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Add an EventNader's violent death still a real rib-tickler for Kerry voters
"Calm down Ralph, I'm not referring to you. For you I prescribe a long vacation – a road trip in a vintage Ford Pinto."Ha ha ha! Do you get it? It's like this: "vintage" Ford Pintos used to explode in rear end collisions. So if Ralph Nader took a long road trip in one, he could be immolated in a fiery crash. See, Pizzo apparently disagreed with Nader's electoral strategy this time around--so Nader's painful death has become a source of humor to him! And what's even better is that there's irony here too, because according to Ford's own estimates, Nader's actions in exposing the dangers of the Pinto saved 180 people per year from burn deaths, and that many more each year from serious burn injuries. So for him to die that way would be really funny! It makes you wonder if Stephen Pizzo (or anyone dear to him) was ever in a Pinto that was rear-ended, but which didn't explode because of Nader's selfless actions. Boy, wouldn't that be a twist? Even funnier!
This echoes the chuckles Bob Harris offered us all when he ran a poll just before the election that humorously asked (he's a funny guy, you see--he writes for TV and movies), "What would you like to contribute most to Ralph Nader's campaign?" Among his suggested answers:
- A seat belt, air bag, and fire hood equipped ice floe
- A shiny new '65 Chevy Corvair
Go ahead and do some Google searches--I bet you can find plenty more examples of your own. You'd be amazed to discover just how many Kerry voters get a kick out of imagining a painful death for Nader. Take Robin Supak, a loving parent and self-described "Poke-mom" (Pokemon+mom, just in case you were wondering) who wrote in her "Song for Ralph Nader": "Please stop these dreams where you perish in a Pinto!" (that's her exclamation point, not mine).
Still not getting it? Well, maybe you could think of it this way: it's like 2004 is really 1984, Nader is Emmanuel Goldstein ("the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies"), and Kerry voters are living out one big Two Minutes Hate--only instead of lasting two minutes, it seems to have no end. And that's funny. Isn't it...?
You know what? Maybe you're right. Actually, that's not funny. It's not funny at all.
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combine this with the unwillingness of the Democrats to actually demand that the ballots of their supporters be accurately counted, and you get the predictable result: 4 more years of Bush
apparently, settling old scores was more important than winning the election
so, if anything the joke is on the Democrats
--Richard Estes
Davis, CA
You are ADVOCATING the two-party system by saying if only the D's didn't have to have a SHRED of DISSENT, everything would be okay today. You are also ADVOCATING the sickening ploys they used with their money in courtrooms to try to destroy the only man running a serious campaign with a voice against war.
No amount of 'extra money' would save the Ds, and suggesting that we must is pretty sick. The D's are digging their own grave, one congressional vote after another. It is not yours or my job to STOP, REPRESS, and DESTROY democratic process to 'save' the Democraps.
They have leadership and they have repeatedly CHOSEN to look the other way when the R scams were SCREAMING at them, e-voting, racial disenfrancishement, etc.
They are the same millionaires as the Rs. Please wake up.
There are plenty of Democrats who are not millionaires. Please make a distinction between the electorate and the elected. And although I understand your superior feeling toward the Democratic party and all their shortcomings, it's not really going to help you build a 3rd party if you don't appeal to some of the existing members of one or other of the 2 parties that are currently running the show. Give the electorate a better alternative, but don't lose them by name-calling.
56,834,641 people voted for Bush, and 52,166,068 voted for Kerry. A third party can't win national office opposed by all 109 million people.
You are ADVOCATING the two-party system by saying if only the D's didn't have to have a SHRED of DISSENT, everything would be okay today. You are also ADVOCATING the sickening ploys they used with their money in courtrooms to try to destroy the only man running a serious campaign with a voice against war.
No amount of 'extra money' would save the Ds, and suggesting that we must is pretty sick. The D's are digging their own grave, one congressional vote after another. It is not yours or my job to STOP, REPRESS, and DESTROY democratic process to 'save' the Democraps.
They have leadership and they have repeatedly CHOSEN to look the other way when the R scams were SCREAMING at them, e-voting, racial disenfrancishement, etc.
They are the same millionaires as the Rs. Please wake up.]
The only purpose of my post was to point out the hypocrisy of the Democrats in pushing the critical importance of winning the election while Democratic leadership and its supporters, like SEIU, ran off into the woods during the height of the campaign on a snark hunt against Nader, please don't read anymore into it
I won't bore you with the reasons that I voted for Kerry: he lost. At this point, my personal view is that the likelihood of any organized political party, including the Greens, undertaking actions to reverse the current course of American history is not very high, and one of earlier posts on indybay is a pretty good reflection of my general viewpoint. Please focus on the last two paragraphs of this post if you find the entirety of it tedious. Change is going to occur as result of the unplanned, spontaneous actions of people most directly affected by the horrible policies of Bush and the United States.
I would just add the brief, post-election comment that we are witnessing the sinister marriage of neoliberalism and religious fundamentalism in the US as the means for creating strong public support for the dismantlement of the public sector globally, something that neither could accomplish on their own.
--Richard
[a rambling discourse on the future
by RWF Monday, Oct. 25, 2004 at 10:49 AM
restes60 [at] earthlink.net
"What can result in radical social change in the US?"
Unfortunately, I believe that most of the stimulus will be external before it is internal.
As noted by an array of political figures, from the right to the left, the most important paradox of the American system is its deterministic need to expand militarily and economically, even as the ability of the US to maintain this system continues to weaken.
Hence, the US has military bases in about 150 countries, and pursues free trade zones and agreements, even as soldiers police Iraqi cities without flak jackets and drive broken down vehicles, while domestically, jobs, even now technology ones, are outsourced. As Thomas Friedman once candidly admitted several years ago, the military/industrial complex assists in the imposition of American economic values on the unwilling, but the burden can no longer be sustained.
The Iraq war is a watershed event, marking the end of the postwar era commenced in 1945, and if the resistance prevails, as I believe that it ultimately will do, it will intensify opposition to American intervention in all forms. I do not identify with the resistance ideologically, if it is even possible for anyone to do so, as it is a very fractured endeavor, except to the extent that it wants what all countries in the world should have: freedom from American dominion.
Strangely, foreign leftists with 1960s roots, like Tariq Ali and
Christopher Hitchens, seem to be caught in a time warp, and see the American military and economic system as nearly omnipotent, as, while arguing over Iraq in DemocracyNOW!, both spoke pessimistically over the prospect of the resistance prevailing militarily. Perhaps, one needs to live in the US to see the increasingly illusory and hysterical assertions of US power.
Similarly, defeat in Iraq is likely to be accompanied domestically by the continued unraveling of the economic system created by Carter, Reagan and Clinton. The halcyon days of 20% returns for mutual fund investors, many of them middle income workers chasing money for retirement and health care coverage, has already ended, but the consequences have not yet been experienced.
The final shoe will drop when the real estate boom ends, as the bill comes due for a neoliberal era where the populace was wrongly lead to believe that, by relinquishing its public sector benefits, it could live even more prosperously. The whole charade has been financed on resources seized from
the rest of the world, and the music is already beginning to stop. Along these lines, one of the most alarming phenomena in the last year or so has been the extent to which government tax revenues have not been increasing with the reported levels of economic growth, suggesting that there is a
systemic problem that is becoming more and more acute.
So, there will be an opportunity, and it may just be lurking over the horizon. A long way around to saying: take advantage of events as they occur, and don't be rendered passive by strict adherance to ideology.
Or, as the real RWF said, when asked about his political philosophy. He said that he just had a good nose for bullshit, and that when he smelled it, he just started firing in all directions. Possibly good advice for dealing with an unpredictable future.
"I think we should work towards more radical actions and I don't think most on the left believe what I'm arguing against, but one keeps hearing a small group essentially arguing for a general strike or uprising today and that's what seems so counterproductive since its is the right-wing stereotype of
the Left."
This is an excellent comment. When times change, people change, and social change. The concept of the general strike is a 1930s labor, working class concept. Unions were on the rise, and people were willing to die to organize them.
Well, obviously, things are different today. So, what to do? Again, it might be a good idea to look around, and elevate experience, and, thus, deemphasize ideology a little bit, just to see what's really happening out there. Mao used to periodically criticize Marxists who learned their theory solely from books, demanding that they not speak until they had worn out their shoes investigating.
One of the most difficult psychological problems in bringing about change is revealed by the following quote: "So, it's also my attitude toward society that I see its failings and I see that it has to be changed, and yet I'm content to be a member of this society." The comment has two important aspects: First, even activists need to be candid about the extent to which they find fulfillment in contemporary life, while advocating
radical changes, and thus confront this contradiction directly, and, second, persuading people to step forward, and go beyond the rituals of their day to day life is always difficult.
It also hints at a political peril. If the left does not confront this
contradiction effectively, the right will fill the vacuum, as it is doing today.
My guess is that the actions that move things forward will be spontaneous and poorly planned in nature, but fortuitously timely, conducted by people with, by the standards of the people who post here, a most definitely imperfect political consciousness.
Indeed, they probably won't even understand someone calling their activity an "action". For example, the situation with the guard and reserve units forced to serve in Iraq, and their families, should be monitored carefully in this regard. I think that there is a potential for them to do some things that could definitely be destabilizing, with the reserve unit in Iraq that refused orders being a possible harbinger of things to come.]