> No one should have to look for reasons to vote for Clinton/Gore. There are
> several obvious ones, though, including Bush and Quayle being the first two.
> Then there was the GOP convention, which was an abomination of the first
> magnitude. The spectacle of that affair should be sufficient to galvanize
> support of any free-thinking person anywhere. I can't recall a more dangerous
> and offensive [train of rhetoric in my 40-odd years on the planet.
Yes, I expect to give my vote to the Democrats this year again - I've
done the same at every Presidential election, but I never felt I was
voting *for* anyone. I've always seen myself as voting *against* the
ticket I was most afraid of - the Republicans.
Do y'all really think that Clinton/Gore are going to get *anything*
accomplished? I don't mean to disparage them as people - in his recent
book, Gore said that the human race is addicted to consumption as a
means of anesthetizing itself from the emotional & spiritual pain of
"civilized" living; it's a remarkable position for a mainstream
politician to take. Clinton I have less sympathy for - he talks a good
centrist-democrat line, but I just can't trust the guy; he seems to
actually *want* to be president for some reason (presumably
power-addiction), instead of just wanting to do the Right Thing.
Even if they have the political will, do presidents really have the
power to change things? Are they really that powerful? I have come to
believe that, no matter what a president genuinely *wants* to do, s/he
is really quite hamstrung by the position - special interests,
multi-national corporations, a public that wants fewer taxes, more
services, and a strong war machine, all at the same time. The internal
machinery of the political parties requires them to repay political
debts with jobs in the administration, which gives us characters like
John Sununu (sp?) & James Watt.
Look at Ronald Regan for a second. Unlike Nixon, he was not an evil man;
he was a simple-minded over-the-hill actor who believed his own scripts.
On at least one occasion, he actually confused his personal history with
a role he once played in a movie. This is why so many people trusted
him: he *was* sincere, but he was a sincere puppet, a figurehead instead
of a leader. I believe that Reagan genuinely wanted to balance the
budget, but he was unable to accomplish it, because it's not what the
Powers That Be wanted. We got the biggest military buildup in history,
an almost complete rollback of the civil rights gains of the previous 30
years, and (quite the opposite of the Republican platform) an
unprecedented level of deficit spending. Why? The people and
organizations who really run this country didn't want to balance the
budget - but they did want more tax $$ to go to the arms companies and
to the armed forces, and less power to go to the underclass. Reagan was
the most powerful president of recent times, yet he still couldn't
accomplish what HE wanted - it was the agenda of those that convinced
people to vote for him that was accomplished.
If you disagree with me about what Reagan really wanted, look at it from
the other side. I had my disagreements with Carter, but no one seems to
question that he was a well-intentioned and determined Democrat. When
his administration failed from overall ineffectiveness, and a terrifying
majority of voters fell for the thinly-veiled corporate puppet of Ronald
Reagan, I began to suspect that the entire administrative branch of the
Fed Gov't was really not under the control of the President, and that no
leader, no matter how well-intentioned or competent, could overcome the
combined forces of: the DC beaureaucracy; the military-industrial
complex; a post-colonial world ruled increasingly by opportunisitc arms
dealers, coke smugglers, and covert intelligence operatives; and a
public that vacillates between Viet Nam-phobia and world-cop-ism,
between not-in-my-back-yard-ism and spirited globalism.
I vote for Democrats in a desparate attempt to retain some civil
liberties and to try to keep people from starving and freezing to death,
since Dems usually choose to exploit those social interests for their
own purposes; their record is spotty, but not as bad as the Republicans,
who choose to exploit reactionary social interests for THEIR own
purposes. The fundamental nature of political parties, whether they're
Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Libertarian, or even Green, is the
same: their primary objective is not to serve the People, it is to get
their people into power and keep them there, at any cost. Like most
institutions, political parties are created for idealistic purposes, and
in their youth may actually accomplish good things; eventually, though,
they end up neglecting those ideals in the name of their own internal
interests - the expansion of their power base and the personal ambitions
of their leaders.
The only lasting solution I can see is for humans to adapt to the use of
spontaneous forms of social organization, without firm leaders or
institutions that eventually subvert our interests to theirs. That's
why, the more Rainbow tries to create some _process_ that will ensure
that we Gather, or Council, or scout, or otherwise do something the
"right" way, the more we lose our vision. If relatively spontaneous
organization fails, we need to get better at spontaneously organizing
ourselves, not make our processes more formal. Instead of making more
rules, we need to get better at living without them.
Until we get that figured out, I expect I will continue to vote against
reactionaries....my $.02....
==========================================================================
-- thumper@uujobs.com -- | A population of sheep will eventually beget a
Please clean up. Thanks! | government of wolves. -- William Sloan Coffin
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I am no longer a contact for legaliaison, mid-atlantic, or anything else.
Try Thomas from Peace Park @ (202)462-0757; or POB 5604, Takoma Park, MD,
20913; or Allan's Rainbow Hotline @ (202)797-3625; or the Colorado Tribe
at Rainbow, 1704-14th St., Suite 359, Boulder, CO 80302, ph. 303/838-4577