Barack Obama was not the only African American running for president in the 2008 elections. But few knew of Cynthia McKinney, Georgia’s first African-American Congresswoman and this year’s Green Party Candidate.
In a plurality-takes-all political climate, little knowledge of the third-party candidates is understandable. Many believe that voting for a third party is a waste of your vote, for they will never get elected. In 2000 Ralph Nader allegedly spoiled the Democrats’ chances by taking many of his 2.9 million votes from people who would otherwise have supported Al Gore. In Florida, with a mere 537 votes separating the Republicans and Democrats, this could have been decisive. George Bush got in because of Nader! In 2004, Michael Moore got down on his knees on national television and begged Nader not to run. The sentiment was clear; running against the Democrats in swing states is immoral.
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- Written after watching a segment about soldier risk in Iraq
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Main and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” ––Henry David Thoreau
History of our demise:
The telegraph gave us context-free information; information about which we knew nothing of before, and which came in the form of headlines we could understand little of, for they offered no depth. The value of information no longer needed to be tied to social function, but instead became attached to curiosity, novelty, and interest.
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- written on Monday, November 10, 2008
Dear Mr Nader,
I am an undergraduate at The New School in New York. I’m old enough to remember the reasons why my mother voted for you in 2000 and voted for you myself in 2004, but realized that by the time the 2008 elections came about, although I have been keeping up on the elections, I didn’t know much about your race.
On Election Day I interviewed 100 people at six different voting booths, all over Manhattan, to see what NYC’s educated elite knew about the election alternatives. I asked them questions just as they left from voting. Ten thought you might have been on the list. Three of those knew what party you were standing for. One had voted for you, but his vote was a protest vote against McCain and Obama. I did not meet a single person who could tell me something positive about you, even though (almost) everyone I know shares your beliefs.
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“This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing… Political language is designed to make our lies sound truthful, and murder respectable”
— George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946.
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in… to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
— George Bush, May 24th, 2005.
George Washington was a famously distant figure, intent on retaining aristocratic rules of etiquette in the White House. Lincoln demonstrated the virtues of a sober, almost impersonal state of mind. Roosevelt, creator of the Fireside Chats, spoke more as a guiding parent than as a sympathetic friend. Johnson never smiled and favoured a monotonous tone. And Nixon wore dress shoes and black socks on the beach.
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