And today's Fuck You goes out to...
...Ralph Nader, who according to Politico is considering yet another run at the Presidency.
Because America, presumably, hasn't suffered enough under the Bush regime he brought into power in the first place.
Who does Ralph Nader consider worthy of praise in the current line-up? Mike Gravel - that's GRA-Velle for those of you who've never heard of the man - and Ron Paul - yes, that Ron Paul, the guy who's against the war and the Patriot Act, but still carries the dubious distinction of otherwise being Texas' most reactionary Congressman. This is political nihilism blended with incoherence.
Ralph Nader is an irrelevancy, still feeding off a time, back when disco was popular, when he had something notable to say. Today, however, with the odium of fathering the Bush administration firmly attached to him, Ralph Nader speaks for nothing and no one other than his own vastly over-inflated sense of self. The tragedy is that he may very well be willing to inflict the price of that towering ego, fed as it is by a sense of his own indispensability - a sense not widely shared beyond the confines of the political ghetto that is the Green Party - on the nation, once again. This because, similar to other cranks, and despite the mountainous evidence piled up, one coffin at time, to the contrary, he still believes that there is no appreciable difference between the two major parties. That's still a fashionable belief, in some narrowly constricted circles; however, it is manifestly, demonstrably, incontestably, untrue, and anyone who believes otherwise, after the abject lessons taught over the last few years, should be committed to a home for the criminally insane.
Many people are able to realize mistakes, particularly catastrophic ones. Ralph Nader has more cause to do so than most people breathing. True to form, it appears that he is unable, worse, unwilling, to do so. That is little more than arrested development; with the unfortunate distinction, however, that this is not his private misfortune. Rather, again, he will attempt to burden the nation with it. And so his private delusions could again pose a threat to the common good.
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2008 Elections | Delusions of adequacy | Green Party | People without a clue
Precisely.
Submitted by Michael Bouldin on 21 June 2007 - 10:52pm.
And there's a vaguely Bushian sense of entitlement, like a dollop of cream on top.
Now wait for the crazies to come out again and bewail and bemoan that the Democrats don't do every single last thing that they want, so they have to vote their precious little consciences, and if that helps get us another republican, that's just too bad - just as long as they can bask in their own purity and feel better than the common trash that actually wants to make things better.
Elitist purity troll pigs. Okay, rant over >
Actually
Submitted by mole333 on 22 June 2007 - 7:21am.
Many Greens I know personally are fed up with Nader. And I also know some former Greens that after 2000 got fed up with Nader AND the Greens. They aren't necessarily ready to like the Democrats, of course, but they have realized what a dismally stupid mistake Nader 2000 was.
And, for the record, I notice Barack Obama is having some success drawing these dissatisfied former Greens towards the Democratic Party. Dean in 2004 probably helped a bit as well.
Ralph Nader - Communist Ticket?
Submitted by Frida (not verified) on 24 June 2007 - 1:41pm.
I predict he will run on the Communist ticket. Isn't that the most closely related to the green party and not a big joke like the green party is?
I support Nader's right to
Submitted by M (not verified) on 25 June 2007 - 11:20am.
I support Nader's right to run for office because I support the right of voters to choose to vote for him or to not vote for him. That's called democracy.
Kucinich runs every election yet vitriolic hate speech is not hurled at him. How interesting.
I chose not to vote for Nader because I feared my vote would help Bush. Instead I helped Pennsylvania deliver its electoral college votes for Gore. But Bush still won. Nader wasn't even on the PA ballot in 2004 and its electoral college votes went to Kerry, but Bush still won.
So to listen to the hate speech against Nader, it sounds like it's ok that the nation still has deep flaws in the conduct of our elections--that it's ok that voters are denied the right to vote on the basis of race; that it's ok for the wealthiest democracy in the history of the world to deploy inadequate polling machinery throughout the country; that it's ok for political corruption to tilt electoral outcomes; that it's ok for candidates to campaign on spin, hate speech, and other distortions of fact.
American democracy has serious problems and it's ashame that one of those problems is widespread confusion among Americans about the definition and practice of democracy itself.
Er
Submitted by mole333 on 25 June 2007 - 4:02pm.
No one advocated banning him from running, yet that seems to be what you are arguing against.
Most of my detestation of the man is that a.) his ego dominates his decisions to a destructive degree, and b.) he has sacrificed practicality in actually DOING something for the environment for a level of dogmatic purism that outdoes that of the Republican Party. I don't like that kind of dogma when it's neo-Con, I don't like it when it comes from Communists and I don't like it when it comes from Greens. Anyone who takes the attitude "if you aren't with us your against us" reminds me of Bush. Nader reminds me of Bush these days.
As for candidates campaigning on spin, hate speech, and other distortions of fact, Nader did exactly the same. In fact he did so more than Gore did, though perhaps less than Bush. So don't give me the angelic, pure St. Nader crap. He has embraced Republlican support, lied about Gore's environmental record, calling it equivalent to Bush's (talk about spin and distortion) and...well don't think he's done hate speech. But neither do most Democrats and even a large minority of Republicans as far as I am aware, so that is hardly an accomplishment.
Nader
Nader: All ego, nothing else. His cancer-like ego has eaten up all the useful parts of his personality: his brains, his idealism, his dedication to the environment. All his universe has become is himself. Not the environment, not the Green Party, and certainly not America. He is the only one pure enough. He has transformed himself, in his own mind, into the one and only savior of the Universe and no one else is worthy to lick his boot.
The man is worse than irrelavent. He has become practically a sociopath.