I'd like to lay out my thoughts here, and hopefully I get some feedback before the obsession
du jour drags this topic on essential democratic values into the voraginous bowels of a reality that can't exist outside a permanent state of self-obsession.
I just watched an episode of Law&Order. The premise: a homeless man is beaten to death by another homeless man. The victim suffered from profound mental problems. The fight broke out because the victim refused to share an orange. And the DA couldn't but prosecute for manslaughter: as he said in his closing statement, homeless people have no house, no money, and more often than not, no food... And issuing a verdict of "not guity" -- driven by compassion or whatever other external motivation -- would effectively deny homeless people justice, as well. In true TV drama, the man was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The DA's bitter last remark, on his way out of the courthouse: the homeless man was simply transferred from one jungle to another.
Estimates indicate that there are about 3.5 million people,
1.35 million of them children, who are homeless in the US. Another numbing figure, another reality: the US prison and jail population
exceeds 2 million people.
Alternate realities, parallel perceptions.
Of all people entitled to vote, only half exercises that right. Only half: I have to repeat that to myself every time I think about it. Apparently, one half of the population considers itself separated from their citizenship and their stake in their society.
The Democratic party and its "politburo" received a stern warning, a corrective message in the elections of November 2000, when many angered and disappointed voters gave their support to Ralph Nader, or simply didn't bother to vote. This, mostly because the feeling prevailed that the Democratic party leadership, and therefore the government that was in office during the previous two terms, had betrayed the liberal wing and deluded itself into believing that a very moderate policy would ensure its survival. After the Floridian fracas and the Supreme Cohort's intervention, Ralph Nader, the Democratic apparatchik, and about 1 in 4 of registered voters were rewarded with Bush.
Also tonight, on CBS 60 Minutes, I saw an item about the so-called "Texas Miracle" - the vicious lie that the toxic Texan had promised to the salvation of the nation's educational system. It became an official lie under the name of "No Child Left Behind"(NCLB) but, as the local CBS affiliate in Houston revealed, it still is a whopper. Instead of the officially reported drop-out rate of 1.5% for the City of Houston,
the real number is now believed to approximate
50% - there we go again, half the population thrown in the dumpster. Not surprisingly, immigrants (mostly Latinos/Hispanics) make up a disproportionately high number of the almost 3,000 children that were "disappeared" by the fraudulent bookkeepers working the system set up by the same man who now services the nations' students as federal Secretary of Education.
Kyoto, ICC, Enron, WorldCom, ANWR, deliberate muting of counter-terrorism, Afghanistan, USA Patriot Act I & II, Iraq, CAPPS, rape of the federal budget, arsenic in drinking water, Halliburton, HIPPA, Saudi and Bin Laden money, underfunding NCLB, PNAC, energy companies writing the law, Plamegate, Guantanamo, TIA, broken AIDS funding: a haphazard choice from the national trophies collected in
not even 3 three years of government under Bush. Some people saw that freight train coming.
Others didn’t:
- BEGALA: When you ran against Al Gore and George W. Bush, you said there wasn't much difference between them. Now trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the rich from Bush, which Gore opposed, a war halfway around the world, Bush supported, Gore opposed, devastation of our environmental regulations. There was a huge difference, wasn't there?
- NADER: Well, now there's a difference, because the Bush administration has gone off the rocker. They've put the corporations in charge. The people don't rule here. They have corrupted elections. They've damaged low-income people tremendously. They've enriched themselves with their own tax cut. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, they've enriched themselves with their own tax cut. They want to preserve their inheritance by getting rid of the estate tax.
Yes, we're approaching new elections for the President of the USA.
And frankly, I don't give an F word for who gets to play Al Gore in this charade, and who gets stuck with the role of Ralph Nader.
Wild-eyed attacks on
any of the running Democratic candidates should be vehemently fought down as attacks on Democracy itself. Wild-eyed attacks on
any of the running Democratic candidates should be vehemently fought down as attempts to re-elect George W Bush, sometimes with the aggravating circumstance of doing so just to reserve a safe pulpit in the margin of power to change things, so as to be able to gloat, crow, chastize or otherwise behave like a sanctimonious saloon socialist. Redbaiting my ass.
It's my freedom, my choice, my vote.
That's why I'll support the nominee of the Democratic Party - come hell, sunshine or Ralph Nader reincarnate. I make the same mistake only once. This year, elections will hopefully be celebrated under close watch for a scrupulous respect of citizens' voting rights.
Would
you like it otherwise? Fine. Go for it. But
vote and be counted.
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