raider_red's Journal: Democracy (?) in America, 2004

I've noticed some interesting things the last couple of days. For several months, I've had as my message signature the line "Associate Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy." This is of course a joking paeon to a comment made by Hillary Clinton during her husband's perjury investigation.

A few days ago, I made a joking reference in which I might have called Hillary Clinton the Antichrist. Some Anon. Coward took offense at this and called me a right wing nut-job. Oh, and he also suggested that I be mod-bombed, which is just impolite.

In response, and partly as an experiment. I changed my signature to the line "Honers Graduate of the George W. Bush school for speling and gramer." All misspellings are in the original, and of course constitute part of the joke. Now I'm being refered to as a liberal pansy who's apparently sleeping with Michael Moore. (Okay, the response isn't that bad.)

Sadly, this seems to represent what passes for political discourse in America today. You're either part of my party, or you're stupid/ignorant/inhumane/racist/gay/homophobic. Take your pick depending on which party you belong to.

For the record, I don't care much for either party right now. I've voted Republican in the past because I'm in favor of less government intrusion in my life. Sadly, the Republican Party is becoming the party of social conservatives, at the expense of increasing the power of the federal government. So, people with my mindset now have a problem. We have a Democratic party which wants to enslave people through over regulation and government handouts, and we have a Republican party which wants to enslave us to a particular lifestyle and value set. Either way, we all lose, but because we're so set on one party over the other, we can't get past what they're both doing to us.

As to the election, I don't care much for either candidate. I think Bush has some issues, but no one has given me a compelling reason why Kerry is any better. And no, I'm not going to subscribe to the "anybody but Bush line". With that kind of logic, we might as well install Joe Stalin to run the country. So I'm probably going to vote Libertarian, or leave the line for President blank on this years ballot.