Vote for things, not against them
I am secretly glad Bush won the U.S. election.
Certainly not because Bush is a good president; he’s a dolt, and an international laughingstock. And certainly not because he is surrounded by a bunch of extremely intelligent - and evil - individuals who are bent on retaining U.S. global hegemony.
No, I’m glad, because American progressives are weak and hypocritical, and I’m hoping that this will maybe wake them up, though I think this is doubtful.
Flashback to the Democratic primary: John Kerry had run for president several times, as I recall, and each time he didn’t even make it out of the primaries. He didn’t make it out of the primaries, because he is only marginally competent, and he is completely uninspiring. This time around, though, Democrats felt that he had the best chance to oust the President because he was “in the shit” in Vietnam, while Bush was busy beer funneling in Alabama.
When asked why they were voting for Kerry, Democratic primary participants consistently said, as a mantra: “I think he has the best chance of beating Bush”.
So, even during their own election run-up, the Dems were proudly proclaiming that they were voting against something…that, rather than have their own vision, they were content simply hating someone else’s.
This is not the kind of message that inspires people.
Almost all of my friends are “liberals”; I work with filmmakers and non-profits and so forth, and I have been incensed, all summer, at how they were religiously lining up in a veritable crusade to oust the sitting President, who has torched the economy, who is a religious zealot, and who is murdering people left and right in countries where we should not exist.
The reason I was so annoyed? Because they were all aligning with a pro-war Washington insider who wants to continue murdering people so that we can grab the oil and maintain the incredibly fragile status quo that is our hyperinflated economy.
So, basically, all my anti-war friends abandoned their convictions about human rights, and so on, in order to support a guy who wants to wage the exact same war, only with better PR (read: “global test”).
The lesson, I think, for America’s liberals and progressives is this: stick to your convictions, instead of accepting “the lesser of two evils”. Stop supporting candidates who are extortionists and murderers. Stop abandoning all of your internal beliefs about right and wrong simply because you think one potential outcome is marginally better than another.
In short: vote for things instead of against them.
Oh, and by the way: I voted for Michael Badnarik, who is opposed to the war in Iraq. Willfully killing people is, for me, just not a negotiable issue.