from Geoff Summers
to news@lostatsea.net
date Sep 17, 2007 12:07 PM
subject Survey Says... Presidential Candidates
Hi there,
Not sure if you are responsible for the 'polls' on LAS, please pass on to the relevant party...
I must say that I take exception to your exclusion of, to quote from the poll itself, "several viable candidates" from this survey.
In fact, if the presidential hopefuls were to be closely examined, I think you would find that candidates such as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Ron Paul are indeed more viable (if we are taking viable to mean 'capable of working successfully') than any of the six listed in your poll, and that's not even to mention candidates representing other parties.
I am not naive. I know that when you use the word 'viable', you do not mean it in its true sense. Rather, you mean it in the way that it has come to be used in describing candidates that pass through the media's rigorous 'filtering process'. Clinton is 'viable', in short, because she is a corporatist. Kucinich, for example, is not 'viable', because he is a populist, and because candidates like him are effectively removed from the process prematurely by the press (and other factors at odds with any sort of, erm, viable democratic process), would-be supporters feel disenfranchised and, ultimately, 'settle' for the next best choice (or the next best, or the next best).
For more on this phenomenon, see:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-08/13herman.cfm
For a specific, archetypal example of this phenomenon, see Sean Hannity's disenfranchisement (and Alan Colmes' complicity) of voters (please excuse or ignore the pro-Paul angle in the latter part of the video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUxQadgSkoA
via:
http://openletter2foxnews.wordpress.com/
I intended to write a brief complaint about the poll on LAS, and I may have gotten a bit carried away. But I think it's important not to prematurely remove legitimate candidates just because the media is coercing us to do so. We should support the democratic process (or at least the idea of it) and not play into the hands of the powers that be.
Best,
--
Geoff Summers
surf the gerf turf
http://surfthegerfturf.blogspot.com
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RE: Survey Says... Presidential Candidates (fwd)
from LAS
reply-to eric.j.herboth@lostatsea.net
to surfthegerfturf@gmail.com
date Sep 21, 2007 11:37 AM
subject RE: Survey Says... Presidential Candidates (fwd)
Hello Geoff. Thanks for your email, and taking the time to compose it. We could surely go back and forth on American politics all day, both of us no doubt equipped with an arsenal of facts and well-composed points, but I would imagine that, in a very broad "liberal" versus "conservative" analysis (using those terms as loosely as possible and then only as a default to the current standards of discourse imposed by the media, which you appropriately point out), yourself and the majority of the LAS staff would settle on the same side of the fence, so that would probably be a waste of time and energy on both our parts.
Yes, indeed, we do/did use the term "viable" in reference to a candidate's chances, in ratio to those of a snowball's of surviving in the mythical realm of Hell, of actually being elected to office in a nation full of Americans. If we were to use the term in reference to a candidate's likelihood of being "successful" in furthering and bettering the cause of the Earth's occupants (the human race as well as plant and animal species), there certainly wouldn't be any scumbags like 9/11 flag fucker Rudy Giuliani or that Mitt Romney guy. But, alas, I don't even think Russell Means is running for those Libertarian weirdoes anymore, I don't think Noam Chomsky or Russ Feingold ever would run, and we don't even have the possibilities-slash-media spectacle of Howard Dean to consider.
Our poll is simply for demographic analysis purposes (and, it should be honestly said, entertainment value) in relation to what might be an actual event. I think more and more people are realizing that the United States (and unfortunately, as a result, much of the known natural world) is pretty much fucked in at least the short term and that most every disaster that befalls it - from 9/11 to the Iraq war to western wildfires and beyond - has been a long time coming simply as a matter of cause and effect in a world that is dynamic. I shan't veer off onto that thread of argument though, because I think we also all realize that innocent people needlessly and horrifically have lost their lives at the hands of other human beings, a list of victims that extends not only to upper middle class equities traders in the World Trade Center as well as to the inhabitants of places like Afghanistan, Honduras, Alabama, the Philippines, the Navajo nation, Chechnya, et cetera, both as the result of American interference and/or blind eye neglect. And just as a short but necessary point, we likely also all realize that all nations commit cruel and violent acts against their own people and others, but this topic is on the United States which, we also all recognize, is the country gallivanting around the world as a beacon of equality and dignity and human rights. If it was okay to just do what everyone else did the United States would have gulags and torture chambers and... er, wait a minute... never mind.
Basically, I can't speak for the rest of the staff, but as far as I'm concerned anyone in sanctioned state politics (the world over, it seems) is going to perpetuate the course of American political and social life which, lets face it, has been pretty shady all along (I'm sure you've done your share of reading). Who wants to risk protecting a bunch of Bronze Age villagers in mud huts and caves when there's a fucking McDonalds franchise at stake?
The last person I personally would have actually supported and endorsed with a vote for President of the United States was Robert Kennedy, who unfortunately was assassinated nearly a decade before I was born. By the way, that is a sentiment I wouldn't extend to his douchebag brother Ted, who is an appropriate and effective totem for the absurd hilarity that is the Democratic party. I personally maintain that Republican politicians are almost uniformly despicable human beings (damn if that John McCain doesn't, when not dry-humping George Bush's leg, seem like he could be a rational human being from time to time), but at the least they have far more palpable (of course not absolute) and proven level of integrity (in relation to doing what they say they'll do) and conviction of principle that one can almost respect. I'd rather drink turpentine and piss on a brush fire than vote for a Republican, but the guiding light for the Democratic party in the post-Camelot era (itself wrought with American excess and international meddling) is Bill Clinton, a fellow who had the chance to pardon or at least grant clemency to someone like Leonard Peltier and instead used his last minute signatures to benefit his cronies.
I've spent more than half my life living in the United States, as a citizen, and it is pretty clear to me that neither a woman nor a person of "color," no matter their merit, stand a very good chance of winning the support of a majority of Americans. At least in one instance we can thank goodness that prejudice extends to Jews and that weasley Lieberman. Who knows, I may be wrong, but the fact that most people are only very very vaguely familiar with the names Mike Gravel and Ron Paul and even Kucinich is probably testament to the fact that none of them have been making passionate and intelligent pleas for a dramatic change in American policy *in a logical and real-world practical way*. And in that regard they're the same as Obama or Clinton or Howard Dean or John Edwards or John Kerry or Al Gore and indeed Giuliani and McCain - none of them are going to so much as adjust CAFE standards to a "viable" (in the OTHER sense of the word) level (which would make gasoline engines non-viable), let alone cut off military and political support to Israel or normalize relations with Cuba and half of South America or even provide real and complete social and economic relief to their own citizenry of indigenous origins. I mean, c'mon - millions of people were running around three years ago with groups like MoveOn and operating under the very sincere belief that John Kerry was going to nationalize health care and save the world. It's like the dumb leading the retarded.
I kind of get the impression that Kucinich is effectively removed from the process prematurely by his own party, but I could be mistaken.
By the way, Ron Paul actually defeated Russell Means for the Libertarian nomination for president in the late 1980s and then, after having succeeded in displacing a candidate who would have at least been as "viable" (again, the other sense of the word) as Walter Mondale, switched to the Republican Party to suck up the last residual bliss of the Reaganomics coma that Americans were in. You sure you want to back THAT guy?
Again, I thank you for your correspondence and I salute your obviously passionate political arguments, even if I personally have different views. In that regard, America is still sort of cool, that we can say what we want (so long as its not over the phone or internet with any alarmist rhetoric!). In the end everyone, left and right and up and down, has to make their own decision, whether that be to vote for the lesser of many evils, move to a foreign country and watch from afar, incinerate a Hummer dealership, affix themselves to the bridge of FDR's nose on Mt. Rushmore with a 55-gallon drum of superglue adn waiving a banner that reads GAY ATHEIST MARIJUANA SEX FOR GHANDI, or what have you. Perhaps the options on our poll were not as open/fair as they could have been, for to do so we'd have to reasonably include the candidates from the National Socialist White People's Party (aka the American Nazi party), the Klu Klux Klan, Warren Beatty, Jessie Jackson, that dude from Law & Order, Grover from Sesame Street, Arianna Huffington, et cetera. We will for sure be running updated/similar polls closer to the country's political conventions and the run up to the November Oh-Ate elections, but those will also, unfortunately, need to reflect real-world scenarios for the information gathering they are intended for. Who knows, maybe Kucinich is going to adopt a platform that forbids federal aid money to any fungdark who builds his house in coastal Florida and then is found in a blubbering mass of remorse after a hurricane takes his wife and kids and custom Caloway (sp?) golf clubs and spreads them across half of Georgia, in which case he will assuredly be in a subsequent list of polling options. Heck, if he says he wants to give Florida to Cuba, he'll even get my vote! I think Castro could at least appreciate the Everglades as they once were...
By all means, if you'd like to compose an opinion piece on the state of American politics in relation to the current election cycle (or the politiscape in general), feel free to do so and I will seriously consider it for publication as a column - and there's no need to pander to my jaded reactionism if you do so. Give it to us straight. Regardless of how our individual or collective political or moral (now THERE is a word that has lost all meaning in modern American times) might play out, in no way would any of us wish to block anyone from the opportunity to share their views on how to right that sinking ship.
Thanks again, and don't let the bastards get you down.
PS - I've copied the staff on this email (and my parents, who are no doubt always overflowing with pride after hearing my astute political observations), just to ensure that I'm not in some way seen as speaking for anyone but myself, which I'm not. Oh, and while we're on the subject, to the staff I'll say that I'd love to see a female leader of the free world, aka US President, but anyone considering voting for Hillary Clinton might want to revisit her vote on the Iraq military powers authorization. My point being that I wholeheartedly believe she voted YES because she didn't think Bush was actually going to use that authority, and that is exactly why I don't think she should be entrusted with such an office. I mean, if she can't read and predict the level of theological fanaticism and moral bankruptcy and capitalistic opportunism in some clown like George Bush, how in the hell is she going to deal with the next Pol Pot, Manuel Noriega, Osama bin Laden or any other former CIA operative turned "rogue"? Actually, in his defense I should point out that Pol Pot was never on the US payroll...
And is it just be or does this Obama guy say all the right things but still seem kind of... I don't know, I can't put my finger on what I don't like about that guy... at least he'd probably get the US involved in African in a meaningful way... and isn't he down with two dudes engaging in hot, passionate sexual intercourse with each other and then adopting kids? I haven't heard, but that would be rad if he was.
--
Eric J Herboth :: Managing Editor
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