The Lesser Evil? Seriously?

If your only 2 choices for president of the USA were handsome Jeffrey Dahmer, who tortured, killed, and ate 17 boys (between 1978 and 1991), or his (hypothetical) handsome twin brother, Timothy Dahmer, who tortured, killed, and ate only 5 boys, and who had actually been known to help boys from time to time, for whom would you vote?

What if we had a third choice, their ugly older brother, Ron Dahmer, who was a little bit crazy and had been a strong Reagan supporter back in the day, but who was strongly opposed to torturing, killing, and eating boys and who had never done so? Would you vote for Ron, knowing from statistically conclusive polls that almost everybody would be voting for one or the other of the handsome Dahmer twins? Or would you be doing your best to make sure that at least we didn't get stuck with the worst of the Dahmers?

Usually when I post something on my blog, I feel pretty sure about the inherent logical self-evident "alien sociologist" objectivity of what I'm writing. But this time, I'm writing about how confused I am.

Chris Hedges, author and foreign war correspondent, is a hero to me. He was recently the lead plaintiff in a suit against the government regarding the military detention law included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed by Obama on New Year's Eve, 2011, that allows the government to charge Americans as terrorists, arrest them, and hold them indefinitely without a trial "until hostilities cease." Perhaps for 20 years in some dank offshore prison, even Gitmo. Chris Hedges knew that he and his supporters were likely to lose the lawsuit, but his patriotism and love of liberty impelled him to try. Thanks to a brave district court judge in New York, Katherine Forrest, who ruled it unconstitutional, Hedges won. So at least for now, the government has been barred from enforcing the military detention law, although Forrest's judgement will probably be appealed. And this brilliant, brave man, Chris Hedges, says that we should vote for a third-party candidate. 

When a man this great, a man whose every word I have always (well, almost always) agreed with, says, "Go ahead and vote this November. But don’t waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate--just enough to register your obstruction and defiance," what am I supposed to do? 

The thing that makes me feel justified in my predictable stance--I believe we all should vote for Obama--is that so very many of our fellow citizens are going to vote for Romney. In a democracy, you have to accept the will of the majority, right? Even if you think their ideas and plans are stupid. If the election were held today, perhaps a majority, or at least a very large percentage of voters, would chose Romney. We're stuck with these Romney voters. We can't just wish them away. Just because we want a more ideal government, one that doesn't borrow money from China to fight fake wars while our schools and highways crumble, one that doesn't bail out criminal banking organizations while hardworking Americans lose their homes and go without health care, doesn't mean we can have one. As long as the peasants (which includes upper-middle-class educated Americans as well as trailer trash and hillbillies) keep voting Republican, we are doomed to the status quo, which any thinking person knows is unsustainable. 

Like Hedges says, we have been colonized. WE ARE COLONIZED. When Americans vote for Romney, they'll be voting for a more oppressive, more total colonization. They'll be voting for an extension of Bush's presidency, for a proxy McCain/Palin presidency. So, in the real world, since so many of our fellow citizens will freely go to the polls this November and freely choose to turn UP the volume on the dictatorship and increase the level of our oppression, doesn't it somehow justify my stance, that we should do the only thing that we can do to grab onto their arms and try to hold them back as they turn up the volume? The louder the volume, the more it hurts! It would seem that we don't have the luxury of voting for a more perfect candidate, since in our particular democracy, which includes so many ignorant, provincial, scared, simpleminded people, we can't HAVE a more perfect candidate. 

AND YET, if I vote for Obama, I'm going against the will of my dear Chris Hedges! Plus, I am voting for evil. Obama has licensed 4 new nuclear power plants in the South, the first president to allow new nuclear plant construction since the 1970's! How many Chernobyls and Fukushimas here in America will be acceptable to Obama? One a decade? Two? He quadrupled Bush's drone strikes and doubled the size of our fake war in Afghanistan! He has strengthened the anti-Constitution Patriot Act! I am really confused! Hedges makes it sound so easy and so right to register our protest by simply pulling the lever for a third-party candidate. But basic math, simple real-world thinking and real-world statistics, dictate that if we vote third party or don't vote, Romney will be our next president. 

When you let a retarded child into your antique shop full of ancient Ming Dynasty vases, even for only 4 minutes or possibly for 8 minutes, is that a prudent and patriotic thing to do? Does allowing bad guys to break things valuable and precious to us really help our cause in the long run? Do we really need to let criminals take our money and break our stuff before we can finally get mad enough to start fighting to take our country back? Is allowing an invisible committee of global billionaires to rape us (even harder than they already are) for the next 4 or 8 years what a smart revolutionary would do? I honestly don't know, but it sounds somewhat illogical to me.

My friend Tony has been kind and clear, and yet persuasive, in arguing that after the failure of the Obama administration to deliver "change we can believe in," and after his proving to us that, actually, "NO, we can't," should we finally be done voting for evil, even if it's the lesser evil? Tony has made such a wonderful case for not voting for evil ever again. For example, he sent me this chart:




So I am writing to you, my loyal readers and to anyone you forward this to. I hope you will help me make sense of the quandary I'm in.

Before you render your judgment, I remind you to keep in mind that we're a democracy, not some utopia or even potential utopia that can be just the way Ron Paul supporters want it to be. In the real world, 57% of all white male Amerikan voters recently chose to give the keys to our nuclear arsenal to insane McCain and stupid Palin. Since our fellow citizens are choosing to ratchet UP dictatorship, that is the will of our democracy! Since none of us seem to have the guts, at least at this point in time, for real revolution, or for risking many years in prison like Chris Hedges just did in fighting the military detention law (that damned terrorist!), it would seem that in accord with our being democracy, we should make compromises that are doable and workable and realistic. 

Even if half of our voters are dumbasses, who would vote for a lifelong business failure, war dodger, recently reformed alcoholic (who had been behind bars 3 times for drunk driving), simpleminded inarticulate fundamentalist Christian guy (Bush Jr.), we either have to accept their will or we must impose some kind of dictatorship on them, which would be counterproductive for those of us who value democracy. More recently, these same dumbasses voted for for a guy who graduated 894th out of 899 at Annapolis, crashed 4 American airplanes, was a liability, not a hero, in Vietnam, and who was a prominent member of the Keating Five, a gang that cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars during the Savings and Loan Scandal. This man bragged about supporting 95 percent of Bush's policies (which brought our great country to its knees), and he joked about "bomb, bomb, bombing Iran" (sung to the tune of a Beach Boys song). These fools voted for McCain even though that meant they were voting for greater subjugation from nameless, faceless billionaires, and that their votes might even translate into the deeds to their own homes being on the line, and even, for many of them, their own sons' very lives on the line!

Just think about that last point. Remember, we are not living in some perfect experiment that has suddenly gone awry. We are living in Amerika, a land where a large percentage of the people are ignorant peasants who believe the creator of the universe wrote the Bible, who hate gays, who want to control what people do in their bedrooms, who don't mind blowing up people in foreign countries that have oil, and who want to prevent women from terminating unwanted pregnancies. They want to perpetuate our barbaric health care situation, that puts us 34th in infant mortality statistics, right below Cuba and Cyprus! They call the successful health care systems of Germany, France, and Taiwan socialism. But look at where those countries appear on this list! And look at the CIA list right next to it, where we appear 39th.

There's one more aspect to my voting problem that I need to mention, and I think it will be very useful for you to consider. If you don't have children, it might not come naturally to you to think about this issue like I do. I think that in America, there are two very basic tiers of reality: for adults, there is the adult "real world," and for children there is the somewhat ideal world of childhood. Adults here have a pretty good life relative to most people in the world, but there are serious difficulties we face--a scary economy, high divorce rates, health care worries, mortgage payments, medical bills, etc. But children here, especially comfortably middle- and upper-middle-class children, have amazing, almost magically charmed lives. And regardless of how fkd up the world actually is, their lives are almost identical to lives they would live in a perfect world! They are insulated from pain, danger, and disease. Their lives are enriched with cultural experiences, high tech learning and playing devices, good food, and travel. (My children have travelled overseas many times. They get to sail around in the San Francisco Bay on my brother's new 45' sailboat (2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms), and they've had thousand-dollar Mac laptops since they could walk. And they get all this while being almost completely insulated from political guilt and political worry and even from political danger.) In many poor and unstable countries children don't have the luxury of living in a separate tier of reality, because they do have to step over dead bodies in the street, they do have to experience bomb blasts in the marketplace, and they do have to watch their mother shrieking in agony when her husband has been taken away by the authorities to be tortured.

So, when I vote for Obama, I'm prolonging, measurably prolonging, the insulation that my children enjoy from the harsh reality of life on this planet, and allowing them the best odds possible to better themselves, to strengthen themselves, to remain idealistic, and to keep believing in the possibility of a better world. I saw my daughter's transcript yesterday, and she's number 1 out of all 321 people in her 7th grade class. My son was number 1 in his high school, and now he goes to UC Berkeley and is doing very well there and in his side business of designing local advertising. He's a second-degree black belt while my daughter will soon be testing for her provisional black belt. They speak Chinese. They're the kind of people who will help build a good future. And I was able to nurture their lives and their personalities free from backpacks blowing up in cafes and free from radiation falling on their skin. 

My revolutionary act of not voting for Obama and instead voting for Ron Paul or whoever the Green Party candidate turns out to be (they're considering Roseanne Barr!), in the real world, would narrow their opportunities, because that's what happens when a BLATANT tool of corporations such as Bush, McCain, or Romney comes to power. Admittedly it's almost as bad under Obama, but it's certainly not AS bad. Obama stopped the Keystone Pipeline from traversing the Oglala Aquifer, prevented the dumping of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, allowed 26-year-olds to stay on their parents' medical policies, saved the American auto industry, and much more. Obama might be a selfish egotist, but some of his actions indicate that he has a heart. Romney's history and his demeanor indicate that he might actually be an automaton.

What gain will my children obtain if I allow their buffer zone to be diminished? If all I get out of voting for a third party is to feel good about myself--"Jeff is such a smart revolutionary!"--would that be worth it?

Please respond to this post here by clicking on the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post. Anonymous responses are fine and will ensure that you don't end up on the no-fly list.

Drones

The other night I spoke with an 18-year-old University of California student and was shocked to learn that she didn't know what a drone was. An A student having just finished her first semester in college, she certainly had not stayed up on the news. What upset me wasn't that she didn't know about drones, but that her not knowing is indicative of MILLIONS of young American adults not knowing.

She didn't know that our government is deploying drones in several countries, that a third of the people killed by drones are innocent bystanders, that Obama has ordered more drone strikes than Bush ever dreamed of, or that the drones are operated by normal suburban military personnel who work in comfortable command-and-control rooms at a military base outside Las Vegas, killing people 8,000 miles away, then flying their drones back around to see clear video of the carnage they have just wreaked, including little kids missing legs or heads, a bride and groom accidentally blown away, a grandmother face down in a pool of blood. I told her how after a hard day of work, one of these drone controllers might stop at a 7-11 to buy a gallon of milk or make it just in time to watch his child play in a Little League baseball game.

She was receptive to my criticism. She realizes that in a few months she'll be voting to decide who our next president will be. I told her that it was a simple matter to go on line and read the main international, national, and local stories of the day, and that if she would do this every day, not only would she know what was going on in her world, but it would all start to make a lot more sense to her.

After our conversation about drones, I put this little photo essay together and e-mailed it to her. I wrote: "3 pictures worth a million words."

Split in America

I want to ask all of you to think about how to heal the split in America. I might not have time to answer every response--there are 441 of you on my email list, and I know most of you, plus many of you send out my stuff to others--but you know I will read every one carefully. 

Here, below, is a perfect example of the split, a letter to the SF Chronicle by my friend Karl and a response to it. Please read them both and then think about how we can bring these two sides together. 

Karl's letter:

Isn't it about time for GOP apologies?

As Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele falls all over himself to apologize to the real leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, I think it is a good time to ask the Republicans to go one further and apologize to Americans.

Apologizing for such crimes as lying, and starting a war based on some of those lies, torturing, phone tapping, judge fixing, not to mention offshoring our jobs, making the way for fraud on Wall Street, and otherwise ruining the economy.

It was just a few days ago that Limbaugh was called out for being incendiary and when he asked for them, the apologies even came on his radio program.

So we can wait a few days, now that you Republicans know that America wants you to apologize. You know where to find us.

Karl Hodges

Response to Karl's letter:

Here's a Republican apology

Karl Hodges wants Republicans to apologize for America's problems. He is correct; the GOP owes America an apology, and also a promise to make amends.

As chairman of the San Francisco Republican Assembly, I apologize to every man, woman and child in America. We Republicans failed to do our job to defeat the most unaccomplished and unqualified presidential candidate in history. We Republicans expected the media to expose a glib community organizer from Chicago who never held a job. We apologize for failing to convince rational adults that mindless slogans will not protect the life, liberty and property of the American people and the free world.

America's investors know this president is using the present crisis to dismantle capitalism. That's why the stock market is crashing and Americans are losing their retirement savings. America's adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and al Qaeda know this president opposed liberation of 25 million Iraqis, and heads the party that whined, "this war is lost." That's why the world is a more dangerous place.

But an apology is not enough; the GOP also must make amends for what it failed to do in November 2008. Therefore, we Republicans will work harder to ensure that this president fails to impose European socialism and second-rate health care on America. We will also tell every American what this president never will tell: "We will pay any price, bear any burden to assure the survival of liberty," and with no apologies.

Mike DeNunzio

Let me just add this, now that you've read both letters: The atom bomb that ended our war with Japan (whether it was right to use it or not) was not a Democrat or a Republican atom bomb, it was an AMERICAN atom bomb. With the economy tanking, we're probably in more immediate trouble than we were in during World War II, and yet America has become so divided that we're almost crippled when it comes to dealing with the problem. 

Please comment below, or send me an email.

Change or No Change? 

Change or no change, that is the question. It's up to you. We must be vigilant from the very beginning of the Obama presidency. We must swear to ourselves and to one another: never again! We must never again allow ourselves to be degraded and our country to be wounded by criminal leaders. We must truly become the leaders.

Here is a starting point. People are already talking about the Clinton recycles and right-wing operatives Obama is choosing for his cabinet and advisors. Here is an evenhanded article, "This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House," by Jeremy Scahill, that gives you a nice (but unfortunately scary) thumbnail description of the people he's already chosen. I hope and pray that Obama will be able to control these powerful people and direct their diabolical powers towards working for good, but I fear that it's totally up to us.

What do you think?

Your Software Is a Virus

I've enjoyed the debate between Mr. Fluorescent (Robbie) and German Psycho. Robbie, I really enjoyed your first comment to my "McCain and Obama--Bad Software" post, and it gives me an opportunity to make myself even more clear (if that's possible) than I already have. I also enjoy your writing style, and I learned a lot about Obama that I didn't know, or, actually, that I kind of did know it, but hadn't let it all gel yet. You are as good at dissing Obama as I am at dissing Bush.

When it comes to Obama's shortcomings, I admit I've kept my head in the sand a bit. I agree with almost every word you write about Obama and I agree wholeheartedly that it is sickening to always have to vote for the "least worst." But I want you to realize something: Months ago when Congressman Dennis Kucinich was still in the running, I hosted Kucinich house parties, bought lawn signs and bumper stickers, and made phone calls. Our two-party system is completely unworkable. I've been registered Green before, and I don't call myself a Democrat.

There was a chance that a large movement to elect Kucinich could have congealed and grown, even snowballed. It's always at least theoretically possible that some charismatic leader could come onto the national stage and speak the truth in such a way that people would actually listen and follow that person. But now, less than two and a half months away from the election, given the software and operating system we have to work with, it is too late. It's a fact, Robbie, verifiable by statistically valid polling, that because of our incredibly obsolete, broken operating system (the operating system is the the American people, 60 percent of whom still believe that the creator of the Universe wrote a book), only certain software will run on this machine.

At this late date, and with the candidates we have, and with the level of ignorance still prevalent in our society, it is impossible for a mass movement to start behind any of the alternative candidates. I repeat, this is proveable by statistically valid polls. Cynthia McKinney is not suddenly going to become super popular, and people aren't going to suddenly be excited by angry old Ralph Nader! It aint gonna happen, Robbie. True, something out of the ordinary could happen--an assassination, a candidate's plane crash, a visit from aliens. But barring something extremely out of the ordinary, we're going to go to our polling places on November 4 and pulling the lever for either Obama or McCain.

You might want a rockin' kick-ass computer like I have . . .

but right now, this is the computer that you have:

A skilled user can do a lot with an old computer. But if it's crippled with viruses, it becomes junk, and then the user is out of business. There is only one password on this computer in its present configuration that will stop the McCain virus, and that's "Obama."

A Carter is not a Nixon, and a Gore is not a Bush. Eisenhower was not a Bush. There are huge differences. Do you think Eisenhower would have let people die in the streets of New Orleans and babies go several days without water after Katrina?

The reason that Obama initially got so much young and progressive support--the amazing "Yes We Can" video put together by Will-I-Am and featuring Scarlet Johansson, the huge rallies, the incredible amount of money Obama raised from small donations--was that he made great speeches that talk to the good in us. The other candidates only make speeches that sound, to most educated people, no matter what their political stripe, like blatant propaganda tilted towards the interests of billionaires. Obama is married to a real black woman, not a golden Beyonce-type wanna-be-white woman with blonde straightened hair. And they have two little daughters who will have to breathe the mercury in the air and drink radioactive water if things don't turn around.

It sickens me the compromises he's made, but those are the software workarounds necessary on this broken operating system! Just take one minute and watch this amazing Obama Smackdown video and listen to the speech Barack Obama made in 2002 about the war. It's juxtaposed with a speech by Johnny Edwards, made at the same time, in which Edwards uses his super-lawyer skills and sells the hell out of Bush's coming attack on a sovereign non-belligerent nation.

There are not two sides to the truth.

German Psycho and you are both more knowledgeable than I about some of the specifics of our occupation of Afghanistan. (Although your friend's experience about drug eradication there is giving you a skewed idea of what the war is really about. Opium growing has increased exponentially during our occupation, and American soldiers in many areas walk through opium fields without a care. My views on this "war" fall somewhere in the middle between you two. But Robbie, just because you may be smarter than I am about Afghanistan and better able to use English than German Psycho doesn't mean you're right in voting for McCain, which is what you'll be doing when you pull the lever for McKenney.

You must be young, so you can't really wrap your mind around what it's like to worry about McCain privatizing your Social Security (think Enron). You're probably healthy and can't really feel empathy for the 55 million Americans who can't afford health care, who let their kids walk around with cavaties in their teeth and ear infections, who get a second job to pay off jacked-up medical expenses. For you, voting is an intellectual exercise. It's a fact, barring something bizarre happening in the next two months, that "McKenney" is a simple keyboard shotcut to start up the McCain virus. It's simply immoral. You're educated and knowledgeable, but that doesn't mean you're logical. Spock and Data from Star Trek need to pay you a visit and slap you on the side of your head! Of maybe Spock should teach you how to do a mind meld with some of the people who will soon be dead or suffering if McCain gets to be your Commander in Chief.

I just wanted to make it clear to you and to everybody enjoying this conversation that if your third party candidate fails to build up a head of steam after a certain point in time, then it's time to abort that installation until later. A skilled user can use even flawed software to write better software! But you can't do shit if your software is a virus!

McCain and Obama--Bad Software

Someone posting as "fluorescent" took strong exception to my train analogy, especially the part where I say:

“It is incredibly bourgeois, decadent, arrogant, and selfish to sacrifice the lives of literally millions of foreigners so you can make your little progressive or libertarian point at the ballot box!”

Fluorescent writes, "Wow how intellectually dishonest and scraping the bottom of the barrel of you. You not only imply that because i want to vote for Cynthia Mckinney i have blood on my hands but you also put it in red font?"

OK, "fluorescent" or Lord Farquaad, or whatever your name is, I can dig that you don't like my tone, but you seem to have missed the most important point of my essay. I think you honestly don't realize how simple and binary our present situation is. My words in "Stop the Train or Just Slow It Down?" are perfectly true, and as provable as a simple math equation.

Having worked for many years as a network administrator, I find myself often dealing with situations in life that seem exactly analogous to situations with computers. Right now America is like a computer with two crappy programs on it, and if you type in a certain password, the Obama program will run, and if you type in several other possible passwords, the McCain program will run. This is something I'm right about. It's as basic and absolute as hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart your computer or typing your own password to access your credit card on line. It is immoral and stupid to let McCain drive a bus with our children aboard for even a minute! But if you type in the password "Nader," "Paul," "Barr," or "McKenney," or if you type in the password "McCain," it's a fact that this dangerous McCain software virus will run.

However, if you and all the other wavering progressives type in the password "Obama," it's highly likely that we will have someone at the wheel who hasn't yet murdered, someone who spoke out strongly and very clearly against the invasion of Iraq and tried to stop it. You sound like a very spoiled, self-absorbed individual who thinks her/his vote is so important and meaningful that she/he is actually going to type in the code that starts McCain. I wish it weren't that simple, but it is. We are dealing with a fucked up computer and two fucked up pieces of software, but that's what we've got to deal with right now.

I admitted that I think McKenney is the best (although in light of my train analogy, I'm scratching my head wondering about her motives, and I'm hoping she'll endorse Obama at the last minute). And I even hinted that of all the candidates, Jesus would probably choose McKenney. So I'm not putting her down. I'm just saying that her name is one of the passwords that will start up the McCain program.

If you really research Obama, he might turn out to be almost as slimy as McCain and Hillary, but at least he's competent to drive the bus. McCain and Hillary, by their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, have already run over a bunch (a million!) of innocent pedestrians, so they're clearly not fit to drive!

"You remind me of someone you probably hate . . . Fox News," "Fluorescent" writes.

 
The difference between Fox News and myself is that they put out lies and propaganda, while I tell the simple truth. There may be some style similarities, however. I'd like to think that I'm fighting fire with fire.

Stop the Train or Just Slow It Down?

I recently went to an impeach-Bush event at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland with my 9-year-old daughter Eileen, and I was immediately saddened to see that all the people there (including me and except for Eileen) had gray hair, and that less than half of the seats were filled. Eileen was privileged that night to see two of the most famous living American patriots, Daniel Ellsberg and Cindy Sheehan, speaking passionately and eloquently for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Before the speeches started, I got into an argument with a trim older gentleman over voting for Barack Obama vs. voting for Ralph Nader. His analogy was that we're all riding on a train headed for disaster, and that the Democrats look out the left window and want to head towards the sea, while the Republicans look out the right window and want to head towards the mountains. "But no matter who gets to drive," he said, "it's the same train on the same track, and there's a 'Bridge Out!' sign up ahead. It is time to stop selling our political souls, to stop voting for the 'best worst' [as Ralph Nader puts it]. It's time to vote for what we believe, for what is right!" And for him, the ONLY viable choice, if we are to have any hope of stopping the train and putting down new track, is independent candidate Ralph Nader.

I argued that the result of millions of us progressives voting our consciences for Nader in the 2000 election was that Gore got considerably less of the popular vote, and that had we voted for Gore, the two major crimes of the election, the theft of many thousands of black votes by computer database purges spearheaded by Jeb Bush in Florida and the treasonous appointment of Bush to the presidency by the Supreme Court, would have seemed more blatant and more criminal. I mentioned that for a few days, Nader had held the power to choose the next president of the United States. He could have given his votes to Gore at the last minute like Ross Perot gave his votes to Bill Clinton, and a million Iraqis who are now dead would almost certainly be alive, drinking tea, going to classes, watching TV, walking around right this minute. Bush "won" Florida by only 537 votes, I added.

I admitted that Obama is no great Savior and that he would probably continue making compromises and selling us out. But you must admit, I said, that Engineer Obama would slow the train down, relative to the speed it would continue going if John McCain became the next Engineer. Electing Obama would result in a substantial saving of human lives!

A substantial saving of human lives, maybe millions! I don't know what it is about most Americans that makes them so cavalier about the sacrifice of the lives of non-Americans, especially ones with brownish skin. I sometimes ask people how many DICPT's their car gets (Dead Iraqi Children Per Tank). When Americans, even some progressive ones, talk about casualties in other countries, they do it with the emotionality of someone mentioning ants killed at a picnic.

Further, I argued, since it's a given that most of the passengers on the train are very ignorant, and since it’s a given that the train is literally mowing down millions of Third World people every year as it rushes down the tracks, we can't afford to be so pure and self-righteous when we vote, when our "protest vote" results in horrible injuries and deaths for real people--both Third World people and American people--plus imposes a huge national debt on our own children and grandchildren, basically enslaving them by selling their future labor against their will!

After Obama is elected, I told him, it won't be the end of our political lives. That will be when things just start to get interesting. "If you and I continue to apply our activist energy," I said, "we can push Obama to do the right things to save our country, and if that fails, we can make sure that the next candidate will be even more progressive."

I sympathized with this man's strong urge to vote for Nader, whom he respects and admires. Cynthia McKenney is running for president now as well, as the Green Party candidate, and I think she is perfect for the job. But I wouldn't dare campaign or vote for her because the ignorance of the American people is a given, just like icebergs in the path of an ocean liner, and the ignorant are mentally disabled in such a way that they cannot see her merits. Therefore if she were to start to gain some traction, she would only take votes away from Barack Obama, the only candidate who, in the world as we presently find it, can defeat McCain in November.

It is incredibly bourgeois, decadent, arrogant, and selfish to sacrifice the lives of literally millions of foreigners so you can make your little progressive or libertarian point at the ballot box! As the despicable little Lord Farquaad says in the animated movie Shrek, "Many of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

McKenney doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell, or an Oreo's chance in milk, or whatever you say about radical black ladies. The same goes for Nader and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, although they both have much to recommend them. The only way to stop McCain is to vote for Obama, and the only way Obama is going to win is if the people get behind him. If the election were held today, when you include vote stealing and polling-station-intimidation tactics, McCain would probably win.

I didn't mention this to the man at the impeachment event, but one weakness of my argument is that the ignorant, complacent, dim-witted passengers on the train, stirred to just enough awareness by a glimpse of the "Bridge Out!" sign to elect Obama as Engineer, would become complacent again soon after Obama took over the controls of the train and things started to get better. Then, once again, because of their ignorance, they would be susceptible to manipulation by the psychopaths who make money by extracting resources and wealth from Third World people as they mow them down, using the labor and battlefield sacrifices of brave Americans as lubrication for the gears of the train's engine. These selfish psychopaths vaguely realize that the end destination of the train is not good, but the trip to get there is set up perfectly for them to make a killing, pun intended. The title of a recent Noam Chomsky book sums up their attitude nicely: Hegemony or Survival. They have opted for temporary hegemony now instead of long-term survival into the future.

Anybody over 45 has seen this whole cycle play out before. Americans learned nothing from the Vietnam War, even though it had resulted in the needless, immoral, insane killing of 3 million Vietnamese, 1 million Cambodians, and 1 million Laotians, plus over 50,000 American soldiers. Actually, we did learn for a few minutes. After Nixon and Ford, we elected pro-environmental, relatively peaceful Jimmy Carter. But after Carter we relapsed into our intellectual coma and elected the first neocon, Reagan, followed by neocon foot soldiers Bush 1 and Bush 2, and doomed ourselves to repeat the Vietnam War. Now we've added another million deaths in Iraq to our list, and the murder of another 5,000 of our bravest citizens.

So, perhaps I'm arguing not so much for making things better forever as for pulsing them from bad to better and then back to bad again every decade or so! Perhaps voting for Nader, McKenney, or Barr, even if it does hasten World War 3*, is, looking at it from the God's-eye view, the best. Like I've heard many a Republican say, "Nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out!" Maybe a global thermonuclear war wiping out most or all of humanity is better than a progressive century in which America regains its economic greatness and its reputation for being a beacon of freedom and the most innovative country in the history of humanity. Call me a chicken, but I don't think so!

Maybe we're just screwed, period, like the dinosaurs were.

But at leaast they have good strong liquor on this train, and since I'm riding in one of the nicer, higher cars, I can barely hear the crunching of children's bodies under the wheels or see them splatting against the windows.

It's a fact that most of the passengers on this American train put their hands over their ears whenever you try to talk sense to them, and like children, they loudly chant, "La, la, la, la, la!" until you stop talking. The moment you start reasoning with them again, they cover their ears and start jabbering. We also know from experience how much time it takes to teach even one of these imbeciles to start thinking independently and analytically. Slowing the train down is crucial, because it gives us more time. And time is clearly of the essence!

Ideally, the majority of our people would somehow see the rightness of voting for Nader, McKenney or even the fundamentalist Libertarian Barr (like Marxism and like many religions, Libertarianism would work if human nature were perfect). Then the murderous train could be stopped, new track laid down, and everybody would live happily ever after. The murder of Third World people by Americans would stop, and our treasury would no longer be raided to support a war machine that only enriches billionaires. No longer would our children be plucked off the train to serve in our military, to help clear the way for the billionaires' train to mow down more people and take their stuff.

But I doubt that even Jesus could convince the people to listen, change, and vote for McKenney, Nader, Barr, or the brave Congressman Dennis Kucinich. In order to impress generations of people who have grown up watching amazing special effects in the movies, his miracles would have to be far better this time around.

An announcer began introducing the night's speakers. Ellsberg and Sheehan were taking their places at a long table on the Grand Lake Theater's stage, and I had to end my conversation with the stubborn Nader supporter (pardon my redundancy--the word "stubborn" is not necessary when talking about Libertarians and Nader supporters). I told him, "Don't get me wrong, I do understand how you feel about voting for a man you don't even really believe in. I was ready to campaign full time for Obama, but now that he's bending so far to the right of center and contorting himself a la Gore and Kerry, it's hard for me to even lift a finger to help get him elected. 

But I keep reminding myself that if McCain wins, the quality of my children's lives will almost certainly be diminished for the rest of their lives. Their very lifespans will likely be shortened, and possibly, if McCain gets World War 3 going, shortened down to a very few years! It is certain that McCain would continue to ravage our environment and waste our national treasure. Those are two of his campaign promises.

The speeches by Ellsberg, Sheehan, and others that night were truly great, but I doubt they'll ever show up in history books. As usual with progressive events, we were preaching to the choir. So I'm trying to spread their message where it's not yet being heard. I stand outside of supermarkets and register voters. I give away expensive Obama lawn signs and bumper stickers that I buy at the "Obama Store" on his Web site. And I write e-mails to hundreds of people on my list, providing powerful glimpses of truth via brilliant YouTube videos and short on-line articles by the likes of Naomi Klein, Katha Pollitt, and Robert Scheer. Every bit of buzz we can create through a simple conversation at work or with a prominently placed bumper sticker is worth it. People are very lost right now--there is a vacuum in their minds that needs to be filled--and if people start perceiving Obama as a happening, a lot of them will jump on the bandwagon and vote for him.

If we don't bring younger people into our political process, America is pretty much doomed. Looking across the audience at the Grand Lake Theater impeachment event, I couldn't help wondering who would take over once us graybeards and graymanes bite the dust. You don't need a degree in psychology to realize that McCain isn't going to activate young voters, except maybe to make them feel like smoking more pot or dropping more Ecstasy to blot out the whole mess.

Let me leave you with this thought, and forgive me for repeating myself: It is incredibly bourgeois and decadent to spend the lives of literally millions of foreigners so you can make your little progressive or libertarian point at the ballot box. 

The Real McCain 1

The Real McCain 2

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*We might as well start using Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals. People are going to have have trouble with the Roman numerals when we get up to World War IV, V, IX, etc.