So... when is HE running for president?

[kenosarawa]

FINALLY, someone who feels much the same way that I do. I've grown sick over the past several years of people shoving two bowls of shit in my face and say, "pick one." And, if I didn't pick one, they'd pick one for me and then force-feed it to me for four years.

Reading this, I was tempted to stand up at my desk and give a standing ovation.

Comments

[entropius]

I think you make the error of saying that any candidate you don't like is equivalently distasteful

[kenosarawa]

You say one is spaghetti and the other is shit, and I say that both are shit, but for entirely different reasons. Your opinion versus my opinion. Neither wins

[entropius]

That's up to you to decide, election by election. I use this analogy not to endorse one candidate in this particular election, but to say that candidates, like most things, exist on a spectrum between ideal and anathema, and that to reject a candidate for being not-ideal ignores that he might be a whole lot better than someone else.

In my case, I prefer Obama to McCain for several reasons, the most salient of which is that anything he screws up will pale in comparison to the damage done to the country by continuing the Iraq war. $2 trillion is a lot.

I don't side with the Libertarians, the Republicans, the Democrats. Your assuming such is just that: an assumption. In fact, I don't side with any of these other groups who subscribe to the corporate delusion which states that the more people that agree with you, the more right your standpoint is. The way I see it, we've taken a shortcut in our nation's political system and applied it as a fundamental truth of the universe.Ah. This makes sense; you're not opposed to any particular

[kenosarawa]

You touched on one aspect that I've thought of quite a bit. We need an intelligent, reasoning electorate. The only way to fix this is to educate people. Right now, we have a bipartisan government that only seems to be concerned with its own continuance, rather than the continuance of the nation it governs, and they are supported by a rather-uncomfortably-large portion of our population that is utterly convinced, either one way or the other, that their particular brand of "saving the world" is so much better than everyone else's

[entropius]

I think the government of the last eight years has been far, far more concerned with continuing in power than previous governments; the last president that's gone to such lengths as Bush to hold onto power was Nixon. The difference, of course, is that Nixon didn't royally cock things up as badly, and that Congress cared when he got caught

[kenosarawa]

Thank you for clarifying your stance in those last three paragraphs. The violent opposition to any belief is just as bad as those who force those beliefs upon others. Now, the word "force" is used here with a grain of salt. The mere mention of one particular belief outloud with a non-believer within earshot has been classified as "force" in recent years. People who just see the presence of religious or faith-based programming on television as a personal attack on themselves are a little too convinced of their own self-importance. On the other hand, there are many of these televangelists and others that should be held responsible for the direct and harmful outcomes of their messages. Hell, we hold journalists and other media figures liable for... well... libel.

Dammit, I thought I could come up with a better word than that.

[entropius]

Religious programming on public television is something I am opposed to, and that's happening in Alabama.

Mentioning a particular belief out loud with a non-believer within earshot certainly isn't force... but that non-believer standing up and saying "I don't think that's right, and here's why" certainly isn't violent opposition, either.

Neither is "You're a loony".

One interesting tidbit: I was involved in Project Chanology (Anonymous' campaign against the Church of Scientology) for a while, and Anonymous was very careful to distinguish between scientology (the belief that L. Ron Hubbard is a demigod, xenu, thetans, all that) and the Church of Scientology... even to the point of supporting the Free Zone, the non-Church of Scientology scientologists.