How to out your neighbours and influence people

An article in the New York Times today shows that the rest of the world is catching on to the availability of campaign finance information at Fundrace.org. Now in glorious technicolour you can zoom into your locale and find out where the reds and the blues are hiding. People with political persuasions atypical from their neighborhood are starting to wonder if they might be outed by nosy neighbours using Fundrace.org to discover just where they have been sending their campaign donation checks.

I expect it will be only a matter of time before people start reporting being harassed and effectively "driven out of town" for not supporting the locally favoured political gang. Closet Republicans and liberals who have been hiding out in enemy territory and keeping their noses clean may find a run for the border may be necessary to escape victimisation. Eventually, because so many people in America seem to focus on narrow issues over a broader perspective on life, one may see very sharp divisions as people start to choose carefully who their potential neighbors are before moving to a new area. Can you imagine real estate listings including information on the political leanings of your neighbours?

Of course people do factor in the demographics of politics into their daily lives. If they can they will often already choose to live in a district that votes "their way", and work for a company that does things fitting their life philosophy. I'm not about to move into Bush country or every work again for a CEO who thinks its appropriate to preach politics from his pulpit of executive power, especially when they are not my kind of politics. Just why should being "politically correct" be applied to everything except speech about politics?

It would be nice to think people aren't so short sighted but ultimately we know this kind of stuff will start to happen and we could end up at a point where the blue districts will be solid blue, and the red districts will be solid red and woe-be-tied any little "anomaly" that arrives on the scene and is foolish enough to put their money where their mouth is. The answer is that everyone should always be ready, willing and able to stand up and speak freely of their convictions and not be subject to the slings and arrows of those who foolishly believe that mere dissent is the sure sign of an evildoer at work.