Let’s face it: As long as Uncle Joe has been campaigning, his foot’s been in his mouth as often as not. Heck, given his repeated plagiarism, sometimes it’s someone else’s foot. …Or is that him being creepy? I lose track. But that’s O.K., I guess, because so does he.
In any other campaign season, the candidates would need to be out on the road (more…)
Every four years like clockwork there’s a major campaign designed to guilt people into going out to vote. And every four years like clockwork we’re presented with a choice between two of the most detested humans on the planet. In 2020, it’s more of the same.
Even the exceptions (more…)
How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the forty million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
Hunter is dead, and I’m not him. Now we’ve got through the bad news, let’s take a good hard look at what’s changed in the past 48 years.
OK; I lied: We’re not through with the bad news. (more…)
NOTE: This is intended as a response to an article by T. N. Reider published at “The Conversation” entitled “Is the ‘lesser of two evils’ an ethical choice for voters?” That article is well-written, and I recommend reading it. All quotes come from there.
As I’ve discussed in other articles, despair is endemic in this country. The presidential politics of this year underline this in a fashion seldom seen before, with the fiercest supporters of each candidate shouting loudly that their pick for president isn’t quite as bad as the only other choice. People have stopped questioning the system, which seems to guarantee that the worst possible candidate always gains their party’s nomination. Instead they like to shout at one another about how the other option is worse.
One thing that cannot be denied: Americans hate both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and they do so in record numbers. We haven’t seen this level (more…)
The Not Fake News 