Damn the Right
By H.G. Miller
You know, it's not that I'm in love with the Democratic Party. I just
hate
Republicans...
My first recollection of a presidential election begins with a trek across the hallway from my sixth grade classroom to the fifth graders. I vaguely remember buttons with Bush and Dukakis and I remember a lot of red, white and blue streamers.
I’m not sure if the teachers tried to push any certain ideologies on me, but I remember being happy that Bush won, because it meant Dana Carvey would get to keep doing his sketches of the president.
When Clinton ran against Bush four years later, I was much more aware of the process, but my main concerns still had to do with Carvey’s portrayal of both Bush and Ross Perot. Bill Clinton seemed a lot cooler and appeared on MTV a few times, so from a karma standpoint, he had my support.
Four years later, I finally counted, and the choice came down to Bill Clinton, fellow-Kansan Bob Dole, the funny-looking Perot (who remembers when he purchased a half-hour of prime-time programming to show all those charts and graphs?), and the Libertarian candidate who’s name I can’t remember, but I know I thought about voting for because he wanted to make pot legal, and pot was cool.
The election in ’96 was my first real taste of partisanship. Bob Dole didn’t just seem old to me, he seemed wrong about a lot of things. I think most young people start out at some extreme political position, and for me it was Libertarianism. Legal pot, along with the ideals like a clean environment and individual liberties, seemed like good ideas.
Of course, I hadn’t really done much research, and even as a young punk, I understood the concept of “throwing your vote away” and I didn’t want Dole to become president, so I punched my ballot for Clinton.
The next four years solidified my position firmly to the left. When Clinton was impeached for getting a blow job, I watched with a growing sickness in my stomach. The votes for impeachment were being carried live and a group of us at work watched. They kept a counter going, marking which votes came from which party. 48 Republicans, 48 votes for impeachment. 51 Democrats, 52 votes for acquittal (the one independent senator also voted to acquit).
I couldn’t fathom that one of the most important decisions our congress could make had nothing to do with facts or ideals, but whether there was an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ next to a senator’s name on the ballot.
So, 2000 came and I voted Democrat once again. Anything to keep those nasty Republicans who couldn’t get laid themselves out of office.
I watched the debacle that was the Florida recount, and I feared the worst when George Bush the Second took the throne. Maybe he would see that the country was split between him and Gore. Maybe he would take it easy and really work to build a consensus between the two parties.
Ha.
Well, it’s been four years, and now another election is coming near. I’ve seen an action star from Austria become my state’s governor and I believe the IQ of average American’s is perhaps lower than it ever has been. If people are not getting stupider, they are definitely getting lazier.
Sound bites dominate the airwaves. Two weeks are spent debating the merits of a CBS report about documents from 30 years ago, with no attention paid to the witnesses who say the story is true, or even the fact that it was THIRTY YEARS AGO!!!
I continue to research alternate political parties, and I will vote for the Natural Law representative for all offices that are not the President. Otherwise, I am firmly fighting against the right again this year.
They keep saying that the world is safer now than on September 11th. But, I think the question should be was the world safer on September 10th than it was two years earlier? I don’t think it was, and I think we should be asking why.
I am not naïve. War with Afghanistan was inevitable. Something had to be done to show the world we wouldn’t be taken sitting down. However, a potential war in Iraq was getting press well before September 11th (why do people keep forgetting this?).
I can keep going, but the fact is, I don’t think it matters. I watch CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I check about ten different websites for news throughout the week, and if I find something that all of them agree on, then I figure it must be mostly true.
I try to keep an open mind, but I find myself assuming all Republicans are liars, and when a Democrat says something monumentally stupid, I’m apt to forgive them as if they were a hot chick in some bar who I figure means well.
I really don’t want to be a political person. I want to go back to voting for the president based on which Saturday Night Live actor puts out the funniest sketches. Unfortunately, a switch was flipped when the Republicans tried to oust Clinton for something that had nothing to do with foreign or domestic policy. My temperament has been continually pushed by the failing economy, the lacking healthcare and the never-ending war.
I keep hoping that one of these years I’ll get to vote for something, but once again, I’ll be voting against the Republicans.