Hopefully this project won't turn into a waste of space-time, or a huge shouting match. While I encourage discussion, and will admit I'm wrong, I have gotten super tired of feeling trod upon, held under fire for my beliefs and suppositions.
Yet, I also know that in many things I am mistaken. What can be expected from someone who doesn't have the time to spend on endless hours of research, on-line or otherwise, looking for backing to prove out my beliefs? In this age, anything can be done, said, and found to uphold a distorted position on anything at all. And arguments are not worth losing friends over. Thus, the title. May it serve you well.
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There's a lot to talk about. You'll find me over at DeviantArt.com too, but there I've decided to get away from the social-political BS, because honestly, who wants to read my work while I'm ranting about things that have nothing to do with my authorial attempts? I know I don't generally want to wade through similar garbage from the people I watch. When you're not in the mood, you're not in the mood, no? http://katarthis.deviantart.com/
Anyway, for the first post: Voting. I don't know who you're going to vote for, but I know who I'm not. I find it interesting, how friends here in the states (and abroad) have set their sights on the party whose ideas and customary platform is an anathema. These people have loudly proclaimed to me that they would never vote Democratic in the general election; that they despise both candidates and everything they stand for. And yet, for purposes of the primary they decided to hit the polling places, only to vote one candidate over the other, in order to keep the candidate they detested the most from winning the vote.
Am I reading that right? Instead of voting the tickets as we ought, choosing the person we find best suited for the position, we're actively choosing people we don't want to win? And what if this goes all the way back to the beginning? Who gets chosen to run for president anymore, and how does the process start? For the life of me I cannot understand how we've come to the point where our options are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to start with... how we no longer vote for the best man, but for the lesser of two dweebles.
And as for the Democrats, what exactly is the problem?
Clinton, who has her past involvement in Whitewater, which most of us don't understand anyway, and the "baggage of Bill" which I cannot see how that matters.
And Obama, who apparently now has "terrorist, black supremacist" ties.
... It isn't who you know as much as who knows you? And if what you say and how you say it was a real problem, our current office holder would be deep in it too, as there is a pile of Presidential gaffe just waiting to be read by anyone digging for goofs.
Meanwhile, McCain, who seems to have promised us four more years of the same Iraq, the same social economic status quo, and more sabre rattling with our "new potential foe" Iran, isn't getting a peep of dissention from the media. I suppose that's likely because he's got his nomination cinched and hasn't had any real opposition from any angle for some time. But could it be...?
When you look at the line up, and the first in line is the good old white boy, while the opposite corner is held by, gasp! A woman and a man of color... (Is he a black man with a white mother or a white man with a black father? Berke Breathed always makes me proud.)
Maybe I'm reading too much into all of it. We've been about style over substance for so long it's hard to find anything to be optimistic about. For every time we've been promised this "change" that's being thrown about, we've gotten the same old delivery. Would we have prospered better under Mondale than Reagan? Gore than Bush? It seems to me that the point, like this upcoming election, is rather moot.
How's this for an idea? You want to produce change? Take Money Out of Politics. It's hard to feel represented fairly when the folks running for office don't seem to live in my part of life. (read: poorly.)
lol. Like that will happen. Oh well, it is my lot to dream.
k
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4 comments:
I hope you get a decent readership, at any rate, my friend.
I will only say in regards to clinton and obama: the very, Very few things you mentioned about their backgrounds, don't begin to scratch the surface.
As to McCain- I don't like him, but I have no choice but to vote for him, if I am to keep certain necessary ties to the country of my birth. However I do NOT think he is '4 more years of the same.'
If I had my choice of black candidates? Bill Cosby, Tomas Sowell... and James Earl Jones, come to mind right now.
A woman...? I really can't think of one. Certainly not one who plays the race and gender cards at the drop of a hat, uses inside information to make her money (cattle), so on and so forth...
Anyone else? Bobby Jindal!
And You. You believe in Personal Responsibility. That's pretty much Right of Center ;)
Anyway, I hope this turns out to be a good spot for you. Any time I comment, I shall strive to be accurate and polite, which is something I am not always, as you well know. And I will kick the butt of any conservative who gives you the wrong kind of hard time.
No holding back!
*chuckles* as I said, I will not say much about obama or hillary in response to your first posting.
Instead, I will let a female for barack say it:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/05/clinton_obama.php
And now I shall leave you be for a while.
Arrrgh!
Ok, here's the text:
Allison Benedikt at 4:52 PM, May 20, 2008
My lady parts do not ache for Hillary Clinton.
As The First Viable Female Contender’s bid for the Democratic nomination sputters to its inevitable end, everyone and their mother/sister/daughter has something to say about the poisonous misogyny that’s apparently to blame.
Sunday and Monday brought three such post-mortems in The New York Times, one on the front page that ended by quoting a resident of Bizarro World, who laments, “[Obama] still looks more like every other president we’ve ever had than she does.”
Next comes Arianna “No Fear” Huffington, suffering from a strain of short-term memory loss that seems to be going around, to declare: “The greatest triumph of Clinton’s campaign—a complete triumph—is the example she has set for the next generation.”
Currently pregnant with the next generation, let me just say this: There is no greater wish that a mother can have for her daughter than that she will exploit poor people, obliterate Iran, and win rigged class president elections, Putin-style. (Mom, I won 100 percent of the vote!)
Huffington was actually responding to the Times piece, in which Jodi Kantor set up the ultimate false choice: For women, Hillary’s run represents either (A, and Arianna’s choice) “a historic if incomplete triumph” or (B) “a depressing reminder of why few [women] pursue high office in the first place.” Umm… C?
This War on Women is just like the War on Christmas: imaginary. Yes, yes, Hillary’s had to contend with the fashion police (BTW: Do you think Barack Obama looks more like a real American with or without a tie?) and the “likeable enough” smear (Is he black/white/patriotic/Christian/American enough?). And who but a female candidate would have to be tough and warm AT THE SAME TIME? Surely, not Obama, right? (Does he seem aloof to you? I’ve heard he hearts Hamas.) Adding insult to injury, Obama is NOT calling for Hillary to drop out. Men!
Now we learn of a new, primarily female group, Clinton Supporters Count Too, which promises to actively campaign against Obama in the general because, as their leader told the Times, “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus.” Also: Black people? Suck it.
And Hillary’s lapping it up. Confirming in today’s Washington Post that the primary campaign has been sexist (but not racist), Clinton complains—states/notes/ declares—that there’s been a “disservice because we have broad coalitions of voters who have voted for me who make up the base of a winning campaign in November that I think want to see this end up with my being nominated." Translation: "This is unfair and sexist, because my voters clearly want to see me nominated. And if I'm not nominated, a disservice has been done to my voters." What makes it really unfair is that she’s losing by every measure and we still won’t let her win. Classic misogyny.
Here’s the thing: There is plenty of sexism—more than enough, thank you very much—in this country. Which is why it’s so sad to see Hillary’s supporters (and lately even her female detractors, and way too many column inches) elevate her to some kind of goddess warrior, symbolizing the decades-long fight for gender equality, absorbing the entirety of history’s catcall in one massive blow, and then standing tall again because that’s what women do. Powerful stuff, except that she’s a lying, race-baiting insult to our collective intelligence. Powerful, if she and her husband hadn’t sold out poor people in the ’90s or if she had stood tall like a woman against the war in Iraq or if she wasn’t right now trying to change the rules of the game and stir up the worst kind of identity politics. Powerful, if her most fervent supporters weren’t threatening to vote for John McCain out of spite, Supreme Court justices be damned.
That’s right, ladies: Teach this nation a lesson for once and for all. Do it for Hillary.
[Editor's note: Allison Benedikt, the Film Editor of The Village Voice, wears an Obama '08 pin on her lapel, and has volunteered for his campaign.]
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Funny what one can find by reading conservative blogs ;)
And I promise I won't bomb you like this every time.
There's a lot of merit in that post you bombed me with, and I don't mind it at all.
There's only one small catch to the "sit down and shut up Hillary" response.
And that's Obama, and the just about 50 percent of Democratic supporters that don't seem to want him to win. (No, I don't have exact numbers.)
Things are kind of obvious to the uninformed, that despite the fight, it does look like Hillary is going to lose, but if she didn't have numbers anywhere close to Barrack's wouldn't she have folded like so many Republican runners against McCain?
For a while it looked as though he would have to bow to her. Now, she to him. Thank God it's almost over.
(But just how much money have the two sides spent? And for what? So the winner can do it all over again? Novemember won't come quick enough at this rate.)
k
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