The Personal Is Political - Stories in America

I learned of this extraordinary project about 2 months ago, from my participation on DailyKOS, and kept forgetting to post about it.

While most political pundits -- professional and non-- were still hand-wringing over, negatively stereotyping, dismissing and trying to psychoanalyze those "Red States" that went overwhelming for Dubbya despite the clear evidence of his failings (from megalomania to stupidity), Rose Aguilar, a journalist from here in the Bay Area, obviously remembered one of the basic rules of all understanding:

The personal is political.

So she decided that rather than pontificate, rather than speculate, rather than assume, she'd ask. She is currently on a six-month journey through Red State America, and so far, the stories that she has reported have been nothing less than extraordinary:

Stories in America

This is a site worth checking out by everyone, regardless of partisan politics. Many, including myself, have lamented the Great Divide^TM that appears to have split America in two since the Bush Administration ascended into power. But those laments are worthless. It is only by hearing (a word well known in progressive politics those that seem least like ourselves that we will both get to the bottom of what motivates those who live in states that are "Red" and understand our commonalities with most of them. That dialogue is the only way to develop "political empathy", which I believe is the only way to make some progress going forward.

So check this site out and, if you can, donate a tank of gas or a motel room so Ms. Aguilar can keep up her extraordinary work.