[Doug to Yoshie]: I wish one of you would respond to my argument that a Dem president provides a better discursive and organzing environment for more radical critiques of The System.
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This was the argument I made for voting for Gore to Gordon Fitch way back before the fall of night... So I agree, but there are many more reservations and things to consider on this round.
Bush has defined 9/11 in a way that has to be dismantled in a climate of war and fear that seems to me almost impossible. Let's say we all vote for Kerry or whoever and they win. Then what?
Sure Bush is gone but the entire facade that Bush erected over 9/11 is still there. Stand down in Iraq and Afghanistan, throw out Homeland Security, throw out the Patriot Act, dismantle Guantanamo, get rid of the secret courts, re-establish some regulatory power in the executive branch, toss the tax cuts, the medicaid-drug bill, re-take control of the Senate and maybe the House, etc, etc.
Even with all that which is already vastly more than I think Kerry can or is willing to manage, there remains the re-construction of 9/11 in a way that we can get rid of this mindless climate of fear the Bush government has generated.
Sure anybody but Bush, but that is not the end. Let's not kid ourselves about how difficult it is going to be to get rid of the rest of this bullshit.
And another thing. Bush et al. may continue to implode, but that doesn't make Kerry a sure thing. I would expect wave after wave of obscuring election issues on a mammoth scale: threats of nuclear war on North Korea, threats to Syria, Iran, blaming the CIA's faith based intelligence, Saddam trial, capture of OBL, endless red alerts, any and all kinds of dirt unearthed from Kerry's past, homophobic hysteria over gay marriage, election frauds of all sorts, and on and on. Bush isn't going to be voted out of office quietly. And even if all that doesn't work, I would expect Kerry to face a tidal wave of rightwing media and congressional shit even before he takes office that doesn't abate, but builds up and up, like it did with Clinton---making the next administration almost completely ungovernable.
Even so, yes anybody but... And yet who or what are we trying to save?
We can only wish we were trying to save Weimar with its Mann, Brecht, Beckmann, Nolde, Kollwitz, Cassirer, Carnap, Einstein, Born, Pauli, Weyl, von Neumann, Hilbert, Schoenberg, Schrodinger, ... even its Heisenberg and Heidegger.
Chuck Grimes