Attention nonparticipants
Nov. 6th, 2002 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
substituteThis is for all you Green-voting, non-voting, "anarchist" types who don't vote because "they're all the same".
Wake the fuck up.
They're not all the same. The people who won yesterday want to take away reproductive rights, roll back civil rights, dump a huge tax burden on working people, strengthen entrenched monopolies, chop down every tree in North America, and send us to war for little reason.
I see the arguments that "I can't give my vote to the opposition because they're slimy and annoying" and I have to laugh. Folks, politics is not about whether you feel beautiful and pure and ideologically correct leaving the booth. Politics is practical. It's about what you can accomplish with that vote, in the real world where we all live. It's not about reading 'zines and drinking wheatgrass juice and being part of a totally ignored nouveau hippie subculture. This stuff has real-world consequences, and not just for you and your painfully correct friends.
So I hope you get what you wanted, anyway. Maybe at the next party you can put on your hemp cap and sweet talk some girl into bed with your tales of how you stood up to the Man and didn't cave in and vote for some compromise candidate because you're keepin' it real. Or maybe you just got to stop off for a latte on your way to work instead of punching a hole in some cardboard.
In any case the rest of us are going to be spending the next two years watching George II and his cronies take away our country. Thanks for nothing.
Wake the fuck up.
They're not all the same. The people who won yesterday want to take away reproductive rights, roll back civil rights, dump a huge tax burden on working people, strengthen entrenched monopolies, chop down every tree in North America, and send us to war for little reason.
I see the arguments that "I can't give my vote to the opposition because they're slimy and annoying" and I have to laugh. Folks, politics is not about whether you feel beautiful and pure and ideologically correct leaving the booth. Politics is practical. It's about what you can accomplish with that vote, in the real world where we all live. It's not about reading 'zines and drinking wheatgrass juice and being part of a totally ignored nouveau hippie subculture. This stuff has real-world consequences, and not just for you and your painfully correct friends.
So I hope you get what you wanted, anyway. Maybe at the next party you can put on your hemp cap and sweet talk some girl into bed with your tales of how you stood up to the Man and didn't cave in and vote for some compromise candidate because you're keepin' it real. Or maybe you just got to stop off for a latte on your way to work instead of punching a hole in some cardboard.
In any case the rest of us are going to be spending the next two years watching George II and his cronies take away our country. Thanks for nothing.
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i agree (sort of)
Date: 2002-11-06 05:23 pm (UTC)If one's conviction is that the political system is broken and corrupt, there is no contradiction in voting strategically, i.e. voting for Democrats. In fact, one is *obligated* to consider how broken the system is in making a choice. To vote for the 'ideal' candidate is like closing your eyes.
If one votes Green, but does nothing in between elections to ensure that this is a viable choice, nothing's really going to change.
Finally though... I understand you're angry, but come on. Not all third-party voters are poseurs. They are trying to open the way for future successes by their party, for instance, maybe embarassing the powers that be into getting onto televised debates. I don't know how if there's an indisputably right choice between taking a stand for the long-term health of the democracy, versus avoiding short-term crises. Honest people can disagree about that.
Re: i agree (sort of)
Date: 2002-11-06 06:19 pm (UTC)Loopholes have been found; events unanticipated by the founding fathers have transpired; extra-constitutional modes of power have arisen; all of these things have been exploited by the types of people who exploit such things. Those people still have their heads, therefore these things occurred with the tacit approval of 'the people'. It is 'the people' who are broken.
Returning to the idea that I typed above, the American left have been far too involved with name-calling, obsessions with fantastic political and social philosophies, pining over the injustices of the english language, and splintering off from each other when they don't get their way. Meanwhile the right spent the 70's building a coalition, and even though the various philosophies within that coalition know they won't get their way immediately, they've all been willing to stick with it until a suitable environment in which they might get their way arises (with an occasional defection to which the majority of the right say 'uh...OK; you have fun with that, now... We'll be over here when you're done.') In this environment, it's no wonder the Democratic party abandoned liberalism - we're lame. We are no way to win an election; and as much as people want to apply philosophies to parties, parties don't care: they are in the business of winning elections. After all, which party was it that freed the slaves?
I've been hearing these little peeps about 'new Continental Congress' and 'revised constitution'. There are people out there who think the system is broken enough for that, and they almost have the approval of enough states to pull it off. This is a bad idea - I can't think of a worse time to attempt such a thing. America is at best a 23-way civil war waiting to happen. At least the founding fathers were able to agree that 'Europe sucks; let's not be that'. At least they had some guiding ideologies that purported to be for the 'good of the people' - even if those people were white, male, and middle class. I don't think they did a very bad job. A continental congress today would be all about slobbering, ravenous interest groups just chomping at the bit for the ability to fuck with the machinations of the US government.
The Green Party? I'm sympathetic, but they're dead. They couldn't even garner enough votes to qualify for Federal Matching Funds in an election in which they had a WELL-KNOWN candidate with SPECIFIC ideas running against two of the most BORING, UNFIT, and DISLIKED candidates that have ever existed in any American election. If there was any time that the vote was gonna rock, it was then.
And Nader aside, when you vote for a Green Party candidate are you voting for a specific person with a specific platform and specific and realistic plans for attaining that platform? Does such a creature exist? Or are you merely voting for the idea that polluting the environment is bad, and stuff....?
Re: i agree (sort of)
Date: 2002-11-06 06:22 pm (UTC)But I enjoyed my rant, so it shall stand.
Re: i agree (sort of)
Date: 2002-11-07 03:20 am (UTC)Fair enough. Their platform is rather wacky in many places too, I'm not sure I'd like to see any of these people actually in power! :) But the fact that they exist makes the Dems at least watch their back, they can't become *actually* identical to the Republicans without losing support.
You and I share a disgust of the left as we know it...
I disagree with your chracterization of the public as being "lame". A lot of people are genuinely concerned these days and don't know where to turn. One obvious thing that's different from the Dems of your youth; unions have much less power and influence, and can't focus discontent into action like they used to. I don't want to see the USA or Canada turn into France, but that might be half the problem right there.