A friend advises that I should register my discontent with the treachery of the Republicans and the cowardice "" if not complicity -- of the Democrats, and generally with the current oratory and shenanigans of both by casting a protest vote (Nader? McKinney?) in November. And further, that such protest votes will be "noticed" by whatever power next ascends the throne of America, and hopefully heeded to some extent.
My friend is considerate, and offered this advice in response to my demonstrated anxiety that a "protest zone" was to be configured at the Democrats' convention in August, and it would be sufficiently far and blocked from the view of "our" delegates so to ensure that "order would be maintained."
The response to my friend follows "".It occurs to me that protest votes simply play the system. Yes, the Powers will notice, but then they'll dismiss them, in the case of a Republican with a smirk, in the case of a Democrat with a wave and a smile perhaps, but a dismissal nonetheless.
Other friends have not unkindly advised that I am angry, and that anger does not accomplish anything. But they are wrong. I am not angry. I am fuggan outraged! And after 28 years of citizen submission to a political system that has become progressively more abusive and a citizenry that raises no objection beyond what its abusers allow, or is too abysmally dense to comprehend what has been happening -- then anger and outrage it seems are exactly what are needed to motivate the action to turn things around, to stop lying wars, to stop torture for Christ's sake, and to regain our Constitution.
If I'll need to go elsewhere to avoid the resurrection of Nazism, then so be it. Wherever that place may be, I can only pray that the citizens there will have more sense and courage then to submit to similar treachery, and likewise not be deluded by a cowardly or complicit political "opposition," e.g. our Democrats.
I keep asking myself, "Why, America, tell me why you allow this to happen?" There is never an answer.
I had contemplated going to the Democratic convention in Denver to deliver my views by speaking, marching, signage, whatever means were available -- but I'll be damned if I will submit to be penned up like a dumb steer outside the slaughterhouse so the charade on the other side of the fence is provided the orderliness deemed essential to sell out America once more.
