Recently I was at a Hip-Hop show at an undisclosed location on a confidential night, and while warming up to rock the crowd Rapper X (X for anonymous) gave a lengthy talk about George Bush. In his talk he told the packed house that if he thought it would make a difference he would shoot Bush in the head, noting that he was a little depressed about the outcome of the elections but it was not going to stop him from doing what he was doing.
It wasn’t the statement he made that justified writing this article, it was the significant reaction he got from the people on the dance floor. There were cheers all around the club, proving that hip-hop kids generally speaking share a common hatred for George Bush.
Let’s take everything back to the RNC where over half a million people marched and participated in direct action all over NYC. Do you think a President Kerry would bring so many people together against him? probably not. Kerry’s mistakes aren’t as obvious as Bush’s blunders, a Kerry presidency would have looked liberal and sounded liberal but as soon as anyone got close enough they would have smelled a very fowl conservative agenda that is going keep on going regardless of who takes the podium.
This isn’t a public service announcement for Bush by any means, but just hating Bush is not going to change the very system that his administration is so good at manipulating. We as citizens against Bush have to educate that hate and empower it to create change instead of blindly following the Democratic party down the same rabbit hole that the left always gets sucked into every four years. Third parties, although some espouse libertarian values, if put in the white house will eventually have to appease big business and perpetuate the same platform the other two parties always end up doing. Even if it did stick to it’s guns a third party if elected would not get anything past legislation, be ineffectual, and get voted out come next election. Assimilation is also something that has happened frequently to third parties of the past, like for instance the incorporation of the Free Soil party (anti-slavery) in 1854 by the Republican party. This shows how easily a political party can be turned around and subverted into an authoritarian centralized body. Take for instance the Green Party in Germany, they have gone from libertarian alternative values to acting very much like the former conservative Kohl government, being pro-war while espousing liberal rhetoric (sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it).
Let’s face it the most supposedly ?progressive? president we can look back to in the last 50 years is Jimmy Carter (who was an active member of the Trilateral Commission). Jimmy Carter espoused a liberal energy policy he even put solar panels on the White House, but when he was in office more nuclear power was being used than any other preceding administration. Also, being an active member of the Trilateral Commission buddied him up with David Rockefeller (the rabbit hole gets bigger).
I voted in this election, which is not something I am proud of, because the more I try to rationalize my decision to vote the more I realize that a vote in any presidential election is a stamp of approval for business as usual. Elections are popularity contests for plutocrats, aided very much by corporate media in manufacturing issues for a large population of people. It is imperative to dose people with as much propaganda as possible to maintain and control on a macro-level, if you take away important issues (like trade liberalization and it’s effects on local workers and farmers) from the monopolized public mindset then it’s like they don’t exist at all. It will always be like this when governing on a large-scale, so don’t play into that quagmire think locally.
Anyone who has a grasp on world history (not the revised bullshit they try to pawn off on students in public schools) will understand that unadaptable uniformed systems always lead to tyranny and oppression. There is much strength in diversity and one single system is not going to work everyone.
When a social system is not working for it’s constituents you don’t drag it on for 200+ years. We are beating a dead horse, we are flying in a machine made before the principles of lift were laid down. Guess what, the ground is coming up on us faster and faster, and if we don’t scrap these top to bottom systems for more adaptable locally centered egalitarian designs then we will just repeat history until we undo ourselves.