This upcoming election is certainly shaping up to be quite the hot topic; enraged sycophants on both sides of the political spectrum carry signs with such clever messages as “No Blood for Oil” and “Four More Years!,” while the two candidates themselves travel from state to state, working on “clarifying their positions” to voters who haven’t yet gotten a clue.
And Wesleyan is—as to be expected—in the middle of it all. Students make phone calls to swing states persuading people to vote for Kerry, and try to raise money for the Kerry campaign. Meanwhile, we can all agree that Bush is a simpleton (“Did you SEE the way Bush was all squinty during the debate?! What an idiot!”). And yet, while we can all agree that voting for the incumbent should earn you a firm kick in the groin, John F. Kerry is not the only alternative.
I’m quite surprised that for a school that believes in the concept of more than two sexes we still don’t seem to recognize the fact that THERE ARE MORE THAN TWO POLITICAL PARTIES, too. There is at least one candidate on the ballot in nearly every state in our great country that is less squinty, less flip-floppy, and sure as hell is less interested in making our government any more clumsy and inefficient than it already is.
The two Big Government parties (you know, the elephant and the ass) seem to have a monopoly in the business of politics. Why? Is it because those two parties nominate the best and brightest for our country? No. Is it because both parties are actually GOOD at running the most important country in the world? God no. Instead, the Democrats and Republicans retain a monopoly on politics because of knee-jerk voters, who believe one can only be “Left” or “Right” on any given issue. These are the people who vote for any candidate merely because of his party affiliation—and his chance of winning.
Wesleyan has very bright, and allegedly free-thinking, students and it does not make sense to me why we so uniformly goose-step to the beat of the same political drum. “Oh, but voting for a third party candidate is WASTING your vote!” But that statement is only true when uttered. If we think that the third party has no chance, then he has no chance—and vice versa.
Since when was it considered a bad thing to let the little guy have a chance at competition? Think of it this way: the Democrats and Republicans are the “Starbucks” of the political realm, and they do their very best to kick out the small local third-party shops, except they do it by force (whereas Starbucks is just superior). For example, Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Candidate, is on the ballot in 48 states, and may very well affect the outcome of this election. Yet, he wasn’t even invited to the debates. In fact, most of you probably have never even HEARD of Michael Badnarik, or even the Libertarian Party. And we, as young, hot-blooded, eager Americans with the right to vote, allow this to continue. It is the little guy who is non-coincidentally the most qualified candidate, and yet we continue to show him no love. Since we all hate Bush, the only logical choice must be to vote for the Democrat—every time, all the time, no questions asked. Knee jerk. It is not even a matter of intellectual politics anymore; it’s about reflexes.
The government today is at its biggest, clumsiest, least efficient, least freedom-preserving point in its history. This is not solely the fault of our dim president, but rather the entire Big Government complex. Nearly all of the problems that we find today in our country are the fault of Big Government. But we are intellectuals with minds capable of immense reasoning and thought power, and yet we put it on hold when we vote, because we don’t bother to actually THINK about who we’re voting for. So, dearest Wesleyan students, when you go into the voting booth on Tuesday (or fill out your enigmatic absentee ballots), remember to read past the names of the first two candidates. For the little guy.
Leave a Reply