Every single one a youse can just go straight to hell.
Yeah, I know. It’s irrational. Maybe I’m tapped; maybe all my moonlight’s drained away. Normally I’m as waffly as they come, if by “they” you mean terminally indecisive eldest children who in their zeal to make nice between all the various factions that tug and push their lives end up seeing the merit to every possible point of view and never really finding some floor for their own feet that stays safe and stable for long. I mean, there’s no way under the sea or over it that I’m going to vote for Nader this year, but I’m not about to apologize for having done so in every election since 1992, and if I can recognize there’s something sky-pied arrogant about the whole enterprise of third parties in American politics, well, still: something’s got to be done, right? If the Democratic party is assured of my vote no matter what, because where else am I gonna go, well, why should they ever listen to me? (When was the last time I ever tried to tell them something?) And if there’s more than a little irrationality and nose-slicing spite in the vituperative hatred of Nader players that gets to strut down the Democratic catwalk with depressing regularity, well, the comfort I take in knowing that my Nader votes did nothing to steal electoral votes from the Democrats I was trying to message is a cold and hollow comfort, indeed. (I’ve got little enough time as it is for the things I need to do to keep my own life on track. How else can I help steer the ship of state?)
And if my sudden flirtation with the lesser of two evils has more to do with where we all are now than any yawning gap between 1992-me and 2004-me, well, 1992-me is still pissed. Every election is a crisis. It’s always never the right time to rock the boat. That this election is demonstrably the most critical of my voting life, if not the past 50 years, if not the past 100—that the boat has already fucking capsized, and we’re all paddling about, doing our best to right it in heavy seas—it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. 1992-me still wants his fuck-you vote. And if you maybe think 1992-me is as spoiled and wrong-headed as he is idealistic and righteously frustrated, well, I’d probably agree with you; then again, you don’t have to live with him.
Like I said: irrational. I mean, very little good can come of the white-hot rage that lights up my skull and leaks out of my eyeballs when I read something like this in a recent poll of registered voters:
Can I repeat that? —In the here and now, this current situation, with a choice between—
- a manifestly incompetent boob who’s crashed the country, looted our treasury, smeared our reputation with blood and shit, done his damndest to restrict our speech and our freedom of association—not out of any actual desire to keep us actually safe, but merely to score feel-good points in the polls; who sees no fault at all in claiming to be above the law, and has seized upon the most craven and dishonest means to keep us all split and squabbling, at each other’s throats, so that his outnumbered and outgunned faction can hold onto power just that much longer, squeeze that much more money from our pockets to his—
- and John Kerry—
15% of all registered Democrats are seriously considering the boob. Margin of error somewhere just north of plus or minus three percent, but hey: line up seven random registered Democrats. Chances are good that one of them is planning on voting for Bush. (Back in 2000, when Democrats were suffering Clinton fatigue, and hated wooden, beta-male, earth-toned Gore, who lied about the internet and lied about Love Canal [and Story], back when we weren’t all seized with knee-jerk treasonous Bush-hatred, Bush scored 11% of the Democratic vote. And maybe that’s a good argument for taking this LA Times poll as a sport, a freak, an outlier, and maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like grasping this slender reed, but right now I’ve got a head of steam on, so siddown and shaddap.)
But that white-hot rage is fucking irrational. What do I want, unswerving, unthinking party loyalty? (Well, a crushing landslide defeat, with all of us on the one side, and the five percent of those wealthy enough to benefit from Bush on the other—minus those human enough to feel guilty about their perks; plus a smattering of white men so stupefied by the creeping loss of what they see as their due that they can’t vote their own self-interest. Three percent of Republicans are considering Kerry, by the way. Plus or minus something slightly north of three percent.) —I mean, tag the Democrats themselves for this? They’d just panic and go haring after that mythical rightward nudge, the fatted calf to sacrifice that would bring all those chimerical NASCAR dads and soccer moms back into the fold. Which is beyond stupid: the problem isn’t that we’re too far left, for God’s sake. On every single issue you care to name, from abortion to child care to health care to education to the Wars on Drugs and Terra, we win. Our positions are the positions the majority wants; our direction is where the country wants to be heading. (What “we,” kemo sabe?) —But that’s not the choice people think they’re making. They think they’ve got these two options, this guy, and that other guy. And if one of the guys seems a little rank to them, what with the French and the yacht and the ketchup and the stuff about how maybe he lied but it’s all so confusing and it happened thirty years ago so who knows, fair and balanced, remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt he waffles, you know, and so, gee, I don’t know, I guess what’s left then is this other guy, and hey, steady leadership, right? Times of change?
Tacking right doesn’t do a goddamn thing except amp up the talk about waffling.
There’s a rule of thumb about schizophrenia and psychosis that I heard somewhere, and while I have no idea how actually useful it is, it stuck with me: psychosis can be seen, largely, as atypical, abnormal reactions to normal, present stimuli; schizophrenia, on the other hand, is (again, largely) reacting normally and typically to stimuli that just aren’t there, or don’t map reality in a terribly accurate fashion. And while there’s a lot of psychotic “I’d never vote for a guy who said we committed atrocities in Vietnam” (when we did, and anyway, your other choice is a deserter who lied about serving in the US Air Force) or “I’m not voting for a guy who’s going to raise my taxes” (when he won’t if you’re with about 95% of the country, and you’re going to pay the other guy’s tax bill in more ways than you can possibly imagine)—what I want to believe, what I hope, what must be true is most of that 15% (that 11%, that 49%, that 47) is schizophrenic: making the best choice you can from a field of factoids and stories and opinions that have little to nothing to do with what’s really going on, what you really want, life as it’s actually lived, and governing as it’s actually done. Because, while the psychosis makes me want to leave the country, the schizophrenia we can do something about. With a lot of hard work and deft argument and careful organizing and speaking clearly and openly and honestly and without a lot of rancor and spite and anger about where we are now and where we ought to be going and how it is we think we’re going to get there: offering new opinions, new stories, facts instead of factoids. The odds are against us, but the world as it is is for us, and we can get it done, and a lot of bitching and moaning and white-hot recriminating rancor doesn’t help. It’s irrational.
Still.
15.
Anybody sneers about Nader spoilers anytime soon, I’m gonna give ’em such the smack.
(And then promptly apologize, I’m sure. Gah!)
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If America re-elects Bush this year the rest of the world will never again believe in intelligent Americans. They will be a myth - an exception. "Know what? I talked to a smart American. No really! It's true!..."
90% of everything is crap, and 90% of all people are irreparably stupid--and that percentage crosses party lines. That freaky 15% you're complaining about just means that even when we get Kerry elected, we've got to continue watching the Democrats to make sure they don't go waltzing over the cliff.
A friend of mine has a schizophrenic brother -- not in an institution, but not exactly reliable, either. It seemed to us that there is a continuum of human (mis)behavior, and undoubtedly there are people out there almost-but-not-quite fitting the diagnosis, passing as "normal".
Undoubtedly some of these people vote.