminder to not get too fixed on the tidal wave, because there's always more water doing something different all around it.
4 comments:
thank you!
Yes! And on a related tangent, there seems to be an increasing respect for the number of independents holding office -- not acting as spoilers, but actually winning office and governing in the midst of the duopoly.
maybe there actually is a slow erosion of two party control going on after all.
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