I made a post on the Plan-It-X message board about the issue of Ohio disenfranchisement which spawned some comments, some that made me feel pretty good and others which really pissed me off. I wrote a response, but then decided not to post it there. I fealt like most people already said what I wanted to say and that it would be more about trying to win an argument than to encourage further discussion, which is stupid.
I assume all you wangs who talk so highly about getting Bush out of office are going to be voting for Kerry. So has this anti-Bush trend really blinded you people that much? You’re not going to get anymore power if Kerry gets elected..
Okay. Let’s do a poll. Everybody who’s planning on voting for Kerry raise their hands if you think things will be better because Kerry’s a better candidate. I’m guessing there aren’t a whole lot of hands. To refer to an “anti-Bush trend” is absolutely ridiculous and to perceive the current political situation as one where being “anti-Bush” makes you pro-Kerry is equally ridiculous. I would imagine that most people on this board who are voting for Kerry are doing so because they want to send a message to the world and to other Americans that they are not okay with the events of the last four years. I would hope that anybody who considers themselves an anarchist or socially conscious would be part of the “anti-Bush trend” because Bush is a really good example of most of the things that I think are wrong with the world. Kerry is too, but that’s not the point. The point is that if you want do address any of the issues or attitudes that anyone I know thinks are important, it’s really hard to do that without addressing them in the context of how Bush has fucked things up. That’s reality and it’s what people relate to.
Why not work on your real changes now, instead of dealing with an election that’s going to do the same thing it’s been doing for almost 200 years–putting a president into office.
I hear this argument again and again and still I find it impossible to understand how spending five minutes on one day in November comes at the expense of working for “real changes now.” One might argue that the thought and discussion about elections is coming at some expense to concern for other things, but I think this perspective is really short-sighted. As I’ve said before the issues surrounding the election are the same issues that people try to address in their activism. Whether it’s an election year or not, war is a horrible thing that demands outrage. Whether it’s an election year or not, the distribution of resources in our world is very troubling. Whether it’s an election year or not, it is scary as hell when anyone wants to intimidate or harass others because of their perceived differences. The issues that people talk about in the context of this election and that we strive for doing things like Food Not Bombs or prison book programs or street theatre or trying to consume less are the same.
Elections and using the context of the election to talk about these things seems like a really good idea because it’s the one time that most Americans pay attention to the things that are happening in the world around them and think, even for a fraction of a second that they can change these things. If course you shouldn’t speak to people as if voting in an election makes a difference, but to tie the things that you are thinking about or working towards with the issues that are familiar to others because of electoral politics makes a lot of sense to me.
In some ways, this argument is totally stupid because the point of the initial post wasn’t to encourage people to vote, or even to sign a petition. I just wanted to give people an example of something that they could use to try to tell others how ridiculous things have gotten in America. To motivate others to have a little more concern, a little more reason, to try to do something be it voting or anything else.
Hell, 4 more years of Bush just means 4 more years of seeing his face on TV while he follows the same script that would be followed regardless of who was saying it. I don’t watch TV, so I don’t care.
This terrifies me because I think this statement mirrors that of many conservatives. “Because it doesn’t affect me, it doesn’t matter.” For these people, the body count might rise (for both Iraqis and Americans) over in Iraq but as long as the media gives us the illusion that we’re fighting to make things safer, it’s fine. Let me say this – 4 years of Bush hasn’t had much effect on my life. America is so wealthy and so wasteful that I can eat out of the trash whether there is a war on terror or not. America is so priviliged that I can manage to survive quite happily, even when I don’t work very much and spend most of my time building relationships with my friends or doing projects with them. That is fucked up! The fact that so many of us have been so unaffected by all the horrible things that our government has done should be a huge fucking sign that says “Things are fucked up.” 4 years of Bush has meant a hell of a lot more than a face on TV to many people in Iraq and in the rest of the world. 4 years of Bush has meant a hell of a lot to lots of other people affected by his administration’s policies and rhethoric. The fact that we, as a culture, can do so much harm to each other in 4 years and so many of us don’t even notice it, let alone suffer any consequences, is ther scarist thing of all. 4 years of Kerry may mean the same, but we’ll kick and scream and fight then too. All I know is that the world can’t stand 4 more years of anything if we don’t all say “it’s not going to be ok,” in every way that we can.