I listened to John Kerry’s acceptance speech last night. It was the first speech from the DNC I’d listened to, though I’ve read transcripts of most of them. I’ve said it before, I so want to believe in this guy. But this is a guy who wants to increase the size of the military (he wants to add “40,000 active duty troops”), to continue to fight this ludicrous War On Some Nouns, claiming that he can fight a “smarter, more effective war on terror.” As if changing the President will mean we can now somehow fight this unintelligible war intelligently.
There are so many things that Kerry’s can’t even get right. Like, for example, opposing “democracy” and “communism” as binary opposites. He doesn’t even get that communism — in the Marxist, theoretical sense — requires democracy.
He defends the concept of “preemptive war,” saying that he will “get the terrorists before they get us.”
He wants to continue neoliberal economic policies: “we will trade and compete in the world. But our plan calls for a fair playing field — because if you give the American worker a fair playing field, there’s nobody in the world the American worker can’t compete against.” Sounds OK, but what is a “fair playing field?” Is this what is meant by Freedom? As in Free Markets? What exactly are the global labor relations at work here?
Kerry wants to “honor this nation’s diversity,” yet he said “I see us as one America — red, white and blue.” Can’t have it both ways. This just reaffirms the danger of political homogenization that results when there is a “two-party system” and both parties are very close in the political spectrum.
So I got to thinking, where do I fit in this spectrum? Who are my political affiliates? Who are my brethren, my comrades? Republicans or conservatives are so far beyond the threshold of consideration that I don’t even need to mention it. The liberals or the Democrats are so close to the Republicans to warrant no serious consideration either. The political climate of America is strange … all we have left are the bizarre, crossbred love children of a donkey and an elephant. I think I prefer “Donkephant” to “Elekey.”
Even the progressives are swallowing the “anybody but Bush” logic that is nothing more than an admission of defeat (do the math…if one is willing to accept “anybody but Bush,” then that individual has already lost).
That leaves the radicals, the anarchists, and the Marxists. But I suppose that leaves me in good company…