Dare To Inquire: Who Will Become The Next President?    
 Who Will Become The Next President?10 comments
1 Nov 2004 @ 04:14, by Bruce Kodish

God only knows.

Good and moderate people will vote for both Kerry and Bush.

I'm voting for Bush. In spite of mistakes, I believe we will be better off with him at the helm for another four years. I am working against Kerry because I do not trust his ability to lead and see his "always know better" positions as unworkable and dangerous.

Mark Steyn puts some of what I perceive and fear about Kerry into words:
" In another perilous time - 1918 - Lord Haig wrote of Lord Derby: "D is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him." It's subtler than that with Kerry: you don't have to sit on him; just the slightest political breeze, and his pillow billows in the appropriate direction. His default position is the conventional wisdom of the Massachusetts Left: on foreign policy, foreigners know best; on trade, the labour unions know best; on government, bureaucrats know best; on defence, graying ponytailed nuclear-freeze reflex anti-militarists know best; on the wine list, he knows best."

See He was complacent, arrogant and humourless. How they loved him


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1 Nov 2004 @ 06:42 by Ge Zi @24.127.146.67 : But why ...
There are other alternatives.
Why do we feel compelled to choose between two evil and just try to minimize the damage that one of them would do.

Sure enough, initially voting for somebody who has a program I could agree with seems like a vasted vote, but just the impact that for example this one candidate I have voted for, Michael Badnarik, who seems to understand what this country was built on, gets only like 6 or 7 percent! In the next or the following election so many people might actually see for the first time that - no - there is not only two parties.
This might get us away from another boston tea party.
And I have seen examples of change in Germany that were very hard to imagine. When I still lived there, the green party was something to smirk about. They got one or two members in the parliament - men knitting sweaters. Now they are an element to be be considered. Ok, they don't knit any more and wear suits and are now just as corrupt as any good politician is required to be - but hey - there was change from the more or less two party system.  



1 Nov 2004 @ 16:42 by craiglang : Motives
If (God forbid) Bush wins, I might feel alot more comfortable with the results if I felt that his motives were in the country's interest. Unfortunately, I do not see that. Given the untruths that led us into the whole Iraq war, I can not see anything but deception involved. This is not the sign of someone who would be a "firm hand at the helm". Rather, to me it looks like someone who is the symbolic figurehead of a cartel whose only interest is power.

The threat we face is real, and we need to face that threat, not a deception that leads us into the wrong war for the purpose of advancing a right wing agenda called the "New American Century".
So my sense is that if Bush wins, our nations problems will have only begun.  



2 Nov 2004 @ 02:56 by bkodish : Given your premises, Craig...
Why wouldn't you think that way?  


2 Nov 2004 @ 15:41 by craiglang : Ditto
I would say the same about yours.
I guess that means we're both consistent with our views... :-)

OK, so today the rubber meets the road...  



5 Nov 2004 @ 21:54 by Ed Dawson @66.245.209.90 : polarized positions
Some people on the Right condemn Kerry and paint him as a devil.

Some people on the Left condemn Bush and paint him as pure evil.

I don't perceive "pure evil" in either man. I do, however, perceive some evil. The evil I perceive is in each person who sees pure evil, A polarized viewpoint which places either man in the role of devil denies any good in the candidate thus labeled. Once tarred and feathered with a demon label (I apologize for the muddy image of the metaphor), then any action can be considered justified to oppose him, ispo facto his being a "demon". And when any action is justified to achieve the noble end of opposing a pure evil demon, then the end has justified the means, hasn't it?

Anyone who believes that the end justifying the means isn't evil, take a long look at history and the justifications used to do evil. "The end justifies the means" is the real evil. And anyone who practices it in any way -- whether Kerry or Bush or anyone reading this blog -- is in danger of doing evil.

So real the evil is polarization into two extremes, with one pole labeled pure good, and the other pole labeled pure evil. I strongly advise against this mental practice. The label is not the reality (a slight restatement of Korzybski's "the word is not the thing" and "the map is not the territory").

Neither an exalter nor a demonizer be. :)
cheers
Ed  



6 Nov 2004 @ 05:52 by b : Hi Bruce,
Well, the election is all over and President Bush won the house, the senate, the popular vote. The absurd statements that had no evidence or proof are silenced. What had been election rhetoric could now be sedition. The President immediately presented his agenda to his cabinet and the people. It is what he said in his campaign to get reelected. THe stock market went up and Yasser Arafat went into a coma in France. The dollar fell and people overseas are buying Ameican products in all of their countries. If only we could get off this oil tit.  


6 Nov 2004 @ 05:56 by vibrani : And why
did he wait until now to do these things?

There are nearly 300 million Americans -- 200 million of them of voting age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide -- it means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go home crying -- especially when you get to start the next down on the three yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are coming!!!

Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of surprise in 2008. [MM]  



8 Nov 2004 @ 15:32 by Ed Dawson @68.136.84.243 : ninhursag: we only lost by 3 1/2 mill
What's this "we" assumption? Do you have a mouse in your pocket? ;-)
-George  



8 Nov 2004 @ 15:43 by vibrani : No, Michael Moore might, though
that was his quote.  


9 Nov 2004 @ 19:48 by craiglang : Polarity
Ed, in retrospect, now that the dust has settled, you do have a point about polarity. Thanx for your comments.

Your are right in your assertion that no one (or perhaps "almost" no one) is fundamentally good or evil. Yet, while Bush is the winner of the election - or "election" - I don't feel that he represents me, and I will never agree with his policies. I also suspect his motives. However, he as a person, is probably an alright guy... :-)  



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