I Hate Presidental Elections (Rant)

[citrakayah]

The e-zine Expanded Horizons looks interesting. They explicitly stated that they wanted therian and otherkin speculative fiction works, and I can provide that quite easily. And I could even possibly get paid.

Now, on to the rant.

We pretty much have two options, it seems: Romney (or Santorum) or Obama. I like much of what Obama says, but whether he is well-intentioned and merely gridlocked or cynically exploiting people is irrelevant to the central point, which is that our fucking government has the kind of ability to adapt that I would expect of a fucking dinosaur with an inability to mutate. I find it very unlikely that he is not well-intentioned (faced with the kind of opposition he is, things are likely going to be either moving to the right on policy or getting nothing done), personally, but I also don’t care. He is center-right on many issues, and while he agrees with far more of my beliefs than Rick Santorum there are quite a few he doesn’t. Lesser of two evils and all that stuff.

The United States should institute preferential voting and public campaign funding. Immediately. If I could vote in November 2012 (I can’t, but only by less than a month), I would be forced by a desire to avoid contributing to any Santorum or Romney victory by voting for Obama, because he would be far better than either of them. I would prefer, however, a Nader presidency. With a Green Congress.

People call the Democratic Party ‘left’ or ‘center-left’ but it is center-right at best these days. I see little difference between the two parties on most economic matters. And yeah, I blame the fact that right-wing groups are better funded and better organized, what with the Koch brothers and Exxon and the American Legislative Exchange Committee (which seriously does operate like a shadowy underground organization of secrecy) and the Heritage Foundation.

I hate this place. I hate the reverie so many are held in by a two hundred year old document written by people who by our standards are fools and bigots and who I could outwit easily, crafting a better government by myself (No, really, I could make a better governing document today than they could two hundred years ago, because I have two hundred years of hindsight to see everything they got wrong and didn’t take into account, like the Industrial Revolution). I hate the stranglehold the doctrine of rampant individualism has on people, with the philosophy that people should care about themselves first and foremost and not have an ounce of compassion for others, and that people always get what they deserve. I hate the doctrine of human superiority, where we should care nothing for any species but our own. I hate the doctrine of laisses-faire. I look at these things, and I feel little but disgust at policies that have caused the sufferings of millions--no, billions--of innocent sentients. I do not >i>hate those that pursue such policies, because I think it counterproductive, but I will fight to my last breath opposing such policies.

But I don’t want to stay here. I fear that if I fight long enough and hard enough, I shall become bitter and cynical. A lifetime of ideological war can’t possibly be good, not if there never seems to be anything to show for it.

I’m fighting to move reality closer to my ideal of utopia. I can deal with the fact that my ideal of utopia will never be met. I can merely hope to make reality more like it. And I know that I and those allied with me are succeeding... but it seems to be happening so slowly. And when I push on society to change... where I live, you don’t really see it changing. This is my private hell. I can push all I want, but the town in Northeast Missouri where I live is trapped in the past too much for my tastes.

Makes me very glad one of my first orders of business is to get the hell out of here.

Comments

[shang]

I'm abstaining from voting this turn around because I heartily dislike Obama and the nominees for the Republican party. I refuse to vote for the better of two evils, which elections have all pretty much turned into.

Good luck with getting out of your town. Just don't come to the south -- it's horribly stuck in the past on a lot of issues.

[citrakayah]

Why not vote for Nader, then? Or whoever is on the Green ticket.

Granted, they're not going to win, but at least you're doing something with your vote.

Also, one question: If faced with the possibility of Santorum and his allies in power, how would you strike out against them if you disliked the other side that could win?

I plan on moving to New England. That, or California.

[shang]

I don't like Nader, either. I honestly haven't found a candidate I like and the one person I'd vote for, even though he's batsh*t insane, isn't running.

No idea. I don't like any of the candidates and I dislike how you're forced into a "better of the evils" thought when it comes to voting.

The New England area is actually really good and I'd love to move there myself. Having lived in California, I refuse to go back. The school system is horrible on all levels and the politics isn't all that great. Couple those with the mentality of a majority of the people there and it's not a very good place.

[citrakayah]

I plan on going to Berkeley, College of Environmental Design. And I've also been to California before. I quite liked the northern part.

[shang]

Northern California should just separate. :P North Cali isn't too bad. I did enjoy that area, but once I got a little more south I couldn't handle it for the most part.

[jewelfox]

I was going to ask where you're moving. >.> I loved Vermont. It's like a different planet. They outlawed billboards, unless it's on property that you're doing business on personally. They're even planning public health care.

But aliaspseudonym lives in Canada ._.

[citrakayah]

Boston has certain... advantages... for me. Firstly, I don't have to get new citizenship. There's the aquarium, too, and I've been to Boston before. It's kind of familiar.

Where in Vermont would you recommend?

[jewelfox]

I'm not sure ... I haven't looked in a little while. It depends on what you like, too. There are a lot of neat smaller towns.

The biggest city is still Burlington.

[allati]

This is just... what makes voting so difficult for me. You would vote for Obama so as not to contribute to Santorum (and frankly, in the US, where you have psychopaths like Santorum, I can genuinely understand this position and would probably do the same), but here I find it basically impossible to do that because I would feel horrible at someone I voted for contributing to things I can't agree with, perhaps even find reprehensible. holy run on sentence batman.

But it is harder in the UK, because we don't essentially have the Anti-Christ to try and keep out of power. We just have a bunch of apathetic PC losers, and whoever you vote for you're going to get stuff you like and stuff you don't, none of which ever seems like it'll be enough to assuage my guilt at "voting in" someone "bad".

So I don't vote. Meh.

[citrakayah]

Don't you have the BNP, though? Granted, from what I understand they're very fringe and get stuck there...

[allati]

Yeeeeeeah. Voting to keep out the BNP is like voting to keep out someone who's pro-child abuse. In theory, they're evil enough that it's worth doing, but in practice they don't actually stand a chance because no one else is voting for them either.

In recent years they've looked like getting a fingernail in the bottom rung of the ladder, but that's purely because some of our governments have been so very weak and PC when it comes to things like immigration, benefits, asylum, deportation, and so on.

[citrakayah]

What do you mean by 'weak and PC' when it comes to those things? One would think that being politically correct about immigration would equate to not demonizing them.

[allati]

"PC" over here is often used in a derogatory manner to refer to PCness being taken to extremes, which is sort of what I meant. It is no longer "PC" here to even vaguely imply that people born and raised in Britain might be even a teeny tiny bit more important than asylum seekers and immigrants (illegal and otherwise). You get backlash and need to tread carefully in case you get called racist or a bigot or whatever, politicians included. Any policy which could be percieved as implying someone who just arrived (including illegally) doesn't have the same financial rights as any native gets torn apart by human rights people, amongst others.

Which, by the way, is why even though refugees are required to stop in the first safe country, they instead skip through a whole load to get to the UK.

That's what I mean by weak and PC, in this context x_o I believe all people are equal, but I don't think people who peek their head above the parapet on the subject of things like welfare for illegal immigrants should end up full of bullet holes from the PC lobby. There are various issues it's almost impossible for politicians to discuss properly because of it.



ETA: Take the above with a grain of salt, because I am not hugely up to date on politics, although to be fair that was partly because I was sick of nobody actually discussing anything because they got slapped for not being PC.

[citrakayah]

Depending on what they're peeking their head above and saying, I might be able to agree with that. In many circumstances I'm perfectly fine with welfare for illegal immigrants, but from what I understand Britain has money issues right now. If forced to choose between welfare for citizens and welfare for illegal immigrants... well, I personally would be more likely to choose illegal immigrants, because they're more likely to be worse off, but a government's primary responsibility is to its citizens. That doesn't excuse doing awful things to advance the national interest, but in the event of having to choose... the government should choose its citizens.

[mesh_mask]

The political landscape is bleak right now, no doubt. Instead of letting the monumental amount of bullshit discourage us, liberals should strive to 1.) develop and organizing strategy which will move us to act as steadfastly and religiously as the Republicans do on election days, and 2.) single out the greatest threats to American democracy and seek to nullify those first and foremost. **coughcitizensunitedcough**

Rachel Maddow has done a great job bringing national attention to the inanity of the right. The internet is home to many a liberal outpost, and as the insular religious zealots die off and leave more digital denizens to run the show we're going to see an increased concern for the propagation and digestion of information, which works against those who treat politics as just another brand of religious extremism.

Because this information sharing thing works against those who seek to keep the blinders on the general public, I worry that more attacks on an open internet aren't brewing behind the scenes somewhere. We'll see...

[citrakayah]

Of course they are. But the problem is getting support for such an idea. Because every single time you try it, people get really pissed off.