Who will you vote for in November?

Let's see...long list of candidates that no one has heard of...porn star as a candidate...sounds quite a bit like the recent California gubernatorial election.

Tony Pina
Northeastern Illinois University
(recent transplant from California)

 

Am I the only "Naderite?"

HELLO there!

Am I really the only "other" voter?
REALLY I won't voet for Nader.
I expect to vote for Badnarak (ie, Libertarian),
or else I won't vote at all this year for Prez.

True - it's not like this isn't an important election year. Rather, it's that I know that voting is irrational - it won't make a difference! If it gets that close, courts will decide. (You can blame THAT on both parties, as we saw in 2000.) In fact, the closest election I've ever participated in was won by 20 votes, a primary; my vote still didn't decide the outsome. (It's a good reason to go to council meetings and other government fora.)

And it's not like I don't care. OK?-Bush and the Pubies are the least bad of a bad lot (since politics is a necessar evil.) Nor is it because I don't care. In fact, Badnarak would immediatley pull US troops out of Iraq, if elected - something I oppose.

Yet poltics is a necessary evil that does the greater good of doing away with the worst, in general. I'm amazed it survives. Traditional Liberals are divided as to whether or not nationalism is good or bad. So - how did we (humanity) move from family, to clan, to tribe, to village, then polis to the nation state?

Does internationalism really have a future? Or is it the only future?

-Orson

 

Re: Kerry all the way...

Actually, Carl, I believe you're quite wrong. Republicans have led in small donations (until the monthly ying-and-yang that began with Michael Moore in July). A recent survey in the Seattle Post showed that 35 out of the richest people in the region support the Dems.

-Orson

 

Re: Re: Who will you vote for in November?

Though provoking, Bill.

Yet you also write, this: "[Bush's] faith-based cultural-right stuff makes me nervous...because I don't share his faith or his culture."

But you do, Bill you do!
I am constantly amazed at the (typically) coastal rejectionist cries like yours. "Two cultures," anyone? Only unliek C P Snow's dichotomy of science and the humanities (in the 50s?), it's religion versus aggressive secularism!

I am a convinced atheist. Yet I know that atheism was born of Christianity's failures to prove the existence of God. Therefore, to me, Christian belief is the loyal and repectable opposition; if the faithful are right, all the rest of us are in trouble after death. Then it will be too late for the rest of us.

More importantly, nearly every American is informed by Christian values: the equality of all souls (before the sight of God) forms the basis of the American experiment in democracy; our belief in the power of reform and redemption - the all too American regard for "second-chances." Indeed, neither America nor the American experience can be grasped without a huge role for religion.

Have a read of "Defining America" in US NEws (6/28/04) http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040628/

Religion is as American as apple pie!

Since the story is now offline (purchase only), here are the topics inside you will find in your library's copy:

"Defining America: A special report

A place like no other

Those rugged individuals

The self-made model

Agreeing to disagree

Victory in defiance

America in living color

The faith of our fathers

Americans' consuming interest

Where size matters

A nation on the make

The art of the hustle

The mobility to be whoever we want to be

In Vegas, a new start

Americans' exceptional innocence"

I don't share GW's faith either, but I do share his faithful, hopeful culture. Bill - when did liberals leave it?

-Orson

 

Re: Re: Re: Who will you vote for in November?

Orson knows my beliefs better than I do.

"Coastal rejectionist"? I'm not even sure what that means.

How quickly people stereotype me. What's particularly ironic that the occasion was my refusing to state a political preference for fear of being stereotyped.

My universe of religious possibilities is a little more expansive than "Christianity, take it or leave it". The Christian tradition doesn't speak with a single voice and there's more than one alternative to it.

I wasn't raised in a Christian home and your issues aren't mine.

You're the atheist, not me.

I just said that I don't share the cultural vision of the religious-right. That's a fact. It's one of the reasons why I'm not comfortable with Bush and the Republicans. That's a fact too.

I didn't say anything about sea-coasts or "two cultures". I never denied the historical influence of religion.

I was just saying that I'm not entirely comfortable with either George Bush or John Kerry. And that again, is simply a fact.