Clowns to the Left of me, jokers to the Right
This last February I related a conversation I had with a rightwinger. He's got Bush/Cheney 04 stickers plastered on his truck, front and back.
Well, today I found out that on a recent lunchtime trip thru a nearby fastfood restaurant he was verbally accosted by man. The complete stranger told him that his truck should be bombed (apparently because of the stickers...) and proceeded to let loose a profanity-laced tirade. Needless to say the experience didn't leave the rightwinger feeling all warm and fuzzy about leftwingers.
I've also heard first-hand stories from Kerry/Edwards supporters, whom I know and trust, about being flipped off or sworn at by complete strangers, invariably driving cars bearing Bush/Cheney stickers.
It reminds me think of the Trekkie bumper sticker that says, "Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here."
This is just one more small reason why I remain a registered Independent. Why I continue to self-identify neither as a Liberal nor as a Conservative. I loath extremists of all stripes. All they ever do is divide and destroy. Neither side in the long-running Left/Right battle has anything close to the moral highground as far as I've ever been able to determine. Election after election I'm faced with choosing the lessor of two evils.
Is it any wonder that voter turnout in this country is routinely much lower than other western-style democracies?
I just don't see where our defacto two-party system has benefitted America.
Bumper sticker on the back of my car: Independent voter. Convince me.
Thus far Democrats and Republicans alike have failed miserably.
4 Comments:
Kevin, I sympathize with your dislike for extremism. I'm not so sure the two-party system is so bad, however. I've been through a lot of seminar discussions and read a lot of studies on what the alternatives might be for our system, and I've seen nothing that would appear to be better.
You might also want to reflect on the impact of independent candidacies for president. A good case can be made that Ross Perot got Clinton elected in '92 by drawing votes from Bush, like Ralph Nader did in '00 by drawing votes from Gore. Whether one likes or dislikes those results, in our system a third candidate often skews the results despite having no chance whatsoever of winning.
My favorite political bumper sticker:
"God is not a Republican... or a Democrat."
Yeah, I like that bumper sticker too, Vache.
I've actually got a guest essay on TheIndependentVoter.com which bears that very title. It was written in the late Winter of 1999 as the Presidential Primary elections were in full steam ahead mode.
If you look up in the top righthand corner of the blog here, you'll see a link to the website right underneath the little castle. The essay is down at the bottom of the page.
Tom, I see what you're getting at. But, I respectfully disagree with your conclussions.
What we have right now effectively allows the Democrats and Republicans play divide and conquer with the American citizens. This despite the fact that you'd have to combine the membership of both parties together in order to reach a majority of eligible voters.
What have we received for having allowed Dems and GOPers play divide and conquer? Corruption and lies. And I'm not talking about just in the last decade or two. The corruption goes back many, many decades.
Wasn't it George Washington who refused to identify himself as a member of either of the two main political parties of his day?
Seems to me he got us off to a pretty darn good start.
BTW, I voted for Clinton in '92 after having fled the Perot camp convinced that Ross wasn't playing with a full deck, as they say. I loved what Ross was saying and wanted to see reform very badly. But, he was not the right person for the job.
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