LaBatt's All, Folks
Yeah, that's the best Canada title I could come up with. Sorry, gang.Sean is tough to please. Millions of Americans (including me, my wife and our daughter) have protested this administration and the war in Iraq. Roughly 60,000,000 Americans voted (unsuccessfully) to remove George Bush from office in 2004. But that, apparently, isn't enough to convince Sean that we shouldn't all be tarred with the same brush.
Yes, it's true, we haven't had millions of workers strike in protest against our government. Tell me, Sean, what good would that do, exactly? We're not a parliamentary system, we don't have the option of calling for an election at any time. Demonstrating massive public unhappiness with the administration doesn't really have an upside when said administration can only be dislodged via an election that's over two years away. And yes, it has a downside, given the large number of employers who would take a dim view of such activity, and the large number of employees lacking any sort of union to keep said employers from terminating them for such a strike.
Even impeachment (assuming the Democrats could wrest control of the House of Representatives this year and had the balls to attempt it) wouldn't really help. Oust Bush, and you've got Cheney. Oust Cheney, and you've got whoever the Democrats elect as Speaker, except no you don't because Cheney would only have to get a majority vote in both houses to inject a new Vice President into the line of succession, and he'd undoubtedly choose someone guaranteed to get enough Democratic votes to sneak past before a new set of articles of impeachment could make their way through -- say, Condoleeza Rice, because it's a lock that there are some Democrats too timid to vote against a black woman regardless of her culpability in planning and conducting an illegal war.
And the game goes on and on.
You obviously don't think the electoral process is the answer. You don't think that the Democrats are any better than the Republicans. The only thing I can reasonably derive from your post is that nothing short of a new American Revolution is going to satisfy you that there's anybody south of the 49th parallel worth spit. To which I say: yes, it's true. We're weak; we need leadership, Sean. Please come back and show us the way.
I have plenty of sympathy for your viewpoint, really I do. And I love you; you're one of the rare and few people I've met on the net whom I'd go out of my way to meet. But I refuse to be held responsible, even by you, for the inaction of others, and I refuse to feel guilty about my repeated failure to purchase a sniper rifle and climb a water tower.
Of course, I've been drinking fluoridated water my whole life. So that probably has a lot to do with it.
posted by MeanMrMustard @ 8:15 PM
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