This video will finish uploading in 560 minutes from now (12:34am EST). To help me get a faster internet connection to more rapidly upload video, please donate belowIn the meantime, check out
WhatINtheFUCKhasObamaDoneSoFar.comSo there’s this “chicken and the egg” argument that I’m constantly bouncing back and forth in my head:
Which is it? Is it that our government doesn’t represent us?
Or is it that our government represents us perfectly, and Americans, on the whole, are just terrible people?
I ask this because despite the slew of things you can find over at whatinthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com, such as:
* Sucessfully protecting Bush officials from prosecution for torture,
* pushed for a 5 year prison term for a medical marijana dispensary that was legally being run under California Law,
* argued that widespread use of Predator drone missiles is a justifiable form of self-defence,
* argued that the executive branch has the authority to assassinate US citizens,
* reversed his promise to close guantanomo,
* reaffirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage,
* announced $8 billion in loan guarantees to promote nuclear power,
* increased military aid to Israel to $30 billion over the next 10 years,
* prosecuted Omar Khadr using evidence obtained through torture,
* granted 27 waivers to oil companies drilling in the weeks prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and then dragged his feet for months in doing anything to hold BP accountable,
* has done nothing to prosecute wall street criminals,
* actively blocked the prosecution of wall street crimes by forcing out-of-court settlements in sub-prime mortgage fraud class action suit,
* oversaw operation of a CIA black site at Bagram airbase where Red Cross observers reported abuse of detainees,
* fought for and won the right to deny people the writ of habeas corpus,
* blocked UN human rights investigations at Guantanamo,
* launched FBI raids against antiwar groups in Chicago and Minneapolis,
* dropped charges against the CIA for destroying evidence of torture, deported more immigrants than George W Bush,
* continued the Bush policy of kidnapping people and moving them to countries where torture is legal so that detainees can be tortured,
* blocked the release of photos documenting torture and abuse of detainees by the US military, ordered a media blackout on a flooding nuclear power plant in Iowa,
* continues the practice of indefinite detention, refused to sign a treaty banning the use of landmines, made government less transparant than ever,
* blocking more FOIA requests per year than George W Bush,
* cut a secret deal with the GOP to kill the public option despite campaigning publicly for it, defended the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell provisions from legal challenges,
* used the “State Secrets” defense to protect the Bush Administration from prosecution for war crimes,
* extended the USAPATRIOT act without making any changes to it,
and then had the nerve to complain to his staff that his activist base were a bunch of whiners...
YET DESPITE ALL OF THIS: progressives still cling to this fantasy that Obama is somehow ON THEIR SIDE. That is the TEXTBOOK DEFINITION of delusional fantasy. If this isn’t evidence of voters having a mental disorder, I don’t know what it.
And so now the people who advocate not voting are all standing up and cheering. But you’re equally part of the problem.
Instead of getting out there to gather the signatures required to get better candidates like Ralph Nader, or the Green Party on the ballot, you just sit at home and curse them all, because intellectually it’s easier to just be a cynic than actually doing any fucking work.
Most Americans don’t vote, and so they leave it up to the idiots who vote against their own interests to decide things. Of the eligible voting population, only 40% vote, and consistently, they vote 20% for the Dems, and 20% for the GOP. The eligible non-voting Americans make up the majority with 60% of the eligible voting population! But they don’t vote.
Armchair activists like Noam Chomsky keep advocating for this dichotomy that your choice is either voting for the Democrat, or sitting at home and not voting. Not Voting has been used in soviet bloc countries to protest elections as being illegitimate, but that’s only effective there because there were laws on the books stating that if voter turnout was below a certain amount, it would be taken as a vote of no-confidence in all the candidates, and a new slate of candidates would need to be picked and voted on. There are no such laws in the USA. If everybody but one person voted in the next election, that ONE PERSON would decide the election for everybody else. Not voting is the fucking dumbest thing you could possibly do in the USA.
If the cynics could band together around voting for somebody who “could never win” that person would win in a landslide!
So on the one hand, we have idiots who vote for terrible people in both parties, and on the other hand, we have people who don’t like the terrible people who are running, but are unwilling to do any work to get better people on the ballot.
So you know what? Whether you keep voting for fascist assholes and suffer from partisan stockholm syndrome, or if you’re an intellectually lazy cynic, either way, you have the government you deserve. Your government sucks, because YOU SUCK.
I’m the punk patriot. To life, liberty, and pursuit of a less fucked up government.
Posts
