Raven's Rants

Everywhere we look, we see badges. We're surrounded by them, bombarded by them and entranced by them. They're a part of our lives, almost from day one and they remain as such until the day we die.

First there the physical badges. We're all familiar with the ones police and other officials carry. Those are symbols of authority, of power. They give the person behind them a sense of control and it instills a sense of fear in those that are facing it.

But others carry badges too. Your weary cubicle dweller often needs a badge to get in his office. Others use badges to get inside their apartment buildings or communities. Badges also get us back stage at a concert, into our favorite club or wherever we want to go.

But then there are the more metaphorical badges. The badges of honor or shame that we wear on the inside. Though invisible, they too shine though in our smiles and our eyes and become just as distinctive as the ones we wear on our sleves and around our necks.

Finally, there’s the little things we do, our mannerisms, our clothes our hair, the hidden badges we carry with us day in and day out. The badges we don’t’ even realize that are there. The badges that we can't or don't take off, even as we sleep.

The only thing that these badges all have in common is that they define us. That they represent who we are on a fundamental level. Even the simplest badges identify us, tell others who we are and why we're there. They let others know, within the confines of a small square of plastic or an article of clothing, what we represent and why we should or shouldn't be allowed to do the things that we want.

And the bitter truth is that we all wear badges. It's a requirement in this society. There needs to be some representation of the self worn for others to see.

The problem is that most aren't careful about what they display, they take the badges handed to them by the world and wear them recklessly. They wear them to fit in, they wear them to feel like someone important and they wear them to do the things that they think they want.

Soon enough they find themselves wearing everything on their sleeves, their insecurities, their weaknesses and their desires. So eager to fit in and go everywhere, they tack on every badge they pick up and place them upon their sleeve. Very quickly, their badges either tell their full story, or fail to represent them at all depending on where they took their badges from and why.

So if we must wear badges, then let's wear them with pride. Lets be cautious about what we say and put out there and make sure we represent ourselves honestly, but proudly. Let's make our badges, literal and metaphorical, speak volumes about us but only what the world needs to hear.

After all, we're more than the sum of our badges and if we try to define ourselves with what we wear, both literally and metaphorically, we find ourselves portraying very two dimensional images of who we are.

So wear your badges proudly but be careful what they say. Let your true depth show through to those who know you best, the ones that can look past the badges you wear, and don’t cheapen your spirit by slathering it on your body for the world to see.

Our hearts are too valuable to be worn on our skin, the same as they’re too valuable to be tucked away in the darkness until the end of time….

I remember the electricity
when our hands first touched
the newness
the excitement
the taste of the forbidden.

It was a breaking of tension
the end of a game
and the beginning of so much more

As our lips touched
tasting each other
first softly
then firmly
then openly
we watched our inhibitions float away
turning unthinkable thoughts
into heavenly deeds
as our willpower collapsed
in the wind a quivering breath

But as we fade from mortal souls
and slip into a torrent of passion and desire
let's not fool ourselves about forever
nor pretend this is something grand

Let's be in love for one night
so we can watch it fade
when the morning comes

Let's live a lifetime
in these moonlight hours
and never look back in the dawn

Because we both have lives to lead
and our own trails to blaze
and even though tonight we burn for each other
our fire will smolder and die
under the weight of the morning dew

And then we can spend the rest of our lives
forgetting about this night
the night we gave in to an electric touch
and caressed away our deepest desires

If anyone was surprised when Kerry picked Edwards to be his running mate, I feel sorry for them. Edwards had been the top choice ever since the primaries and never got knocked down from the top of the list, even as other, bigger names were kicked around.

But more important than being the top choice since Kerry locked the democratic nomination is the fact that Edwards was by far the safest choice. Controversy, at least in a major way, has not found Mr. Edwards, the American public has little, if any, preconceived notions about the first term senator and he's a lukewarm add on to an already lukewarm ticket.

After all, there's little denying that John Kerry has done everything he can to play it safe this election. He's avoided serious controversy, has not taken a serious stance on any major issue and, despite repeatedly claiming that America is headed in the wrong direction, has yet to take a firm stance against any of Bush's popular policies. Instead, he's focused on the problems America faces (Economy, health care, terrorism, etc.) which are painfully obvious and not up for debate.

All of this has earned Kerry a reputation of being a waffler, of straddling the issues. A very fair criticism of both his recent voting on the senate floor and his various and often conflicting public stances on the issues.

There's little doubt that Kerry and Edwards are running the Ho-Hum ticket, an uninspiring, safe, lukewarm campaign that's as much interested in avoiding controversy and public hatred as it ever was in actually recruiting voters.

The question is, instead, whether or not this is actually a bad idea.

The Kerry strategists probably realized a long time ago that this isn't an election about John Kerry. It's about George W. Bush who, despite his initial promises to be a uniter and not a divider, has become one of the most divisive political figures in the history of the nation.

With Bush's approval ratings hovering just above 40% and the entire nation polarized either for or against the sitting president, (a fire further flamed by Michael Moore's latest flick, Fahrenheit 9/11) it seems all Kerry has to do is stand over to the side, look like a plausible alternative to Bush and not tick off anyone between now and November.

If this is true, the the Ho-Hum ticket, as bizarre as it is, might just be the best one to ride on. Saying little, avoiding controversy and letting Bush sink himself could turn out to be an effective campaign strategy.

This wouldn't be the first time such a strategy had been used successfully. In my home state of South Carolina, in 1998, James Hodges, a democrat in a very Republican state, unseated the extremely unpopular governor David Beasley by simply harping on what everyone agreed was wrong and offering little in the way of agendas or policies for correcting them.

Though the strategy worked wonderfully and gave Hodges the historic win, Hodges turned out to be a weak and ineffective governor and he himself was voted out four years later by Republican Mark Sanford, a charismatic "nice guy" that won popular support not so much for his policies as his likability.

If this is accurate and Kerry is intentionally running on the Ho Hum ticket, he'd do well to learn the lessons of former Governor Hodges. If elected, he can't let his intentionally weak campaign translate into being a weak leader and he needs to realize that, though playing it safe is great for unseating unpopular leaders, it doesn't work well in the face of a real challenge.

Still though, in the short run and depending on what happens to President Bush between now and November, it could be a winning strategy for 2004. As the Detroit Pistons learned earlier this year, sometimes the best way to win a battle is to let your opponent unravel themselves and, for all appearances, that seems to be what's happening.

It'll be interesting to see if that holds and, if it does, what happens to the Kerry presidency. Future political strategists and history book authors will be watching with baited breath.