Letters to the Editor
achilleselbow
Published Letters: 292 Editor's Choice: 16
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Democracy Inaction
[Read the article: Obama, telecoms and the Beltway system]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm hearing a lot of "why do I even bother supporting the Democrats" comments on this board. Does that even need answering?
One danger of being a progressive working in some sort of professional field and living in a cosmopolitan urban area, as I assume many of the posters are, is that you can often forget that there's a whole other world of people out there who have no grasp of the ideals represented by our Constitution, and who care far more about voting based on their fear of foreign terrorists and hatred of 'liberal elitists' than getting outraged at the violation of these ideals. You can blame politics, blame the media, call me an elitist, but it won't change the truth of the fact that most of America still lives in a pre-Enlightenment era. And guess what? Their votes count the same as ours.
Now, of course, one will say that the problem is with the media coverage of political issues, that people are simply uninformed, that if these issues were presented to them in an objective and detailed fashion, they would make the 'right choice'. But stop and think about that for a second - if the people aren't even motivated enough to make themselves care and find the information that is already widely and easily available, if they are so passive and so malleable that their core beliefs can be molded by media coverage and political slogans, then what exactly is the point of democracy?
Let's do a thought experiment: If all of the academic intellectuals, all the Nader supporters, and hell, even the Ron Paul faction broke away and formed our own party, how many of us do you think there would be? Would we ever be able to match the people who fall in line precisely because they DON'T particularly care about any of these issues and simply take their political choices in a lump sum based on a general 'conservative' image? Not to mention that all of the issues that divide us are just as important, if not more so, than the civil liberties issue we are currently agreeing on. In fact, one could say that economics is the single most important issue, even more than foreign policy. It is precisely this issue that matters to the majority of Americans who are both too busy and too lazy to have the sort of abstract political/philosophical ideals that we base our votes on, and it is precisely this issue on which each party is more or less united. Everything else is just window dressing to most people. Of course, when their children get sent off to war, what was previously an abstract issue (peace, global security) becomes a real one, but this is temporary and circumstantial. If we ended the Iraq War today and brought all the troops back, it would only take a few years to talk most of the anti-war soccer moms into a war with Iran.
The point is that we progressives are in the minority, not due to historical circumstance or the current political climate, but due to the very structure of the economy that ensures the perpetual existence of an undereducated and apathetic working class. Once we accept this, we realize that there are two basic options: either a complete withdrawal from the system (which can take the form of either apathy or revolution), or continued participation and choosing the lesser of two evils in the hopes of affecting some gradual change. Personally, I think there is some hope in pursuing the second option and focusing strongly on education, since by increasing the amount of educated people we increase our own ranks. Either way, we need to accept that the abstract ideal of democracy is meaningless compared to existing economic structures.
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How is he 'jettisoning' his ideals?
[Read the article: Obama opts out of public funding]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He said he would agree to public financing if the Republican nominee did the same. Not only did McCain reject public financing, but he first pretended he would accept it in order to leverage for a loan. Not even a Republican could deny the moral disparity here, which is why all the McCain campaign can muster is the pathetic claim that Obama didn't pursue the agreement aggressively enough. Did they want him to take McCain out to a nice candlelit dinner or what?
Go ahead, keep making snarky comments about "Obamabots". I'm sure using that word makes you feel very clever.
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I think I saw this in a hentai once...
[Read the article: A new take on the octopussy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]EOM
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Um?
[Read the article: Some GOP women are defecting from McCain ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why would anyone who cares about reproductive rights have been a Republican in the first place? An anti-abortion platform has been a mainstay in Republican politics since at least Reagan, and any libertarians for whom reproductive rights mattered should have jumped ship after Bush's first term at the latest. I'm sorry, I'd like to believe this but I just can't see the logic here.
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Apparently
[Read the article: Should we go to the mall -- or get pregnant?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]one of the girls had to pay a homeless man to impregnate her. That is sad on so many levels. How ugly must she have been? Also, what's your take on this vis a vis sex and female empowerment?