My Hump-Day Political Rant

I'm sorry, but I've got something to say.



Ralph Nader did not lose the 2000 election for Al Gore. Al Gore lost it himself by being a bad candidate. Do you remember liking Al Gore in 2000? Because I don't remember liking him very much back then, and, come to think of it, most of the people I knew didn't like him, either. But we supported him because he was a Democrat, and because George H. W. Bush, Jr. seemed like an incompetent idiot.

What I find kind of ironic is that Al Gore tried to distance himself from the blundering President Clinton when he ran for president, who had somMy ehow outstayed his welcome after eight years. Now, as we're all embracing change and saying that Obama represents that stray from politics-as-usual and the dynastic administrations of the the last twenty-seven years, I find it rather hilarious that people are still losing their shit over Al Gore because he made a movie that reiterated everything the same things we'd learned since the '90s but suddenly started to believe because we had that bad hurricane that destroyed the poor, black section of a Southern city that we only care about for one week in winter anyway. (Also, the hurricane wasn't really the cause of all of that destruction; rather, it was most likely the man-made levees that had gone unchecked for several years. But having that argument is like disagreeing over the role that slavery had in the Civil War. I'm not going there.)

My point is that Ralph Nader also represents a departure from politics as usual and, in a perfect world, more people would realize this and vote for him. But because we're so bogged down in tradition, and really only get politically-motivated every four years because we think a few months of debates and sending emails to our friends and family will somehow make everything in our country change for the better, we tend to ignore the fact that everything in this country - from the Hill to how we run our daily lives - is politics as usual.

So yeah. I'm not voting for Nader, but I respect what he's trying to do, and I don't think he should be the scapegoat for the Democratic Party's shortcomings.


Related:
An Unreasonable Man

Paultards.

I decided over the weekend that it's time to announce the group of people that I officially hate: Libertarians.

Now, like Republicans, I hate them in the sense that they are a nameless, faceless mass of people who make terrible decisions and have shitty ideas about how the world should work. I'm sure a few of them are very nice people, and that I could get along with them as friends despite their political stance. But I have a problem with people who, at their basest root, are rich, white, men who are just Republicans who want easier access to their drugs.

I sort of understand the appeal - even I was an Ayn Rand fan for about a month! But I don't support Libertarianism for the following reasons:

1. Even rich assholes should have to put something back into society, because if their sense of entitlement somehow persuades other people to believe that we shouldn't have to pay taxes for public schools, parks, and health care and welfare, then the only people who can possibly move forward would be the rich, white assholes who already benefit from this country's class system.

2. I don't do drugs, and have never really thought drugs to be cool enough to be legal. It's stupid to think that if marijuana, for example, were legalized, then the government wouldn't be "in control" of how we damage our bodies, as the government would still have to figure out who would be allowed to grow it, package it, market it, sell it, and purchase it. Also, I watch The Wire and realize that hardcore drugs are pretty bad.

3. I'm believe that we do need the government telling us what we're allowed to do to ourselves, because, generally, people are really stupid and frequently need someone to hold their hands as they make their daily decisions. I mean, for example, look at people who decide they're Libertarians!

These are a few reasons, other than his racism and homophobia, why I hate Ron Paul and the people who support him.

A quick rant and I'll get back to the YouTubes.

I don't like to get extremely political with this blog. I'd much rather alienate my readers with bad YouTube videos and dick jokes and dash my own hopes of getting a better job by admitting that I don't do that much work at my current one. And, as I've been told before, I don't particularly care about "important issues," but every now and then Gawker will touch on something that doesn't have to do with Salman Rushdie's impending divorce, and it makes me have a serious thought or two. Get ready for my opinion!

So, Scooter Libby is not going to jail for being the guy who took the fall for exposing a CIA agent whose husband refused to lie about Iraq buying uranium from Nigeria in order to start a war. And no one should really surprised because he wasn't on trial for the leak that put a CIA agent's life at risk. Rather, he was on trial for perjury and obstruction of justice, which seem like code for "what can we pin this guy with so people will stop paying attention to our fuck ups?"

And the moral of the story? I don't know, really, it's complicated. I mean, it kind of reminds me, yet again, why I stopped following politics in the first place. When I was in high school and my early years of college, I used to get so fucking upset about political issues. I would fight with my father about gun control and how shitty Bush was, and it didn't solve anything. Instead it just made us more angry at each other and what was going on. And that's why I stopped paying attention: I have too much stuff going on in my life that I have some sort of CONTROL over to sit around and bitch about Iraq. I can't do anything about Iraq, and even if I thought I could, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. Libby's commutation is another example about how this administration (and really, EVERY SINGLE presidential administration - Republican and Democrat) is going to do whatever the fuck they want to anyway, because people are stupid enough to keep supporting them. And also, they've got the power and can use it. And that's really what it comes down to.

And please, I know how ironic it is for me to say that just bitching about this stuff isn't going to do anything, because I am, essentially, bitching about it. But really, I'm so sick of people putting bumper stickers on their cars and and joining Facebook groups and going around and shouting about Global Warming because our generation has finally found a cause they think they can change. Look at the youth generations before us. Look at the goddamn '60s, for example. You had all of these people who protested against a war that lasted FOREVER, in the hopes to stop it and make sure something like that didn't happen again. And it STILL went on and it happened AGAIN! And what's worse, you look at some of those people now and see how they are just as ridiculous as the people they were protesting against. John Kerry! He became a fucking politician who was exactly like every other fucking politician. Look at Dennis Hopper, who wrote and directed the film that became a symbol of the '60s counter-culture. HE'S A BUSH SUPPORTER.

I mean, we're living in an age where people are trying to tell us that if we buy cute t-shirts, we'll help AIDS victims in Africa. Because we're living in an age where we need to be immediately rewarded for doing good things, as well as have some sort of object to say to other people, "Look at me and how good I am."

Basically, I'm sick of the fad that is political "awareness."

KTHXBYE.


Related: Make Your Voice Ignored. [Wonkette]