Here's the thing
Dec. 14th, 2007 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdPeople keep telling me that the Democrats aren't as bad as the Republicans, and even when they do crap like this, it's important to vote for them anyway; the "right president" will bully them in the right direction. And that it's particularly important 'cause I'm queer.
And I think about it for a second, and I go, "well, you might think that," but then I look at history.
The Clinton era with a Democratic congress got us what? A military policy that let you be an out gay man or lesbian woman who were abstinent replaced with a Federal law that declared queers "an unacceptable threat... to the armed forces" and wrote specific discrimination against us into Federal law for the first time. A huge setback.
The Clinton era with a Republican congress? DOMA, the law that said the Feds won't recognise our marriages (when we couldn't even get married anywhere yet - it was in response to a potential) and that other states could ignore faggot marrige from other states, too. It passed with overwhelming Democratic support. Another huge setback. President Clinton would later urge candidate John Kerry to attack marriage rights in his campaign for office.
The Bush era with a Republican congress? Sure, lots of rhetoric. And showboating action on an incredibly vile Federal anti-marriage amendment - action that failed, tho' damn few Democrats actually came out and said it was wrong, it was always just "inappropriate" or "unnecessary," given DOMA. And Mr. Bush's fundamentalist asshat appointees certainly made things worse for queer government employees. (Not to mention the assraping of the constitution and the disaster it has been for the country as a whole. But that's a bigger topic than this one, specifically, and likewise has Democratic support.) But in law?
...Bueller?
...Bueller?
Hmmmmm.
The Bush era with a Democratic congress? Whelp, despite a promised veto, the Democrats and their toady, the Human Rights Campaign, broke up the GBLT coalition to get a vote in the House by throwing the T under the bus, all for a bill that probably won't get through the Senate and certainly won't get signed. Then the Dems turned around and threw all the queers under the very next bus in the "hate-crimes" law, using exactly the same rationale when ripping sexual orientation and identity out before passing it applicable to race, religion, gender, and an assortment of other categories. So in less than a year, we've had another set of political setbacks that has ripped apart a longstanding coalition, setting back some elements of it decades, harmed the greater cause in the eyes of straight people, and hurt themselves as a party in the process. Really, it's a classic Democratic maneuver.
So given all this, why, again, am I supposed to give a fucking fuck - specifically as a queer rights activist - about the fucking Democratic party? This is where that whole "lesser of two evils" thing has gotten us. It's not fucking working.
And I think about it for a second, and I go, "well, you might think that," but then I look at history.
The Clinton era with a Democratic congress got us what? A military policy that let you be an out gay man or lesbian woman who were abstinent replaced with a Federal law that declared queers "an unacceptable threat... to the armed forces" and wrote specific discrimination against us into Federal law for the first time. A huge setback.
The Clinton era with a Republican congress? DOMA, the law that said the Feds won't recognise our marriages (when we couldn't even get married anywhere yet - it was in response to a potential) and that other states could ignore faggot marrige from other states, too. It passed with overwhelming Democratic support. Another huge setback. President Clinton would later urge candidate John Kerry to attack marriage rights in his campaign for office.
The Bush era with a Republican congress? Sure, lots of rhetoric. And showboating action on an incredibly vile Federal anti-marriage amendment - action that failed, tho' damn few Democrats actually came out and said it was wrong, it was always just "inappropriate" or "unnecessary," given DOMA. And Mr. Bush's fundamentalist asshat appointees certainly made things worse for queer government employees. (Not to mention the assraping of the constitution and the disaster it has been for the country as a whole. But that's a bigger topic than this one, specifically, and likewise has Democratic support.) But in law?
...Bueller?
...Bueller?
Hmmmmm.
The Bush era with a Democratic congress? Whelp, despite a promised veto, the Democrats and their toady, the Human Rights Campaign, broke up the GBLT coalition to get a vote in the House by throwing the T under the bus, all for a bill that probably won't get through the Senate and certainly won't get signed. Then the Dems turned around and threw all the queers under the very next bus in the "hate-crimes" law, using exactly the same rationale when ripping sexual orientation and identity out before passing it applicable to race, religion, gender, and an assortment of other categories. So in less than a year, we've had another set of political setbacks that has ripped apart a longstanding coalition, setting back some elements of it decades, harmed the greater cause in the eyes of straight people, and hurt themselves as a party in the process. Really, it's a classic Democratic maneuver.
So given all this, why, again, am I supposed to give a fucking fuck - specifically as a queer rights activist - about the fucking Democratic party? This is where that whole "lesser of two evils" thing has gotten us. It's not fucking working.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 08:48 pm (UTC)That said, the Democrats are a political party in a political system that's thoroughly compromised, dominated by a majority of voters who are deeply socially conservative. The problem is so much bigger than any one political party that it's really pointless to rail against a party. It's also really a bad idea to just turn our backs on the whole thing, because then the people who do get involved (e.g. the religious right and socially conservative Democrats) maintain control over the whole fucked up system and make it even worse.
I was watching Al Gore yesterday openly blame the US government for the failure of the Bali talks on global warming, to general applause from people at the conference. Here's a man who on foreign policy (despite his speeches since his defeat) wasn't significantly distinguishable from the neocons, who has a pretty strong anti-gay and anti-civil liberties past, who probably wouldn't have followed a progressive agenda on anything had he been elected in 2000, and you know what my thought was? Damn, if that guy had been president, we probably would be doing the right thing about global climate change, and even with the shit sandwich of the rest of his policies that would have made a huge difference in the long term for literally billions of people around the world. That difference alone, in retrospect, would have made voting for him the right thing to do. Getting angry at him about everything else didn't help build an alternative (though it really didn't help defeat him either). What that told me isn't so much that I should have voted differently in 2000, but that I can't just throw up my hands in disgust and wish an equal plague on both their houses. As much as it sucks, I have to support whatever compromised backstabbing motherfucker will be marginally less bad than the other guy, and work to make the difference between choices better the next time around.
It's easier for me to say that than for you, because I'm not as directly in the crosshairs of the social conservatives. But look at some of the comments about liberals that are percolating up from the right wing these days. If people give up on the mainstream alternative to the far right, the kind of people who will fill that political vacuum are the kind of people who would line just about everyone you and I know up against the wall given the chance.
The asshats WANT you to stop giving a fuck about the Democratic Party. That helps the Republican asshats maintain power and lets the Democratic asshats keep real change from coming. I'm not going to open my own ass haberdashery. I'm going to walk into the one that has fewer asshats and work to replace as many of them as I can.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 08:57 pm (UTC)AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER.
Maybe you don't understand the damage that vote did. It would have been MUCH BETTER not to get a vote.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:06 pm (UTC)And honestly, the Democrats were in an impossible situation given the lobbying by HRC. They were either going to make a vote that would make them look anti-gay, even though committed activists like you knew it was the right vote, or they were going to vote for it and be co-responsible for dividing the GLBT political community. They made the (wrong) political calculation that fewer people would be offended by voting yes. That accounting while repugnant on moral grounds and stupid strategically in the long run makes sense by short-term political arithmetic. The real problem is that the GLB part of GLBT pushed a bill that marginalized the Ts. If HRC hadn't taken that stance, the Democrats would never have been part of the discussion at all. It's HRC that should take the bulk of the anger for what happened. To prevent that from happening again, HRC has to lose support to other organizations that will support the entire framework of equal rights and not play some people off others to the detriment of all.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:11 pm (UTC)The HRC has accomplished...
zero.
They have zero legislative successes.
I'd say it's not fucking working.
If HRC hadn't taken that stance, the Democrats would never have been part of the discussion at all.
Bullshit. They were three votes short. Shattering the political coalition got them three votes once. That's not politics, that's insanity.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:19 pm (UTC)And OK, the HRC has no successes at the federal level. Again, that's their problem, not the fault of Democrats who have repeatedly done everything HRC wanted them to do. All you can ask of elected officials is that they respond to your interests. Democrats did that this time around--they listened to what the most powerful gay rights group was telling them, and acted on it to achieve a majority, albeit a symbolic one. You can't expect elected officials who have to act on issues of all kinds to understand the nuances of a civil rights issue when the activists for that issue are telling them the wrong things.
The bottom line is that politicians are reactive, except in a very few crises such as world wars and depressions when survival demands a more active stance. It's up to activists to produce the proper reactions, and in this case, the activists failed.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:52 pm (UTC)Bullshit. Because the only one who would have done that is the HRC - almost every other group opposed the move - and the HRC wouldn't do it because they're Democratic Party stooges.
You can't expect elected officials who have to act on issues of all kinds to understand the nuances of a civil rights issue when the activists for that issue are telling them the wrong things.
Oh, experience has shown quite clearly that I can't expect them to understand a goddamn thing. But this whole idea is predicated on the idea that only one group was speaking, and that's just wrong.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 10:16 pm (UTC)I see a bottom-up approach:
1. Fix issue-specific groups so that their lobbying of politicians is more effective. Short form: stop funding HRC and similar groups and direct that money to other groups. I assume you already do this.
2. Work on improving the current political options at the local level.
3. Look for ways to open up the system that do not weaken the very few avenues of power we already have.
4. Commit ourselves to social and political solidarity in our relationships and neighborhoods. Don't ever support any proposal that advances the interests of one group at the expense of another. Don't shrug off prejudicial and discriminatory statements but challenge them instead.
5. Vote for the least damaging electoral option.
6. ?
7. Profit.
I really don't have the answers. I just know that we have to fight back productively, and venting at the obvious injustice of it all isn't enough. Take the suckiness of the Democratic Party as a given. OK, so now what?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 01:01 am (UTC)We're where we are for an assortment of reasons. One is that voters do not think rationally. It's possible that voters have never thought rationally; but we know they don't think rationally now, and because political parties also know that (and have, since the late 70s), they react and programme their campaigns accordingly. Part of this is projecting an image and set of values, then operating completely independently of that image and/or values set. Another part of this programming includes convincing voters of a few key things: 1) The lessor of two evils is the same thing as improvement over what has come before, 2) A vote for anyone but the winning candidate is a wasted vote, and 3) Nothing else is viable.
There's all sorts of stuff I'm not good at. Some things I am good at, however, is laying out facts in a relatively rational way, to show how they have nothing to do with a set of abstract assertions. I've done that for years with the fundamentalist movement; I've done a bunch of that with the GOP; now I'm doing that with Democratic branding (such as it is) vs. Democratic reality.
The big point of that, mind you, is attacking programming element 1, that the lessor of two evils is the same thing as an improvement over what has come before. What I'm laying out is a fuck you, no response, and hoping other people will make similar decisions. If somebody wants votes, they should have to earn them. Being a slightly less bad war criminal doesn't cut it.
A third thing I'm doing is attacking programming element 2, which is the assertion that it's better to vote for a candidate you think will when than a candidate you actually support. Voting for who they think the winner is going to be is a huge voting motivator; I see it online, I see it in caucuses, I see it in commentary. It signals the obsession with strategy over goal. By rejecting this, and rejecting it strongly and publicly, I hope to push people away from that line of thinking entirely, because a "republic" of strategists is not a democratic republic at all.
So I'm already doing what I can do with the talents I have and the money I have.
Give me $30 million to spend and I have some other ideas.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 06:26 am (UTC)By the way and for the record, I don't enjoy arguing about this with you, it's just that I realize how fucked up things are and don't want them to get worse. The most important thing is to give a damn about the right things, which you do and which I like to think I do. If enough people did that, we'd all come out all right.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 07:03 am (UTC)Seriously. Because honestly and truly I think everybody who doesn't vote now should go vote in 2008 for ANY RANDOM THIRD PARTY they've never heard of. Do it as a joke, do it as a gag, whatever. It doesn't even matter who they vote for, I don't care. People who already vote for one of the two torture parties can go do whatever they're gonna normally do anyway, I'm not talking about them. But everybody who normally doesn't vote and who is sick of this bullshit, who can't be bothered, who sits it out because the major parties are just so stupid and broken should go register and vote in 2008 for ANY party they've never heard of, because the whole political status quo needs a crowbar across its power supply.
That would be the focus of the campaign. Get all the angry, disaffected, surly people to deliver a crowbar-across-the-power-supply message by showing up for the first time ever, just to say fuck you. (And to be eligible to win a million dollars, and other prizes.) With $30 million (total - a couple of million dollars in prizes, lots of money in campaign, and so on) I kinda wonder if it couldn't be made to happen.
If it goes down in flames, well, it goes down in flames. If it doesn't - if, say, five million people go out and Vote Random who never voted before - you're talking some set of little parties who have a lot of voters and one or two of whom might even suddenly get matching funds. And maybe a message will have been sent.
It's the best idea I've got, anyway. The current system is broken. Badly. It needs shock treatment.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 08:50 pm (UTC)Only problem would be, my views would likely see me get shot. Plus, one voice in a crowd of sheep? Naaaaah.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 08:57 pm (UTC)And you know what, I'm not running for anything ever, both because I can't give a public presentation to save my life, but also because I would never survive the prying into my personal affairs and I couldn't avoid just ranting every time I was passionate about an issue. There's also the whole getting shot thing.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 01:07 am (UTC)well, you *are* short...
Now you did it.
Date: 2007-12-15 01:31 am (UTC)Re: Now you did it.
Date: 2007-12-15 01:35 am (UTC)Re: Now you did it.
Date: 2007-12-15 01:36 am (UTC)Re: Now you did it.
Date: 2007-12-15 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 08:52 pm (UTC)the other question is whether they all suck on other issues, such as war. kucinich doesn't; i actually don't hate him. obama i'm a bit more worried about. clinton i'm quite worried about.
i'm fucking terrified of another republican wrt war, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:02 pm (UTC)Hmmmm. Potentially we could subvert an existing party, but that takes time, care, and charisma, the latter of which tends to get you shot. Besides, that's not the way we want it to work, is it?
For what it's worth, given what you've said and proven with copious links, I have to agree with you. Ain't neither party as a whole worth a tinker's damn at this point.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:20 pm (UTC)I suppose that this matters to me because the majority of my spouses and lovers (although not most of our children) live Stateside -- they have to bear the consequences of legislative stupidity. As, of course, do I every time I run the guantlet to cross the border.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:37 pm (UTC)1) A bill passed by Congress is ratified by 3/4 of the states' legislatures.
2) A Consitutional Convention.
Reform by the former will never happen; Congress won't willingly give up its power. The latter mechanism... once a CC is called, anything could be proposed, voted on in the middle of the night, and then we have ourselves a ohnosecond and run for the hills.
Doubleplusungood.
Ways I see to do what needs doing:
1) Take to the cartridge box. This is bloody, messy, dangerous, and didn't work the last time. The least preferable of the options.
2) Wait for the Empire to fall as it inevitably will. This is almost as bad as (1) because it can often involve civil war or invasion anyway... and being as Cascadia is a nice, desirable place, someone may well want to take it for themselves. And I'm not sure most of the liberals around here have the stomach to fight for it.
3) Revolution by keyboard. This is essentially what Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa pulled, only updated for the 21st Century. Just keep making noise until they Can't Stand It Anymore. It's slow, frustrating work, but it's got the least likelyhood of getting shot, and it's got a decently well-proven track record. (Oh, right. I forgot about South Africa. 'course, that was part civil war, too... but what really ended up working was Mandela and Tutu's efforts, not all the shooting.)
That's what I'm hoping for, is that if we keep pounding the truth out our cat-5's, the hoi polloi will eventually achieve clue and help us tear down the wall. The East Germans did it, the Polish did it, the Czech, probably a few others.... I wish there were a faster way, but Rome was not built in a day....
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 11:25 am (UTC)Option 2: doubtful. The Empire will likely not fall due to civil war: to an outsider's view there are not clear enough power blocs to make that possible. I can, just dimly, picture a future of de facto if not de jure Cascadian separation; we are also at the de facto stage up here on our side of the line, as witness the lack of effort being put into maintenance of transport links across the Rockies. But I digress, as usual. I also cannot see a credible invasion scenario, other than the demographic flood into the Southwest. Who else would have the resources or the will to invade America? Not Canada, that's for darned sure: we can barely piss in a pot with the forces we have, and we are off playing Minor Axis Power in Afghanistan is it is (I wrote that, didn't I? Retirement hath its privileges, such as being allowed to speak truths).
Option 3 maybe; it will take time, and this is Long View territory. It took the theocons what, twenty-five years to organise upwards from the grassroots and local politics to consolidated national office? I remember well the local discussions amongst the fundies of the day (was once in much closer social contact with those folks than I am now, what with having once made my pin-money as a hireling church organist). The two-party system doesn't work very well at all: basically one has the insurance companies bankrolling one side, and the trial lawyers on the other side; business knows well enough to keep both sets of palms greased. Same situation applies here in British Columbia with polarised provincial politics: it's been Socreds versus Red NDP as long as I've lived here, which is a while now. Socreds might call themselves Liberals sometimes, but it's a bit like a used-car dealer changing his/her brand signage: it's still the same old populist tub-thumping and politics-by-paving.
I really like Dara's suggestion of the $30 million solution, the proverbial crowbar across the power supply [which merits a user-icon, it surely do!], pushing for a Vote Random campaign. It is to the ongoing interest of both Stateside political parties to keep the vast majority of hoi polloi away from the ballot-boxes: politicians hate surprises, after all, and if the great mass of "undecideds" ever actually did vote, it could potentially swing things quite remarkably.
I'm all for buying lottery tickets too -- might be my only chance to escape working in the food mines (sensu Gateway); backchannel acts of philanthropy always have strong multiplier effects, even the odd thousand dollars will make a big difference sometimes. Chunk money helps.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 09:37 pm (UTC)The only way that's going to happen is if a third party runs specifically on that issue, and pledges its support to whatever other major party agrees to push for those changes. So, say the Libertarian and Green parties could form a temporary Independent Alliance Party and try to get a decisive minority of voters from the two major parties to support them. Then they pledge to support any candidate or party that adopts proposals for electoral reform, with the understanding that going back on that pledge means permanent opposition. In the US, the key positions would be the Congress, state legislatures, and the state-level secretaries of state.
A similar electoral strategy occurred in the UK in 1997 when the Liberal Democrats gave support in some constituencies to tactical Labour voting with the understanding that Labour would support reforms for proportional representation. (I don't know the details from memory; any British readers can clarify.) The end result was that once Labour was in power, it abandoned its PR pledge. In the long run, that strengthened the position of the Tories, who otherwise would have been consigned to near-permanent minority status.
The difficulty of all this is why I prefer to work within the Democratic Party and with the understanding that electoral constitutional reform is unlikely.
A British reader clarifies
Date: 2007-12-15 01:30 am (UTC)Pretty much exactly that. For what it's worth: Labour = Democrats, but until 1997 (or more accurately 1994) genuinely centre-left; Tories (aka Conservatives) = Republicans (maybe somewhat more moderate, but not much), and the Liberal Democrats at this point were originally a centrist party but were slowly drifting left, a process greatly magnified by their rivals moving right.
At some point in the mid 1990s, the Liberal Democrats made the conscious decision to abandon neutrality between the two main parties and become explicitly anti-Tory. (This was politically expedient at the time, because the Tories then were the most unpopular party in power in, well, contemporary British history.) The nature of UK elections - 660-odd constituencies electing individual MPs, the largest party forms the government - is such that there are some locations where Labour could not win seats themselves, but the Liberal Democrats could steal them off the Tories themselves (and, more frequently, vice versa). It is that very system that they ironically exploited in the pressure to change it - Labour added a pledge for a referendum on a new system, the Liberal Democrats played along with it, the Tories were duly destroyed, Labour won the largest majority in remotely recent history, the Liberal Democrats doubled the number of seats despite a barely changed share of the vote from the prior election of '92, and then Labour became power crazed.
Though they did it cleverly. They did call their other referenda on devolution for Scotland and Wales (Scotland voted yes by some way, Wales did the same by a frighteningly small margin), said devolved governments introduced limited PR themselves, commissioned a report into various alternatives (for there are many alternative electoral systems), said report approved of a compromise similar to but not quite the same as the Scottish/Welsh model, and then it got left to one side.
Where it's stayed for eight fucking years.
Funny that, considering Labour have held a majority all this time and, you know, would have been in minority government otherwise. Reliant on the support of, you know, the same Liberal Democrats who are now the only source of checks and balances on Labour. (The Tories sometimes do too, but usually only to make Labour follow the same path further. Though, to their minor credit, not always (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7130072.stm). But usually.)
fuck the democrats. and those wide stance bastard republicans, too.
Date: 2007-12-15 04:54 am (UTC)first off, i don't mean to in any way deny you your rage. there's plenty of rage-worthy stuff going on. and i recognize that i am speaking from a position of some privilege, so i absolutely don't want to come across as doing some kind of "oh, just lighten up, honey" trivializing bullshit.
but, that said, i do think that overall, things are improving slowly in america. advances in some areas, setbacks in others. at the federal level, politics have been going badly of late for us, what with the throwings-under and busses and us all being a unifying topic of h8 for some of these folks. statewise, some states have been better, some have been worse. but *culturally*, things have been improving hugely.
in the long term, i think we just have to keep treading water and let old people die off. there's a huge difference by age demographics, and that difference is to our advantage.
recent (and not-so-recent) political events still suck, tho.
Re: fuck the democrats. and those wide stance bastard republicans, too.
Date: 2007-12-15 05:23 am (UTC)For the queers, absolutely. And it's all social politics. I engage in a lot of this - see above. But the Democrats - particularly at the national level - aren't part of the solution, and haven't been part of the solution, at least not during my adult life. They've been a big part of making things worse. So I get really annoyed when people say to look to the Democrats - on the national level, in terms of things actually accomplished - as opposed to threatened - they've done significantly more harm than the GOP in this area. It's really impressive.
Re: fuck the democrats. and those wide stance bastard republicans, too.
Date: 2007-12-16 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 05:37 am (UTC)That said, President is different, if for no other reason than the Supreme Court. Look at Clinton's appointees vs Bush's. Granted Bush was something of an anomaly even compared to past Repubs, but no more of that or the hole will be too deep to ever dig out of.
The Dems may not be worthwhile on the environment and cowards on the issue of reproductive freedom, but at least they're not trying to actively destroy these things, and the Republicans unfettered could do a lot of damage real fast.
In sum, unless we have someone supporting nuclear power & ehtanol or something, I'll vote Dem for president next time. Senate/House? 50/50 on Boxer, almost certainly going Green for the House race (as I've done a few times in a row now, alas w/out effect)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 04:20 pm (UTC)But I literally can't imagine who I'd vote for in the primary, much less in the general election, which wouldn't be throwing bad after worse. The way the Democrats have handled themselves recently has completely eroded my faith in them as standing for -anything- much less standing for anything I respect. I keep thinking about the Jimmy Carter effect, if we elect a Democrat for president. Y'know, the thing where we get someone in power who's kinda ineffectual and who tries for four years to pull the country out of a nosedive because of a mess that's not of their own creation - and who then gets voted out of office so that the opposing party gets a nice 12 year run.
At least if a Republican president gets elected, they can frickin' bail out their own bilge.
I don't know...my head says "The lesser of two evils is still less evil.." but my heart says "I don't want to vote for EVIL at all."
So I don't know what to do anymore. I just don't know where to go now...the Greens? What I really want to find is a -real- progressive party that I can throw in with. People with a backbone and principles and the organizational chops to affect actual change. I don't see anybody like that right now.
Mostly I've been trying to just ignore the whole thing, because when I think about it I kind of want to sick up and cry and lock myself in a dark room and rock. That's not good for me or for what I want to accomplish in the world so...for the most part I try not to think about what my country has become. And that's a new thing in my Universe, not one of which I'm particularly proud, but there it is....totally depressed hopelessness. And I know I'm not the only American who's feeling this way by a long shot...
but by all means, let's all spend endless news cycles talking about the $#@! steroids in baseball
"issue."
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 10:55 pm (UTC)for the most part I try not to think about what my country has become
For me - and I use this in my letters - it was when I realised I was fighting the US government for doing the same things I used to write foreign governments in protest - torture, lack of habeas corpus, all that sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 05:49 pm (UTC)But that's just it, the money issue is at the heart of every political problem whether a particular politician says otherwise. In my opinion, it's usually whomever throws the most money at a person or stance over the table and under that gets something decided. I don't have any way to back this theory, but that's how I feel.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 10:56 pm (UTC)