And it probably doesn't matter. It's increasingly obvious that a Romney win would involve some unprecedented combination of weirdness and heinous fuckery. Do I think Romney's people incapable of that level of heinous fuckery? Of course not. That'd be even stupider than I think I am. But it'd be a serious shitload of heinous fuckery.
There's been a lot of what appears to me to be concern trollery as the election season has heated up. But again, I could be wrong about that characterization, and here and there, I've tried to address it calmly and without pointing too dramatically at the underlying stupid. Obviously, that's difficult for me; it's an emotionally charged thing, and I'm as self-righteous as you are. Further, I think I've just plain done a crappy job of it.
I often say that I dislike Loomis. It's true that I think he's a dirty fucking treehugging hippie, and that's where I most often find myself at odds with him. But decency demands that I concede that he is a very good writer on labor history, and he's a very sharp political scientist and political historian--the former puts me to sleep, and the latter holds my interest until someone hands me a novel about Russian tanks facing off against the Nazis at Prokhorovka, or a link to a moderately pornographic Webcomic. Which is why I respect the very sharp part.
I think Loomis gets it right here, in a piece summarizing his disappointment over some elements' behavior during this election cycle. If you're serious about wanting to understand, you should read the whole post. But he summarizes better than I ever could:
To summarize:If you read the Loomis, and the most important thing is still that Obama hurt your fee-fees...well, I guess there's not a lot more to say. Do what you will, and do your best to enjoy the spectacle.
1. Change happens outside the election cycles–elections are for institutionalizing the changes you have attempted to make in the past 4 years.
2. Every single U.S. president has blood on his hands. Voting in a presidential election is always a choice between two evils.
3. We need to think less about our own personal moral position in voting. It’s not about you. It’s about the community where you live. Even if you vote for Jill Stein, the blood of Pakistani babies killed in drone strikes is on your hands. You cannot wash off that blood without changing the system–something that 3rd parties have never done. You want clean hands–organize the American public around the issues you care about. It will take the rest of your life. That is the timeline of real change.
4. There actually are lessons from the past on these issues. There are lessons in how to organize. And there are lessons about what third parties do and do not do. When someone can tell me what value a third party has had to pushing the agenda to the left in the last 80 years, I’ll be real interested in hearing it.
5. We need a tougher and smarter left. The self-described left punditry and journalists in 2012 has been individualistic, holier than thou, disorganized, and narcissistic. The real story of the left this year is smart and tough–the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s how you demand and make change. Writing editorials obscuring the differences between Obama and Romney and encouraging well-meaning people to protest vote is worse than worthless–it’s mendacious and serves as a tool for conservatives to continue pushing this nation back to the Gilded Age.
Oh, and if you think you are one person, or a particular person, don't. Seriously. Deadeye totally fucking seriously.
But to echo the one guy who probably most thinks it's about him, if you're a Marylander: yes on 4 and 6, please. Especially 6. Maryland needs to lead the way on this simple and fundamental matter of human fucking decency.
Not to echo that same guy, because I'm not, but also yes on 5, please, because I'm a partisan political hack; no on 3, because it derives from some asshole pissed off because some PG County Council member didn't get slushed out of office fast enough; and yes on 7, because it's a war between competing casino interests, which isn't compelling, but yes keeps the money in Maryland rather than shipping it to Delaware and West Virginia.
And in MoCo, please, please, please, vote no on B. Both parties and the fucking County Council, and the fucking County Executive want you to validate their clear and sordid violation of a negotiated union contract. Fuck them.
17 comments:
This is a stunningly wonderful post. And Loomis #3 is brilliant. Thank you!!
It's not about my fee-fee's.
When you've lived abroad and worked with people who come from countries that have been recklessly bombed by our permanent faux warrior class, you start to think "maybe I shouldn't go along to get along."
As for the lectures about 3rd parties, the Republicans started as a 3rd party. So people who insist that 3rd parties can never accomplish anything seem a bit shortsighted as history goes. But more to the point, the primary lesson of history is not that the same things keep happening, over and over. It's that things change. Just ask the Germans. Or the Poles. Or, for that matter, the Iraqis.
I am not beholden to any party in particular. But if both parties are right of center, and ruthlessly authoritarian in terms of their foreign policies, I see little reason to vote for either of them.
well, sure, but both parties are not right of center (and first we would have to agree on where the CENTER in American Politics is, and wouldn't THAT be fun?) One is kind of centerish, and the other is batshit insane fascists and racists.
If you read the LGM posts (there's a related one) Loomis is pretty aware of the history of third parties; his point is that third party presidential vanity campaigns are quixotic and useless, and have never achieved anything but benefiting the candidate they are closest to.
as I understand it (and I am a zombie, so cut me some fucking slack here) the Republican Party was less of a third party than a replacement for one that had flamed out pretty thoroughly.
I will now yield the rest of my cursing time back to out host.
OUR host. Fucking Obama, he's making my computer TYPE WEIRD.
achieved anything but benefiting the candidate they are closest to.
GODDAMMIT.
"benefiting the party they are MOST OPPOSED TO..."
WHERE IS THE FUCKING COMMENT EDIT FUNCTION, BLOGGER??!?!
Funny, I've been told that voting for Jill Stein is the same as voting for Romney.
Now, per rule 3, it's the same as voting for Obama?
Sounds like Calvinball.
~
*facepalm*
Yes, Whispers, the formation of the Republican Party 170 years ago is absolutely relevant to the current political climate and to the nature of the essentially binary choice facing us today. Well done. Have a fucking cookie, in addition to the cookie you got for Zombie schooling you on relativity. And what the fuck, another cookie, because you don't live in a competitive state. Here, just take the fucking bag of cookies on your drive to Dover Downs.
Speaking of which, Thunder, did you not find at least five people willing to take you up on your vote-trading offer?
What Landru? You weren't cowed by having been notified that you aren't fully qualified to judge because you haven't "lived abroad and worked with people who come from countries that have been recklessly bombed by our permanent faux warrior class?" I believe you were supposed to be. As was I.
Because, you know, we don't have any empathy and can't imagine without being there.
I'll toss another cookie or two in the bag.
Since I have, in fact, worked with such persons both in the United States and abroad, during the interminable period in which we've been more or less randomly invading other countries, I chose to give Whispers the benefit of the doubt, along with a generous helping of cookies, and assume that he couldn't possibly be talking to me, since saying that to me would be totally fucking wack. I also chose to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't really read the Loomis post, because the only way someone who actually read that post would consider it a "lecture" would be if they had some deep-seated psychological motivations for not wanting to consider historical facts about the impact of third parties and alternative candidates during the last 80 or so years (the relevant comparison in American political history, as any humanities person could tell you, not that non-humanities persons are intellectually deprived or something, especially compared to humanities persons attempting to deeply consider non-humanities), and for taking Loomis' well-reasoned presentation and gifted analysis so very personally. Which I sincerely doubt that Whispers does.
I'm fucking kind that way. And, as noted repeatedly and (also) sincerely, there's absolutely no fucking harm in someone in this state declining to vote for Obama.
Also, it's my fault. I left the man an opening by not saying QED. Totally my bad, QED.
"there's absolutely no fucking harm in someone in this state declining to vote for Obama," no matter how much I allow it to irritate me.
Fixed that for me.
Thank you for the much needed correction Landru. I'm sure that I completely misunderstood. Totally my bad. QED.
Also this very day I noticed a TBogg category that provided me with a helpful collective noun: A scrotum of tea baggers.
Just trying to be helpful.
Funny, I've been told that voting for Jill Stein is the same as voting for Romney.
Now, per rule 3, it's the same as voting for Obama?
Willfully misunderstanding what's being said does not help your friends take your arguments seriously, thunder.
"Yes, Whispers, the formation of the Republican Party 170 years ago is absolutely relevant to the current political climate and to the nature of the essentially binary choice facing us today."
The two party system exists based on its own momentum and the legions of people who vote for them based more on their hatred of the opposition than of any love for their own candidate. The approval rating for Congress was below 10% at one point this year. At some point, people have to stop voting based more on fear of the other and start voting for people who they think will do what they want done.
Sometime next month, President Obama and Speaker Pumpkinhead are going to cut a deal to allow for minor tax increases along with cuts to Social Security and other programs that help Americans. Looking forward to that.
I would have voted for Obama if he had done one single thing that was remotely liberal. Mandating that Americans buy insurance from private carriers doesn't count. Nor does Obama's late arrival to the pro-Gay Marriage movement.
Sorry that voting for somebody who has asserted his power to detain my brother-in-law indefinitely, without any legal recourse, ever, doesn't quite thrill me.
And yes, the Republicans are batshit crazy. (At least Romney and the ones running the party.) (Well, Romney isn't crazy, he's just shameless, shallow, and more than a little bit evil. But I digress.) But until liberals stand up to the con men running the Democratic party, we're going to continue to have nightmarish situation where we have to tolerate their repeated betrayals of progressive principles in the name of fear of the Other.
Many purposes are served by voting against Obama. Throwing the state to Romney was not one of them - Nate Silver estimated Romney's likelihood of winning this state at approximately 0.0% And that might be an overestimate. So there was no need for me to vote for Barry O (think Key & Peele) just to block Romney.
So...my motivation to vote for Obama would be to...join in the lovefest? Declare to the world "this is the best we can do!" No, I'm not buying it.
As for the relevance of the Republicans, it's kind of like the relevance of any historical lesson. It seems irrelevant until it's relevant. I had a German prof who assured her class that the Berlin Wall was never coming down. She said this in 1988. And she knew Germany pretty well, having been born there. Her husband was also German, and had been in the HJ like Pope Ratzinger.
This has gotten long, but suffice it to say the air of condescension isn't amusing. I tend to view it as a sign that you don't understand my motivations, but rather than deal with them seriously, you go for the cheap laugh.
"What Landru? You weren't cowed by having been notified that you aren't fully qualified to judge because you haven't "lived abroad and worked with people who come from countries that have been recklessly bombed by our permanent faux warrior class?" I believe you were supposed to be. As was I.
"
You were not supposed to be "cowed." Where did that come.
I was explaining why I cannot support candidates who pursue the doctrine of endless war. My blithe attitude towards American bombing was changed when I took a German class with a woman who was openly crying because she couldn't contact her family in Belgrade.
So you have that on the one side as an argument against American bombings abroad. On the 'for' side you have Madeline Albright, saying 'What's the use of having an army if you're not going to use it?' Our foreign policy establishment is utterly subscribed to the notion that we must constantly be at war with somebody.
So either you've had this kind of experience with a person whose family has been the target of US-bombing or you haven't. If you have had this kind of experience, you might know that it can change how you think about things. If you've lived abroad, you do know how that can change how you think about things.
I wasn't trying to cow anybody. But you were definitely trying to condescend to me. That was intentional. Not appreciated.
Mandating that Americans buy insurance from private carriers doesn't count. Nor does Obama's late arrival to the pro-Gay Marriage movement.
Well, it's easy to say he's not liberal enough if you redefine the liberal things he's done.
It's the same way the Right has gone about portraying him as un-American by redefining what it means to be American.
One clarification: The health insurance mandate, by itself, my be thought of as 'not liberal' (but it's funny how car insurance mandates are not portrayed as not-liberal) but in the context of the liberal things being achieved within the PPACA, it certainly IS part of a liberal expansion of health coverage. Taking it out of the context of the entire law is a dishonest argument, because the entire law will not operate without it.
DAMMIT. Why do I always screw up comments over here?
Let's all just pretend that first sentence has tags around it and such, making it look all quotey, and get on with our lives.
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