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: : I confess, this potshot was aimed at you, and also exxagerated for effect. However, you have thrown around terms like "cancer" to describe the bougies & cappies, and you have engaged in inflammatory rhetoric about the death penalty and "fighting," but...I concede, you're no Pol Pot. :): Ending what appears to be an apology for a potshot with yet another potshot. 'No, you're no Pol Pot, I just like to put his name and yours in the same sentence...'
: Ask Hank about this technique borrowed from Chomsky. It's sleazy. At least when I accuse somebody of something, I'm direct.
Jeez Barry, grow a funny bone.
:And, by the way, I know you're no tax-and spend ecological liberal who wants poor people to have less oil for heating their homes...
Gotta thin the herd somehow...
: Stoller : They only think that voting makes a difference...
: : That is true at the highest levels, though the bit of difference it makes is crucial, I believe. However, the lower down the political ladder you go, the more voting matters, so that finally at the state and county, you can vote in real progressives (even commies, depending where you live) who will fight hard for the poor, workers, the environment, etc.
: The lower the level, the less impact. Are you suggesting that a city councilman (and, yes, socialists can---and have---won these seats) has an impact on the social relations of capitalism? Most quit because they discover that they must compromise much more than their principles in order to achieve even the smallest gains. To decide whether old coke or new coke gets 99% of a tex rebate for polluting in the town's water or 98% is no accomplishment.
I simply disagree with you on that; we may as well quit arguing about it.
: : I know Big Biz controls a lot, and I know that the televised campaigns, for instance, are controlled by a committee comprised of the two parties (hence, third party candidates can be shut out), but there is still room to fight them, and casting a vote for Nader is at least more effective, if not moreso, as a showing of public dismay with the system, than not voting.
: Remember 1996? Nader did not ONCE get his photo on the cover of the New York Times. He got a cover story in the Sunday magazine, a story about what a loser he was... His tally was 3%.
And "The Washington Post" just endorsed Clinton's "aid" package to Columbia, and the "New York Times" made a humorous reference to the fur protest at Oscar De La Renta's recent fashion show, and then immediately raved over his sable lined dress, and so it's always been: power protects itself. And the rest of us keep fighting it, and will always keep fighting it, with varying degrees of success. There is no alternative but complete surrender, and that does not seem to be part of the human spirit.
:Meanwhile, 51% of the country said to hell with ALL these choices.
We don't know why they didn't vote. People like you were making a statement. Other people couldn't spare the time off work or were too stressed out by life to make it to the polls, and other people simply don't give a damn. Perhaps if voting as on a weekend or national holiday, and perhaps if we REALLY urged people to exercise their right to vote, then we'd find out how many people don't vote as a political statement. My own feeling is that it serves the powers that be to have a low turnout; after all, most people in this country are either poor or middle class, and you don't want them turning out (the exception is the poor/middle class religious right, fired up by their clergy and televangelists, which wields disproportionate power because of their zeal to place like-minded people in office. It's too bad Leftists are too principled to shellac their hair and get on TV praising the Lord and asking for your kind donations...
: : Yes. The 40 hour workweek and overtime is definitely better than what came before...
: You make it sound like the 40-hour workweek and overtime was accomplished by legislation. It was codified by legislation AFTER labor struggled in the streets.
I did not mean to suggest that, and you are right to point out the struggle which preceded the legislation. However, that legislation was never a sure thing, and it by definition took elected politicians to enact. Had there been more hard-line conservatives, the struggle (with its attendant human suffering) would have taken longer, and may never have succeeded. Every progressive is office is one step closer achieving the kind of change which helps the common man, which is why I intend to vote.
