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Just one little detail
By Lyn Bliss
The League of Women Voters (LWV) was formed with a purpose they
declared to be, “helping women carry out their new responsibilities as
voters”. What a great and noble cause… except for one detail.
“From the spirit of the suffrage movement and the shock of the First
World War came a great idea - that a nonpartisan civic organization
could provide the education and experience the public needed to assure
the success of democracy. The League of Women Voters was founded on
that idea.” according to a League of Women Voters’ document compiled by
Kay J. Maxwell ─ a lofty purpose with a wonderful ideal… except for one
detail.
The League of Women Voters of Darke County held a meeting to inform the
public about fracking… or at least that is how it was advertised. It
would inform you, the public. It could have done that… except for one
detail.
They had arranged for two speakers to come and inform Darke County
residents about fracking. What a great service to the community that
would have been… except for one detail.
Attendance at the meeting was about average for a LWV event. My
attendance primarily had as its purpose the reporting of what happened.
When I got home, I had copious notes with which an article might have
been written… except for one detail.
As a result of the above, I have mulled, contemplated, pondered and
considered several angles. No matter how or where I approached, there
was not a “news article” to be had… because of that one detail.
Therefore, this has turned into an opinion article rather than a
report. So, please keep that in mind as you read this.
Fracking is something that I did not know a great deal about and
something that I was hoping an event such as this would help correct –
providing the benefits/risks of such activities. Or, at the very least,
I hoped I would leave knowing more about the pros and the cons than I
knew when I entered. And, this event could have done that… except for
one detail.
If you remember (from above), the League aimed to educate voters for
the success of a democracy. A democracy is a form of government where
the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them
directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually
involving periodically held free elections. It is predicated upon that
voting body being informed and educated about the issues upon which
they are going to vote. It is a system of government where each
individual is assumed to have the power, the intelligence, and the
right to make their own decision regarding how they will cast their
vote. Because of that, it is assumed they will invest some time in
considering the options between which they are to decide. In a
Democracy, the voters are not given one choice and expected to
rubber-stamp it. They are given options and expected to choose.
The League stated a noble goal in trying to educate the voters for the
success of a democracy. But, in the past 90+ years something seems to
have taken them on a totally different path. It is not a documented
progression from that first “educating for democracy” to their current
practice of educating for a specific result. Rather, it seems to have
slowly evolved over the years into something that is not at all like
the originally stated goals.
In the scheme of the world, there is really only one thing that is all
bad… the Devil. Everything else has varying amounts of good and evil.
And, deciding upon that proportion is often left up to the voters in a
democracy (or as in our federal constitutional republic – which also
relies upon the people to make the decisions). At its recent meeting,
there seemingly was absolutely no intent to educate voters for a
democratically decided outcome.
So, now we have come to that “one detail”… That one detail is that this
program was not to educate regarding fracking. This program was
blatantly and outrageously geared to make the audience believe that
there was not one redeemable feature to be found with the fracking
process.
Both speakers were categorically against fracking. One was loaded with
graphs, charts and figures about chemicals, minerals and geological
formations. The other carried on with stories meant to scare, horrify
and alarm. Stories that would have done justice to the “Snake Oil”
salesman of yesteryear.
The public sat. The public listened. The public was courteous. The
public was asked for questions. Some were taken, but many were not.
At the end of the evening, many were overheard questioning why they
were not truly given the pros and cons – educated – about
fracking. No one really seemed to have an answer.
It is my thought that it is unfortunate the LWV is not an organization
whose goal is still one of educating the public to insure a successful
democracy. That it has, rather, become one of underestimating and
belittling the public by treating the members of that public as if they
are not capable of absorbing the facts of a situation and then drawing
their own conclusion from those facts.
The LWV should not underestimate the voters by acting as if the LWV has
all the answers -- while the rest of humanity is stupid, that they have
to feed the voters the correct information and not confuse the voter by
presenting both sides of an issue.
I doubt that I was the only one who was quite insulted by being treated
as if I was incapable of making my own decisions when given facts… and,
that is what women getting the vote was all about: we women being given
the right to make our own decisions. Just one little detail.
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