On Apr 21, 2011, at 1:30 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
> When Ventura was actually in power he was not lefty. He was not the
> worst of the worst, did some actual good things, but overall pretty
> bad. Not my state, so I'll let someone who lived through him give the
> details.
Its not up to us to give report-card-grades on an independent politician's performance a decade ago in his "rookie year," anymore than its meaningful to yammer about empty labels like "Libertarian" and "Socialist." We should take great encouragement in that a nationally known, politically experienced person like Jesse Ventura, a proven winner against the political duopoly, has expressed himself in these terms:
"You control our world. You’ve poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You’ve liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants to your decadence. You’ve stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You’ve profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living. You’ve monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame. We are hit… we are bleeding… but we ain’t got time to bleed. We will bring the giants to their knees and you will witness our revolution!"
This is what we need to hear from an independent, populist (ie., people's) candidate for president in the 2012 elections, and Jesse Ventura--if these words express his real convictions--is right now the person best placed to carry that banner. We should be thinking about how to mobilize for such a campaign right now.
Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64