> Mr. Hightower shouldn’t really be targetting the Republirats in this
> article. He should be pointing the finger at both parties. They’re in
> bed together. Just depends on which one steals more covers
> than the other. …
I call ’em the DemonicRats and the Repugnicans, and I agree with Dennis Miller when he said, “the only difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats are owned by a slighty-less scary group of special interests.” (Though Dennis, in his older-age, has turned a little too conservative for my tastes, and now I far prefer Bill Maher.)
In another email, you wrote:
> We cannot physically fight the government and voting them out of office
> isn’t going to happen. All we have now in America is the internet and
> time.
I agree with the first clause, but not the second. I do think we can vote them out of office. I didn’t think so until Jesse Ventura won the governorship of Minnesota. Now, there’s no way I’m saying I’m for pro wrestlers running our government (but at least you’d know that the game was fixed), nor do I necessarily agree with any of Jesse’s positions (no, wait, I think he’s for marijuana decrim…), nor do I think Minnesota politics paint an accurate picture of America as a whole. But to see a third-party candidate — especially as non-mainstream as Jesse — stun the entrenched parties of Minnesota was a ray of sunlight in this well of despair.
And how I think this can happen is demonstrated by your second sentence. We have the Internet. Governments now are not going to be able to easily hide the Truth, at least not for as long as they usually do. Witness the outcry against the unPATRIOTic Act. Americans have been tyrannized by their government before — the draft for Vietnam, the McCarthy hearings, Jim Crow laws, the corruption of the 1920’s that led to the Great Depression — each time, Americans fought back for their precious liberty, but it took years for the news to make it around the country, enough to cause a recognizable groundswell of public opinion.
But now, a mere two years after unPATRIOTic’s passage, there’s enough public outcry that three states and hundreds of cities have officially legislated against it, in addition to millions of ordinary citizens who deride it. The stink is so bad that Attorney Generalissimo Ass Johncroft has had to go on tour to promote it! You already know the message: “If you’re not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to fear.”
And there’s one other thing that we still have: the vote (unless you’re a black ex-felon or a nearsighted old Jew in Florida). It amazes me that more people voted for the American Idol than the American President (sure, you could vote by phone in Idol, could vote more than once, and vote if you were a thirteen-year-old girl, but gee, that Clay Aiken was just, like, so cute, you know?) I’m always stunned when I meet someone who works a forty-hour week, has little-to-no health insurance, with kids in dilapidated schools, who hasn’t had a vacation in five years, and they tell me they don’t vote. (I’m more stunned when a pot smoker tells me he doesn’t vote!)
They’ll tell you that their vote doesn’t matter. They are right. If they believe that, they are right. Meanwhile, millions of elderly folks, gun advocates, and Religious Wrong’ers know that their votes do matter, and you never see politicians enacting legislation mandating compulsory driver’s tests for the elderly, compulsory gun registration, or the taxation of churches. But since pot smokers, young working people, and parents of school aged children rarely vote, guess who gets to bend over when someone needs a good government screwin’?
“Radical” Russ — people who don’t vote should be looked upon like litterbugs, public cell phone users, parents with obnoxious kids in the fancy restaurant, graffiti artists, and other rude, inconsiderate people who don’t care about the society in which they live…
