Be you Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal, there is, I believe, one thing that we can all agree on. The choices with which we are likely to be presented this November blow.
At this point, my best guess is that we are looking at a Kerry/Bush showdown. To put this another way, my choice will boil down to which of the elitist skull and bones soulless Washington insiders I perceive to be the lesser of two evils. Whoopity do!
I am not sure, but I may be hitting the “why bother to fucking vote” point. This is tough for me, as I was raised to view voting as a very important an valuable civic duty. I still think that it is, but I feel as if all meaning has been hijacked from the process.
Here is what I propose: What if we started a movement wherein we aggressively encouraged folks to participate in local politics and vote for their direct representatives to Congress, but boycotted Presidential elections. What we could then do is sponsor alternative activities on Presidential election days that would have a positive effect on the community. Perhaps we could all spend the time that would have been wasted voting for some random wealthy talking head picking up litter, or working at a soup kitchen. Failing that, maybe we gather together a huge barrel of clothes pins and set up a booth outside polling places to hand these out (after all, people will need them when they vote because both choices stink).
All I can tell you is what I wish, in retrospect, that I’d said to more Naderites in 2000: If you cannot perceive marked and fundamental differences between George W. Bush and his Democratic opponent, their respective avowed policies and histories, likely allegiances and exhibited character traits, then it would be quite helpful to the rest of us if you’d either start paying attention or stay out of any profession affecting public safety.
It is not that I can not see some differences, and it is not that I am not paying attention. Rather, I am becoming rather depressed in that I can not think of a Presidential election in which I have ever voted for a candidate. Rather, I pretty much cast my vote against someone that I see as being the greater of the two evils.
Sure, in some ways Kerry will be less evil than Bush but you can’t tell me that you actually like him.
I don’t have any specific reason to dislike him, and neither, I suspect, do you.
Comments like yours strike me as being from someone who basically just dislikes politicians and assumes they’re all more or less equally corrupt. Such a viewpoint is simply not based on information but rather on prejudice.
Actually, so far, I do like him. I think he’s handled his response to criticisms from the other Dem nominees, the affair accusation, and the Bush’s Guard debacle extremely well, among other situations. I had my doubts about him at first, but I’ve watched his campaign closely of late and am more and more convinced that he would make a very good president.
I have never voted for a Presidential candidate who I liked completely. I very much doubt that I ever will. If I only endorsed candidates with whom I entirely agreed and of whose every quirk and foible I approved, I’d never vote for anyone.
Surely there are enough indicators of character and ability, as well as clear differences on the issues that you can select the candidate who most closely approaches your preferences for policy and style of leadership? Remember that a vote “for” a candidate is not a blank check and an absolute statement of utter trust. You’re going to end up being dissatisfied in one way or another with any flawed human being voted into office. -Which one’s going to satisfy you more than the others?
You have to be a soulless selfish cold hearted asshole to be a politician in the first place. Sure you can be non corrupt, but you most likely won’t get elected if you are.
And from literally thousands of years of “do as I say, not as I do”. Leaders have been kicking the little people around since the dawn of time.
This guy is just like the rest of them, another sweet talking ultra rich whiteman who will whisper sweet nothings in your ear until he turns around and rapes you in the ass.
Thank you! I am all about being optimistic and all, but people have to be blind to not see that no matter which side of the spectrum you choose to view that our power has been seized by a bunch of self-serving corrupt fuckers
And people have to be dullwitted and imperceptive to believe that each and every “soulless selfish cold hearted asshole” (iow “human”) who seeks and attains political office does so with equal intent, ability and team support to “rape” the citizenry which put them there.
Either grab your red banner and foment revolution or shut the fuck up about how pointless elections are. (And I suppose your political solution would keep the self-servers down, eh? Good luck. Have fun stormin’ the castle.)
As for specific reasons to dislike him:
[ul]
[li]He went to Yale and was a member of the Skull and Bones society. Leaving all conspiracy nutjob theories aside, it is at least clear that this is a group rather interested in power and influence is a cultish and creepy way. [/li][li]He (or his mother at least) is a member of the Forbes family and he is currently married to a filthy rich heiress of the Heinz catsup family. Again, no real smoking gun here but none of this points to someone that would have a real understanding of the non-filthy rich concerns that I face day to day.[/li][li]He voted for the current Iraq War, but against reconstruction funding. To me this points to several things:[/li][list]
[li]That he was kowtowing to the “you must hate America if you don’t support our president” BS.[/li][li]That he lacks reasonable follow through (as in if we decide to blow the crap out of another country on spurious claims of massive threttening WMD and engage in regime change we had damn well clean up after ourselves later.[/li]
Or
[li]That he saw Howard Dean getting some traction with opposing the war and decided to jump on that band wagon rather than having a spine in the first place and standing up to the administration as he should have done in the first place.[/li][/ul]
[li]Finally, although I am sure that more will come up as time passes and that I could think of more if I tried, on a more personal note, there is just something about the way that he looks and talks that makes me want to punch him in the face.[/li][/list]
Otherwise, a nifty theory on your part. Only not.
This may be a rumor, but I have heard that it is possible to disagree on things politically with another person and still manage to not be a dick about it.
For example, it is possible for me to follow the news avidly and apply a great deal of thought and consideration to all of the facts that I glean and determine that voting for positions specifically to the Executive branch of the Federal Government has become, or at least is becoming, a joke. I can reach this conclusion, but still see that it is productive and important for me to participate in local politics as well as the process in which I choose my representative to the Federal Government (at the Senate and Congress level).
Now, I am guessing that some of your responses are not specifically directed at me. However, the general tone of your posts seems to be taking the stance that if I reach the conclusion that I am starting to reach that I am either not paying attention, or just stupid and either way wouldn’t it be better if I just stayed out of the way. I submit to you that it is possible to reach the conclusions that I have, and still be paying quite a bit of attention and be intelligent to boot.
Again, you can disagree all that you want. I would love to hear why. That being said, there is no reason for your hostility and for making these broad proclamations of what you believe as if they are irrefutable fact.
But guys, there’s never been a clearer distinction than now in the economic, democratic and foreign policy directions our two main political parties are offering. Given that each major candidate is venal and corrupt to some finite degree, it is both risible and dangerous to assume their respective self-interests translate into equally bad outcomes.
Give me the venal corruption of a Clinton, an Eisenhower or (god help me) an LBJ or GHW Bush over the venal corruption of a Cleveland, a Nixon or a GW Bush any day. That’s just MHO, of course, but if you have an opinion about which particular direction carries you to the worst screwing, it only makes sense to vote for the guy pointing in a less unfriendly direction.
And it isn’t that I can’t see that Kerry (IMHO) is the lesser of two evils. Always assuming that he gets the nomination, I will probably hold my nose and vote for the guy (hence my original clothespin idea).
I guess what bugs me the most about him is the whole voting for the Iraq war at first and them voting against funding the reconstruction later. I know that it is being spun as somehow consistent, but to me it points to a lack of spine to stand up against something wrong in the first place (especially considering his record post Vietnam) and then not following through with the consequences of his earlier decision. These are not qualities that I look for in the leader of the free world.
Also, the sheer access to wealth and special interests that he has as a result of his family and his long years in politics make me nervous as hell.
And I still can’t get past the urge to punch him in the face. There is something about his every mannerism and the way that he looks that grate on my nerves something fierce. I picture him growing up as that little kid that always smelled vaguely of milk that the other kids would stand in line to push around.
Fuck you, asshole. Don’t pull this shit after patronizingly call me “blind” in your oh-so-worldly jaded way for failing to jump on board with your shortsighted belief that all politicians are cut from the same cloth.
So you’re gonna vote for self-serving corrupt fuckers only as high as the US legislature, and cast a “no vote” for Pres, eh? And you think your one-day-every-four-year community activism movement will have more effect over those four years than real votes from the participants would have had?
If I can’t condescend to naivety like that, well I guess I should give up condescension entirely.
Grover Cleveland wasn’t corrupt at all. He cleaned up Buffalo as mayor, reforming the Sewer Authority to get rid of patronage, fought against Tammany as governor, as President, brought suit against railroads to get back federal land that he thought was being misused, and his anti-corruption stance probably cost him reelection.
Ah screw it; I’m gonna quit the back and forth posting. My self-righteous ire keeps confronting my desire to be persuasive. (Big character flaw, I know.)
You’re someone who actually cares, Binarydrone. I should remember that when I take offense.
(On very belated preview: Captain Amazing, I plead mental dyslexia. I put Cleveland on the wrong side of that venal/corrupt continuum. Sorry.)
I think that we are out of sequence posting wise here. I am not calling you blind. I am stating that one would have to be blind not to see that our political process has been seized by self-serving evil men. I have no bone to pick with you, and really am trying to work through some issues of personal politics that are troubling me a great deal.
If you do not believe that our political process has, indeed, been hijacked in the way that I describe and thus infer that I am calling you, specifically, blind then allow me to extend my apology. I guess that I could have attempted to find a better way to say that.
It is not so much a matter of me believing that all politicians are precisely the same amount of evil (or as you state cut from the same cloth) but that there is something inherently evil (to varying degrees) about all of them (at least all of them that I have to date encountered). This is causing me a bit of despair.
So no, I don’t think that if I participate in some every four years activism that it will magically make things better. The thing is that I also do not believe that holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils every four years is making things any better either, and so am looking for alternatives.
I think that there’s varying degrees of evil in all of us, politicians and non politicians, and that politicians aren’t particularly worse people than non-politicans. I mean, there are corrupt and venal people in politics…but there are corrupt and venal plumbers. I’ve also known idealistic, honest elected officials.
In fact, in a lot of ways, I think politicians are more honest now than they were in the past, partly just because it’s so much easier to get caught. If a congressman in 1800 accepted a bribe for a vote, he could be pretty sure word wouldn’t get back to his district, but now, with instant communication, and a national press that’s eager to ferret out scandals and embarrassing information, he can’t be so sure. Now, even the appearance of impropriety is enough to ruin a political career. There are other reasons, in large part because anticorruption laws have gotten so much stricter.
And as to your idea, you’re not going to actually save any time by not voting for President. You’ve already said that you’re going to be voting for Congress and state and local elections, so you’re still going to be standing in line, going into the voting booth, and voting. You’re just not going to be marking one line of your ballot, and that won’t save you any more time than a second or two.
This, I think is a point on which I disagree. In my personal philosophy, the very urge to seek power inherently points to a character flaw (I believe that Plato may have touched on this very issue in some book that he wrote). I, personally, have not encountered what I would call an honest elected official, but I am willing to entertain the notion that I have somehow just had a very bad run of luck.
Also, I am not clear on where I implied that I was trying to save time.
“He only blames injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.”