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Well, we lost. Time to fantasize about better candidates for next time.
I suggest a man with mercenary experience, who is willing to shoot first, and survived brutal treatment as a prisoner of war. His running mate is fiercely loyal, but can get a little testy when backed into a corner. Together, they’ve got a vision, and a plan for ridding the world of bounty hunters terrorists.
No, it’s not McCain/Giuliani, it’s
Yeah, I’ve got too much time on my hands.
‘The people have spoken, the bastards.’ While John Kerry’s concession speech didn’t include this gem of a quote by congressional candidate Dick Tuck, it certainly could have. Kerry made the usual entreaties for national unity, healing, and an end to the partisan divide, but they rang hollow. His running mate John Edwards claimed that ‘the fight will go on’, but it’s hard to see where we have left to fight.
George Bush won the popular vote by over three million, solidifying his party’s leads in the House and Senate, and defeating the Senate majority leader. By anyone’s count, it was a good day to be a Republican.
Republicans will likely interpret this victory as overwhelming. Compared to the squeaker in 2000, it is a mandate from the people. But given how he governed when he lost the popular vote, I shudder to imagine how this victory will manifest itself in his policy proposals. He will almost certainly get to appoint three or more Supreme Court justices, as well as the new Chief Justice. There is renewed momentum for a ban on gay marriage, which will legally have to come as a constitutional amendment. Our preemptive foreign policy will continue and expand. The Patriot Act will be reinforced. The tax cuts will be made permanent. Social security will be privatized. America will continue to spread freedom from the barrel of a gun.
But before Democrats become utterly despondent, let’s remember that 48% of the country, over 55 million people, voted against George Bush and his ideology. This was not a blowout, and we put up a good fight, but we were clearly beaten.
Whatever it was, John Kerry didn’t have it. Maybe he pulled out of Missouri too early, or spent too much energy on Florida. Maybe he was too negative, or not aggressive enough. Maybe the campaign outsourced too much of the ground work to the 527’s. He was probably too nuanced and equivocal. There will be plenty of time for recriminations and accusations among groups on the left. The now leaderless party will wallow in its own self doubt and pity for the next few months. It’s hard to tell whose head will roll that hasn’t already been cut.
Before we degenerate into finger pointing, let’s savor this moment of sadness. There is a lesson to be learned here: a majority of Americans support Bush. Why exactly is a matter for the pundits to argue, but it’s undoubtedly true. Americans see something powerful in their plain spoken leader; something that we who get our news from the New Yorker and the Nation don’t. Although some of us would like to dismiss Bush as an ignorant cowboy, his victory forces us to realize that he is more than that. He is the man a slight, but clear majority of us chose to lead in these troubled times.
Bush promised in his victory speech to try to earn the trust of Kerry’s supporters. It’s hard to see how he will, but I’ll try and give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t steal this election, we lost it fair and square. Now it’s time to see what Bush will do with a lock on all three branches of government.
As our military surrounds Falluja yet again, ready to reinvade, I’m not hopeful about the future. Bush often says that history will judge his mistakes. Now that he doesn’t have to fear the electorate again, this is certainly true. But history is a harsher judge than the American people, and this chapter is Bush’s to write.
A thousand troops killed in Iraq. While this “milestone” is truly arbitrary, it does have profound symbolic meaning. Read this poem from another war, and another thousand dead young men.
A Thousand Killed:
I read of a thousand killed. And am glad because the scrounging imperial paw Was there so bitten: As a man at elections is thrilled When the results pour in, and the North goes with him And the West breaks in the thaw. (That fighting was a long way off.) Forgetting therefore an election Being fought with votes and lies and catch-cries And orator's frowns and flowers and posters' noise Is paid for with cheques and toys: Wars the most glorious Victory-winged and steeple-uproarious ... With the lives, burned-off, Of young men and boys.
Bernard Spencer, 1936
Borrowed from Slate.com
I agree with the thesis of Tuesday’s article [Sept. 14] ‘They’re Different, and It Matters’ by Ken Nesmith, but not the conclusion. The two candidates are different; one believes in individual freedom and fiscal responsibility, and the other believes in borrow-and-spend economics and an omnipotent government. Which one is which may surprise you. Because Nesmith’s arguments are mostly economic, I will rebut them in the same manner, although I may have to appeal to human decency and morality once or twice.
Health care is not the ‘responsibility… of the individual citizen.’ Citizens are workers, and their productivity is inextricably linked to their personal health. It is in everyone’s interest, corporations and citizens, that we are a healthy nation. Because employers pay for the current system, the cost has a negative impact on the free movement of capital. President Bush’s solution is the end of government health care, and a change to complete privatization. But what will happen to the 40 million uninsured Americans, and the 8 million unemployed? Are they to live in squalor and sickness because they cannot pay for care? Is that how a moral nation treats its citizens? What happened to Rousseau’s social contract?
The alternative to complete privatization is a single payer system, or “socialized medicine.” Yes, government intervention would necessarily increase under this plan, but so would public health. While opponents of this system are quick to complain about the inefficiencies of a public health care system, this ignores the inefficiencies and injustice inherent in a private system. Any for-profit health care provider will have layers of bureaucracy to determine if a particular patient merits a particular treatment. Under a public health care system, a treatment is performed if it is medically necessary. While this might seem more expensive, note that Canada spends far less on their health care system as a percent of GDP than we do (9.5 percent vs. 13.9 precent in 2001), while achieving a similar provision of care. A public system helps the economy by guaranteeing that workers are healthy and productive. Our current system makes employers pay for their sick workers, and makes companies think twice before adding jobs. Given that Bush has presided over the loss of nearly two million jobs, one would assume he would jump at any opportunity to lower the barriers to job creation.
Social security was one of the most contested issues of the last election, and it continues to vex politicians today. Nesmith calls it a “pyramid scheme,” and it is in that we use today’s funds to pay today’s debt to retirees. The financial crisis stems not from poor accounting by the Social Security Administration, which has a large surplus saved to pay future benefits, but from Congress, which has borrowed $1.4 trillion of this surplus to pay for tax cuts and spending increases. When they have to pay this money back as the baby-boomers begin to retire, we will either have to borrow money from someone else, decrease spending, or increase revenue by raising taxes.
Here is where the candidates differ. John Kerry advocates “common sense accounting.” Find yourself in a hole? Stop digging. Don’t borrow money to pay for spending now when you know you’ve got large expenses in the future. Surely you’d expect the only president with an MBA to understand this, even if it is from Harvard. Bush’s solution involves shredding the common safety net, and replacing it with a giveaway to corporations. Private savings accounts sounded like a great idea four years ago, when the stock market seemed unstoppable. After that period of “irrational exuberance,” and too many scandals to list, this seems a little less brilliant. Private savings accounts will be administered by Wall Street management firms, which charge exorbitant fees for their mutual funds. According to investment legend John Bogle, they also perform on average 2 percent worse than the market as a whole. Those who have extra money to invest in the stock market are still welcome to do so. But for those millions of Americans who can’t afford to save, the government takes 6.2 percent of their pretax income from both them and their employer to pay for their future well-being. If you make more than $87,900 a year, you’re credited back any excess you paid. This means that Nesmith’s concern about rich retirees paying more than their fair share is misplaced. The poor pay for their own retirement, and the rich are allowed to invest their excess income privately. The government just helps the process along, and charges far less overhead than private investment firms.
Education was also a point of contention in the last election, and Bush claims to have done something about it. In reality, the No Child Left Behind Act is the largest unfunded federal mandate ever placed on the public school system. It requires high standards and “accountability,” but doesn’t aid failing schools with extra financial assistance. Schools that fail are merely shut down and replaced with ones run by for-profit corporations or vouchers for religious schools.
It is in our economic interest that all young people are educated to similar standards. Vouchers and religious schools, while they educate students to their parents’ wishes, are not held to these standards. In Florida, a test-bed for national voucher policy, nearly one third of the schools accepting vouchers were not accredited. While the public school system (of which 71 percent of MIT undergrads are a product) may not be perfect, more funding and real federal help are the solution, not utopian nonsense like No Child Left Behind.
And before conservatives start whining about the ‘nanny state,’ let me remind you who believes the government should be able to tap your phone and review the books you read without your knowledge or consent. Who wants to stop dangerous terrorists like Ted Kennedy from flying, without providing a system to challenge the secret No Fly List? Who wants to write discrimination into the Constitution, when it took so many years to rid ourselves of the stain of miscegenation laws? Who turned the largest surplus ever into a deficit of $422 billion for fiscal year 2004? Who sent us to war over weapons of mass destruction that Colin Powell now says may never be found, and still refuses to project a final cost for the war and reconstruction? Who fired his own Secretary of the Treasury when he dared to offer such an estimate; an eerily accurate $200 billion? Is this sound economic policy, firing the one man who gives straight advice?
George Bush has been the worst president in recent memory, and this nation can hardly afford another four years. Since Ken and I clearly disagree, I’d like to propose one of our finest methods of settling political disputes. In the spirit of Zell Miller, Aaron Burr, and Andrew Jackson, I challenge him to duel at high noon on Killian Court. Weapons may be of his choosing, although I suggest the AK-47, legal because Bush let the Assault Weapons Ban lapse on Monday. The two candidates most certainly differ on this issue, and to Ken Nesmith, that should matter greatly.
– Published in today’s Tech as a response to this article by Ken Nesmith.
“Whose streets? Our streets.” The chants at the massive demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in New York City last Sunday were usually as short, but rarely as true as the above. Half a million people and I took over two miles of Seventh Avenue from Union Square to Madison Square Garden; several thousand then made their separate ways to Central Park for a gathering in defiance of a city ruling that it would destroy the grass. The biggest demonstrations ever during a political convention showed that at least some in this generation haven’t succumbed to apathy.
Various actions continued through the week, including a day of “direct action”, a code name for civil disobedience and anarchic action, on August 31st. While the New York City Police had been remarkably restrained for the first two days of the convention, they lost patience as small groups harassed delegates all over the city. As soon as more than a few people gathered on a street corner, and unfurled signs or began to legally march on the sidewalk, the police simply wrapped the entire area in orange netting and arrested everyone inside. Many members of the press, civilians merely in the wrong place in the wrong time, and peaceful protesters were wrongly detained.
Nearly 1,700 arrestees were taken in city buses to a dirty pier on the Hudson, made to lie on an oily cement floor without padding, and held in excess of the legally mandated 24 hours. The rational for this long wait is either incompetence, or a desire to keep protesters locked up until the President left the city. Either is unacceptable. On Thursday, a New York State judge ordered the the release of those prisoners held for more than 24 hours, and fined the city $1000 per illegally detained person.
I had left the city before the mass arrests began, but did experience some action. I narrowly missed an arrest and perhaps a beating in front of the Broadway theater where my state’s delegates saw the play Bombay Dreams. I was able to converse peacefully with delegates and members of Congress attending a party at a bowling alley late on Sunday night, until the police showed up and cleared the sidewalks under threat of violence.
Some at the Republican Convention questioned the patriotism of the demonstrators. Zell Miller, a renegade Democrat who gave the keynote address on Wednesday, claimed that Kerry’s protest of the Vietnam war “weakened our military.” He said that “it is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.” While the solider does defend that right with his or her blood, the right itself is given to all by the Constitution, and expected as the behavior of an active citizen by our founding fathers. No less a man than Thomas Jefferson stated that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
While Zell Miller may compare me with a terrorist, dissent is our most important political right, enshrined in the First Amendment. Whatever your views, speak up. Dissent has been curtailed in previous times of war, and it is often the first right to go in dictatorships. To truly honor those who sacrificed themselves defending our freedoms, practice the rights guaranteed to you in the Constitution. Silence is the ultimate act of condonement and defiant dissent its antithesis.
Both political parties claim that this is a defining moment in our history. It couldn’t be more true. While both candidates use remarkably similar language on certain issues, particularly the war, we are faced with a choice between two radically different visions for the future of government. Unlike the last election, where it seemed we were given the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the choices these two candidates make, and the people they surround themselves with, will take this country in different directions.
Which future you support is your decision, but participation in democracy is not. I don’t care who you vote for, just vote. Request an absentee ballot from your state, read a real newspaper, and make an informed decision. Thanks to the peculiarities of the electoral system, your vote in Massachusetts is meaningless, because the state is guaranteed to go for Kerry. If you want your vote to count, vote by mail.
You don’t have to risk arrest or bodily harm to be a patriot, but you do have to vote.
– Published in today’s Tech
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