11/5/2004 – Robert

The presidential election has come and gone, and George W. Bush was reelected president of the United States of America.  Honestly, I was rooting for John Kerry, but I don’t think it will make much of a difference either way.  I was willing to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt, but that’s a moot point now.

I think Bush and Kerry are right, we shouldn’t spend the next four years bickering.  No amount of complaining will change the results of the election, so we should do what we can to cooperate and improve things.  I know it’s difficult and we’re all disappointed in how things turned out, but after our mourning is done, we need to take action.

John Kerry losing the election isn’t the main thing liberals should be considered about.  I’m far more worried about the fact that the conservatives are gaining ground in congress.  The GOP gained seats this election, next time around, will they gain more?  How long until the Democratic party is so weakened that they don’t even have the votes for a filibuster?  I think the ideal situation in congress should be a balance between congress and the White House.  So, republican president, democratic congress.  Without some sort of balance, we’re all in for a very bad situation.  Moderate conservatives should take note too, this will impact you as well.

So, for those of you focusing on who is going to be our president for the next four years, the president isn’t the only thing to worry about.  Consider things from a local level too.  Where I’m at, I have a few things to be thankful for.  Jim Matheson held onto his congressional seat, Carroon is now the mayor of Salt Lake County (he won against Ellis Ivory, who is a republican, and Merrill Cook, officially an independent).  Scott Matheson lost his bid to become the new governor, Huntsman won.  You can’t win them all, and this is Utah, of course we were going to get another republican for governor. 

One pretty major gripe I have is Amendment 3’s passing.  To those outside of Utah, this is the gay marriage ban.  I’ll always be a fan of the ladies, but I feel the effects of this ban are much farther reaching than just the gay community.  No matter who you are, this is a major step in the wrong direction.  I may not be as articulate as others might be on this, but here it goes: 

Do we all really need more government regulation in our lives?  The gay marriage ban is really just bigotry shrouded in the pretense of protecting family values.  What are family values?  What is the sanctity of marriage anyway?  You cannot honestly tell me that someone who has been married and divorced 3-4 times is a shining example of this.  Don’t people of every orientation deserve the same chance of happiness?  For those of you that support the ban:  it’s not like your kids are going to catch gay.  I’ll just say this upfront:  you’re a bigot if you voted for one of these measures, and if you didn’t vote against it, shame on you.  In black and white, what this amounts to is the majority of the population supporting the suppression of one group’s rights because of their sexual preference.  Is this the land of the free…  only if you’re not gay?

I have some friends that are republicans.  I may not agree with their viewpoints, but I understand some of them and I respect them.  Those of you who say things like “fuck you to the 51%” need to realize that we’re all Americans and we need to work together.  Hey, I’m not happy with today’s outcome either, but I’m not upset at the republicans I know.  The people of this country have spoken up and the slight majority of them voted republican.  Live with it, move on, start trying now to improve your chances next time around.  To those of you that are complaining:  what did you do to help your party out?  Did you volunteer any time at all?

            Before I throw my ideas out into the ring on how we might improve things, here are some viewpoints of mine so you know where I’m coming from:

• Socialized emergency medical care:  yeah, I really think we should completely socialize health care, but this is an okay compromise, right?  Everybody should get some sort of basic coverage, and it’s a shame that some people go bankrupt because of one bad day in their lives.
• School vouchers are a bad idea.  It’d drain money from public schools that we should just use to fix them.  I believe that vouchers would be the death of the public school system.
• Outsourcing of jobs sucks.  I feel that Bush didn’t do anything to curtail this problem.  His solution during the debates was to re-educate people into a different career field.  Let’s say you’re a highly-skilled engineer or IT worker.  Your job just got outsourced to India to someone who gets paid a fraction of what you do.  Are you just supposed to sit by and get educated in something less-skilled and technical so you can help local companies become more profitable?  They’re dumping money in someone else’s economy, not ours.
• Corporate greed has gone too far.  ‘nuff said
• Equal rights for everyone, no matter their age, sex, race, or sexual orientation
• Protect our environment
• Reduce our dependence on oil / other greenhouse-producing gasses
• Legalize at least the soft drugs and regulate them
• Stop mucking around in the middle east

So, after putting all that out there, here are some thoughts I have: 

The electoral college is ass, scrap it.  It’s perpetuating our crappy two-party system, and we should be using popular vote by now.  Every vote should be equal.  I realize that the electoral college seems to benefit some of the smaller states that candidates would normally tend to ignore, but we’re in the information age now…  TV, radio, and the internet should be more than enough for the majority of people.

I believe that Ralph Nader is right:  the republicans and democrats are too much alike.  That statement does apply to a degree.  Of course each party has its group of extremes, but the centrists are very much alike.  Hell, a lot of them often cross party lines for votes.  Are these people truly republicans or democrats?  Perhaps the political system in the United States needs to be more like this: 

• Progressives:  These would be the liberal democrats and the greens.  More leftist side of the spectrum. 
• Centrists:  Currently, the majority of the republican and democratic parties.  These are the people that can go both ways, and are typically labeled “moderate republicans” and “moderate democrats”.
• Conservatives:  The people at the conservative end of the political spectrum.  Mix of religion and government, favors little regulation for businesses.
• Libertarians:  I didn’t quite know where to lump this group…  I suppose it really couldn’t be done.  Libertarians favor very little government regulation in anything. 

Okay, I don’t know the viability of it all…  I’m not a political expert; I’m just an armchair quarterback when it comes to it.  What I’m trying to express is that I think the current political setup isn’t in the best interest of the population.  We need the mavericks and the muckrakers to keep ideas fresh and to keep the political parties on their toes.   

Where does that leave us?  Currently, I don’t think we’re in good shape with the two party system.  I ended up compromising a bit and voting for John Kerry because I thought he was better than the alternative and my candidate of choice didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting even a 5% share of the popular vote this time around.  I agree with more of what Ralph Nader has to say than Kerry, but I think Kerry had the better shot of being a decent leader for this country. 

I suppose you’ll find decent arguments for destroying the two party system elsewhere.  I’m probably not going to provide the best ones for that and eliminating the electoral college, I just know that it should be done.  Our political system has grown stagnant, and it took someone like Bush to drag people to the polls.  What we need is for things to be shaken up in a pretty major way.  I’m open to ideas.

I’ve toyed around with this essay for about three days, tweaking portions of it along the way.  I hope it still makes sense.

robert@digitalsingularity.com