ARSENIC BE JUDGE, GIN BE JURY
Other political thoughts: While I understand the inherent faults with generalizations, I want to try one on. It seems to me that those who lean to the left accept that our leaders are human and thus flawed, and we make concessions for that. We often look like apologists, simply because we might weigh the value of a mistake and excuse it if it doesn’t tip a scale too far. (Like, for those of us who couldn’t care less who the Prez sleeps with, not when everything else is working.) We also know we won’t agree with anyone 100% of the time. Whereas people on the right don’t want to see flaws in their President, and they will staunchly deny they are there and defend their actions just as zealously as the left tries to explain. Neither approach is automatically right or wrong, I just happen to agree more with the first. (This is similar to Neal Shaffer’s thoughts following last night’s debate.)
The folks who are for Nader because they are starving for a third choice actually seem to me to end up in the same camp of thinking as the right, hence their ability to ignore that Ralph will knowingly take handouts from his opponents. This rush to try to reform the system feels misguided, though, in that they haven’t yet found a decent candidate either. Bush may be a Big Mac and Kerry a Whopper, but Nader is a Jumbo Jack – none of them are the high-end of burgers. It seems misguided to me that those of us who don't want to support Nader are labelled as opposed to the third party thinking; it's no different than the Bush-Cheney "you're for us or against us" approach to politicking. Personally, I’d love to see Howard Dean spend the next four years building something and making a real go of it as an independent in 2008--doing exactly what Nader hasn’t done and working to reform the country from the ground up, so that his candidacy is little more than the charge of the self-obsessed.
Current Soundtrack: Duran Duran, "Too Much Information" single
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2004 Jamie S. Rich
1 comment:
I think that is a fair generalization. I do wonder, however, if this tendency on the right comes from the religious bit of the inhabits a chunk of the people who on the right. Because, once God is on your side and you think he is on the candidate's side, there's no question about the guy. Right? Because God would NEVER lead a believer to the wrong candidate. I don't know its just an idea about how the Right works.
What it seems to be is that Nader and Bush offer membership into an exclusive club: Be one of the Chosen people, Vote Bush. (for more on this, see http://www.livejournal.com/users/jdeguzman about Bush's screening of audience members.) I think its an odd sort of secular application of what used to be a religious sentiment.
The problem is that its difficult to combat these offers of membership (after all, Kerry's club doesn't look as good to the Religious Right as Bush's does) So Kerry is left to do what he is trying to do mobilize the people that are available to change their mind.
Of course, the stupid bit about the people who join up Bush's club is that they don't notice (or care?) how much he lies both about his treatment of them and generally about things. Be one of the chosen people, get treated shabbily by the son of a former Reagan Era Official. Hopefully that will never be what I want to hear to get my vote.
-Chris
http://www.qedcomics.com
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