Nickel Rant^tm:

Deserve's Got Nothin' To Do With It
by Edgar J. Steele

July 5, 2008  

Note:  Please listen in tomorrow at 3:30pm PDT (5:30pm Central, 6:30 Eastern) on Internet Radio for a quick half-hour discussion between the Political Cesspool's James Edwards and myself concerning the upcoming Presidential election (and all manner of other things, of course).  Visit http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/ at about 3:30 pm PDT and feel free to call in with your questions.

My name is Edgar J. Steele.

Voting.  What a joke.  Like voting makes a difference.

First off, we never get any really viable candidates for any office.  Seriously, now - Obama and McCain are the best that America has to offer?  The best?  Hell, I can think of any number of people within a 5-minute drive who would be more honest, honorable and thoughtful as President.  Certainly, almost as experienced as Obama and qualified as McCain.  I'll bet you can, too.  So, how did we get saddled, yet again, with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?

Seems like Americanus Boobus would notice that the game is rigged, but the vast majority of us never do.  You can fool most of the people all of the time, it seems.

Like Charlie Brown every Fall, trusting Lucy to hold the football while he kicks it (she always pulls it back at the last possible moment, so that Charlie Brown falls in a heap from his vain effort), once again I put my support behind a candidate:  Ron Paul.  Once again, it was a total waste of time and money.

Yes, I believe that Ron Paul was the best of a fairly vapid field and, yes, I believe that Ron Paul would make a good President.  In fact, I believed more than Ron Paul himself that we could make him the President.  Of course, neither the Powers That Be (PTB) nor the Main-Stream Media (MSM) would allow it.  You saw how he was marginalized and neutralized at every turn.  It didn't help that he turned out to be a one-note Johnny (albeit the correct note).  Nor did his inarticulate responses to so many "debate" questions and challenges help.  Nor did his shifty-eyed demeanor and squeaky voice reassure us.  Pity.

We Deserved to Win

I encouraged others to support Ron Paul and the response was magnificent.  Thank you.  I felt I had to make one, last try at working within the system to save America.  I feared it was foredoomed, just as did Ron Paul from Day 1, but we had to try, just like good ol' trusting Charlie Brown.  We deserved to win.  We deserved to win and that counts for something, doesn't it?

However, we have learned that, in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, as he stared down the barrel of his rifle at the crooked sheriff, prostrate on the saloon floor and protesting that he didn't deserve to die:  "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

To those who keep sending around emails explaining how, at the convention, Ron Paul somehow will ensnare enough delegates to receive the Republican nomination, I say:  get over it. 

To Ron Paul, to whom my family contributed hundreds of dollars we could ill afford to spare, I say:  I want a refund.   We gave you that money to campaign and challenge illegal vote tampering.  Despite manifest rigging in the very first primary (New Hampshire), you chose not to raise a legal challenge - you chose to "take the high road."  Time and again, you have ignored patently illegal rigging and tampering.  We've all seen how that approach has worked out for you. 

You didn't even spend all the money we gave you in campaigning, but held back millions of dollars that you still hold, preferring to spend it on some sort of splinter effort to "influence the outcome."  True winners influence the outcome by winning.  We contributed to help you win, not simply to influence the outcome.

Too McPainful

Having rapped both Obama and Hillary, I suppose that soon I must do a piece about the traitorous McCain, the third liberal running for President this year.  Not today, though.  It's just too much pain to contemplate McCain's shortcomings so close to Independence Day.

The biggest problem McCain confronts is the guy sitting in the Oval Office right now - the guy with the worst public-approval ratings in history (worse than Nixon, even).   McCain's a Republican, too, and obviously the second coming of George W. Bush. 

Just as the Republicans got thrown out of Congress at the last mid-term election (for all the good that did us), I expect them to be thrown out of the Executive Branch at the upcoming election.  If we're lucky, the Democrats might get thrown out of Congress, too, not that it really matters.  The real problem with America's two-party system is that both can't ever seem to lose.

The Lesser of Two Evils

Yet again, I hear many tuning up to vote for whomever they perceive to be "the lesser of two evils," as though that is some sort of conscientious and informed method of selection.  They're both evil, you morons!  If Bush the lesser taught us anything, it is what a crapshoot that sort of thinking can produce. 

Yet, here they go again - voting against Obama because of his anti-gun stance or hyper-liberal bias or, incredibly enough, due to his skin color, the very least intelligent criterion upon which to evaluate a member of another race (and exactly what race is it, of which Obama is a member, incidentally?) or voting against McCain because he wants us to stay in Iraq, shredding our children for another hundred years, needs be.

Yes, there are third parties, notable among them the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party.  Do you even know who their nominees are?  I didn't think so.  So much for third parties.

Vote Yes on No

That leaves us with choosing between voting selectively and not voting altogether.  We should vote, if for no other reason than to be able to go into that polling booth and vote against every, single incumbent in every, single office on the ballot except President, perhaps.  Write in Mickey Mouse or Madonna?  Don't give them an excuse to invalidate your entire ballot.  Simply don't vote for President.  Vote against all incumbents.  Vote against all propositions.  Vote a resounding No on everything this year.  Everything except President, of course.  To the Presidency, offer only your refusal to play along.