Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

Groupie: ...but why have you stopped mentioning the President by name, Thor? Why don't you personalize it more?

Thor: Because blaming him for what they're doing is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the hamburgers. He's just their frontman. I doubt they even let him into the meetings.

— The Ultimates: Gods and Monsters

We were talking, last night, about whether or not the next US presidential elections will really effect change, or if it's more like changing the corporate shill. Sadly, I expect that it's the latter.

I think it'd be a shame if all the people who are currently angry and politicized start thinking that everything's okay after the next election.

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

This has long been my opinion on the issue. As much as Bush makes my blood boil at times, I don't think he's the source of the problems, and making him such a famously hated guy seems in many ways a calculated act of creating a fall guy.

[professor-booty.livejournal.com]

The media will tell you who the designated Kang and Kodos are. What's the alternative...throwing away your vote on some loopy 'fringe' candidate? Bwah ha ha!

[sarah-dragon.livejournal.com]

The only way we are going to get a more representative electoral process is by disenfranchising both the current political parties and the media corporations. In essence this means making running for political office something that is free and open to anyone. Maybe even treat it like civil service, you spend six months running for President during which time you live in a barrack and everyone gets trained. At the end, the people vote. Losers get a nice care paclages OR better yet, we go back to the time when the loser became Vice President.

With the advent of the internet, no one should need to pay for advertising anymore other than their website.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

But Thor got taken down by the Ultimates, didn't he? The official govt authorised superhero group couldn't stand to see an independent out there, much like governments can't stand to see successful independent states in real life.

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Wasn't The Who who sang "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"?

I still get flack for voting for Nader over Gore in 2000. My reasoning was that Gore was really not that different from Bush. Sure, they may voice differences on issues like abortion rights, the environment and so on. But as long as Gore had a GOP run Congress to contend with, he wasn't going to prevent the erosion of choice. And had he been in office and 9/11 happened (many Democratic apologists insist it wouldn't have), I'm not convinced that he wouldn't have rubber-stamped the Patriot Act himself.

I know some people who think that just getting a Democrat into the White House will make all of the difference in the world. But I think that if that means President Hillary, then it doesn't mean the sort of change people are expecting. I don't much expect it with Edwards, either. I have more hope for Obama, but I'm under no illusions. The Democrats who most represent true change are the ones at the bottom of the heap; Kucinich (mostly good change) and Gravel (some good and some bad change).

I think that Hillary is the least likely to bring change. It's sad that so many people I know seem to think otherwise. And they seem to embrace her more because they want to recapture the "era of good feelings" of her husband's administration than through any real understanding of what she stands for. She will be a minimal change from Bush, and on the things that matter; like foreign policy, full civil rights for all Americans, fiscal policy and domestic spending priorities; she represents almost no change. But some people will think everything is okay simply because it's a Democrat in the Oval Office; forgetting that President Clinton gladly signed into law things like the Welfare Reform Act and the Defense of Marriage Act. And as for Haiti, I don't believe that Hillary will be at all different from Bush. In fact, I don't know that any Democrat would be. It's really not something that's been touched upon at all in the US. Heck, most people here don't know about how journalists and opponents are disappeared or outright killed in Russia. What's more, I'm not sure that they care, so long as they feel like they're doing better than they had been.

It's all just too sad, but unfortunately too true.