As another election day, the second in my lifetime, leaves me literally weeping.
Despair is truly the only word I can find to fit the dark night of fear I have for so many things. The freedoms I truly cherish, the citizens of this nation who are not among the privileged, the citizens of the world in general, and of certain nations in particular, the natural world, and the dignity and honor that I have felt up to now my country has managed to hold on to in spite of some serious winds.
I know I will be derided for taking it all so seriously…after all, as so many have said, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties”, right?
I wish it were so. But I think that those of you who really believe that are going to get a very rude awakening, one that will last long after this horrible travesty has been technically undone. Which is the only light I cling to at this point…that the republicans will be so drunk with power that they will become giddy and mad, and show their truest colors, gladdening the hearts of some, but horrifying more, and the whole damn lot of them will be out on their asses in 2004.
Of course, by then so much damage will have been done, it will be cold comfort.
Oh, come on Stoid, laying it on a bit thick, aren’t we? I have no love of Republicans myself, being a staunch moderate, but there really not that much difference between yesterday and today.
I was thinking of starting a thread titled, “Congratulations, Mister President (or should I say, Mister Cheney), the plan worked”:
Raise a bogeyman where convenient, tie your party to the flag. Iraq! Iraq!
And it all happened a convenient 60 days before the election. Such an astounding coincidence.
To be fair, I toast the cynical calculation with which this was done. Amazingly vile, amazingly effective. Congratulations to the masterminds.
‘mmmmBaaaaahh!’, retorted one woolly voter as s/he was sheared.
And I predict: the rhetoric will die down, the weapons inspectors will do what they do. the U.S. will grumble at domestically convenient times. Nothing much will happen again on Iraq until fall of 2004.
The purpose of the exercise was served, as witness the events of this evening, and the pretense can now be quietly abandoned.
Huh. Speaking from the very vaguely center-left ( and no fan of either major party, or any of the minor parties for that matter ), I have to say I agree with Weirddave. This just ain’t that significant, when you get right down to it.
But I agree with you in one sense ( though I disagree a bit with the vehemence of your presentation ) - If the Republicans seriously overreach themselves in the next couple of years ( not a real likely proposition I think, given the still near equal divide in both houses ), the system will probably self-correct in the next electoral cycle to provide more opposition.
shrug But perhaps I am just getting annoyingly “big picture” in my complacent old age. Not being terribly partisan party-wise, it is kind of hard for me to work up much of a lather over any of this.
I spent last night researching the candidates, their platforms, and newspaper editorials, so that I could make an informed decision at the polls.
I voted for a Republican for governor. A democrat won.
I voted for a Democrat for House. A Republican won.
I voted against a Republican for Senate because he spent $1.6 million on his campaign as an incumbent without a major party opponent. He won anyway.
0 for 3. I still don’t feel too bad about it.
Why? Because it’s not the end of the world. I think if voters got their heads out of their asses and stopped voting in a different party thinking suddenly that’s going to fix everything, things would improve.
I think if politicians stopped their petty bickering and actually start doing things that are of value to their constituents, things would improve.
Most importantly, I think that if both voters and politicians would stop seeing the other side as fucking evil Lucifer Beezlebub Devil-creatures and started, I dunno, thinking rationally in terms of people and not groups, things would definitely improve.
ban political parties, put in term limits across the board,
force the media to allow debates between more than the two clones running against eachother and perhaps I will one day cast another vote.
til then I fail to see the point.
If the Democrats had swept the elections and filled the legislative bodies the world wouldn’t have become a better place.
The Republicans aren’t going to make America a theocracy or the Fourth Reiche.
Politicians are professionals whose job is influencing voters. Everything they do in office is for the purpose of furthering the party. Those who don’t play that way are rare and don’t generally get very far as their party won’t back them.
If Republicans go buck wild they will loose everything. The big concern I hear from hard core liberals is the over turn of Roe vs Wade. Do that and I assure you Bush cannot win re-election. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were attempts on his and other Republican politician’s lives if Roe vs Wade was in real trouble. Hot button issues are best to keep simmering so they can be used to stir up votes. While the party may have some opinions it really cares about pandering enough to its power base to not have it fragment and to adopt enough of the other parties agenda to sway people in the middle.
Your vote means nothing. This election means pretty much nothing. If I happen to be wrong and a tyrany starts setting in well then I appologize to you Stoid and promise I’ll be among the first freedom fighters. I find it unlikely that that will happen however.
I think Stoid was understating. Many of us are seriously fucked. Our lives are now in the hands of the Ken Lays of the world. And there will be few if any checks on their power.
And to the non-conservatives who had said it’s not that significant, well, GWB now owns the judiciary. All the vacancies that the Republicans kept from being filled by Clinton are now his. If O’Connor resigns, Roe v. Wade is gone. The effects of Bush’s ability to fill the judiciary will be felt for decades.
I’d like to point out to those who think we are seriously fucked that the government currently allows us a more powerful vote than a ballet or a buck, it’s called a bullet. Applied properly and in sufficient numbers these sorts of votes seriously alter the course of history.
So if you truly think the nation is lost over this election I suggest looking into the other options that exist for you to express your opinion as to how things should run.
The people have spoken. You may not like their choices, but the whole point of our system is that we have elections with rules. The congressional candidate that gets the most votes in his or her district wins. The senator that gets the most votes in his or her state wins. And the President that captures the most electoral votes wins.
If the complaint is, “Oh, I wish more people saw things as I do!” then I’d understand. But I hear a distinct tone of, “Oh, these people are WRONG; they cannot be trusted to make the right choice; they have cast us into terrible times!”
Perhaps I’m hearing something that isn’t there.
I was not pleased when Mr. Clinton sailed to victory over Mr. Dole, or here in Virginia when Mr. Warner defeated Mr. Earley last year for the Virginia governor’s job. But I recognized that it was the will of the people. I wish more had agreed with me, but I didn’t think they were WRONG for having exercised their choice.
Are the millions who gave the GOP the edge this election simply not to be trusted with the right to vote?
It is sad. All Republicans are out to create a Nazi state in the US and raise the rich to higher levels while casting the poor to the depths of hell. The Pubbies will take the poor and feed them to the dogs while the rich eat prime rib. The Pubbies will gut the Constitution and ban guns…errr…wait…that is the Dems…uh the Pubbies will ruin your life.
Grow the fuck up Stoid. It was an election and the Republicans won. While you may disagree with the Pubbies agenda they are NOT going to turn the US into a horror show.
Is this what’s being taught in schools? Since reading the Federalist Papers many years ago, I was under the impression that the US was a Representative Constitutional Republic, not a democracy of straight ‘majority rule’.
Stoid, honey, as a veteran of elections going back to 1974, allow me to reassure you that this isn’t the End Of Civilization As We Know It, and that in six years–eight max–the pendulum will swing the other way when the American People decide, once again, that it’s Time For A Change.
They always do.
Back and forth it goes, back and forth. Donkeys for a while, then elephants. They take turns, y’see?
Illinois went Democrat, if it makes you feel any better–Blagoevich, Madigan, Durbin.
FWIW, I really thought it was the End Of Civilization As We Know It in 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro was not elected Vice-President of the United States. “Finally! A woman! One heartbeat away from the highest office in the land! Yes!!”
