Election thoughts

I spent a few days at the family homestead recently, and took the time to talk with some of my kinfolk about the upcoming election. My father, Abbot Yid, works for a consumer advocacy group that spends most of its time tilting at windmills as it attempts to actually hold utility industries' feet to the fire. The funny thing is, Dad's the group's "resident conservative".

The more Dad works at this place, the more radicalized he seems to get. Which is understandable, given that they never seem to win any of these legal battles, and watch as the utilities get away with bloody murder by referencing the all-mysterious "market" and the favorite watchword of the industry, "competition".

Incidentally, Dad yells a lot.

We had a long talk the other night about the election, and about how one of my biggest issues isn't even with policy per se, but the fact that politics seem to be about spin, personalities, and general disengenuousness much more than the actual issues. I also mentioned that this behavior didn't seem limited to a single party.

Dad agreed with me, but pointed out that at this stage, he'd be willing to vote for anyone that wasn't this present administration. To an extent, I can really identify with this "changing-of-the-guard" mode of thought. The issue, of course, is that it seems to be the institutions themselves (government as well as party) that are far more corrosive, than the individual cogs in the machine.

I don't like the idea of settling for the lesser of two evils, and I don't like that the only options are "vote the ticket" or "waste your vote". On the other hand, I understand the logic behind, "time for a change". It could be because I'm more politically aware now than I was under Clinton, but the sheer chutzpah of these politicians, Reps and Dems, Prez and Congress (and yeah, the Supes, too), is just so damn frustrating- the utter contempt for the truth, straightforwardness, and basic respect for Americans is really apalling. There's just no shame. Maybe there's never been any shame, but there's certainly none here. Rummy stonewalls till he's blue in the face, Bush sidesteps by saying "it's my job to protect you"- and in the meantime, there are tons of domestic problems (education, health care, illegal immigration, terrorism, economy), AND we're getting screwed in Iraq.

Iraq: We can't win it. I've resigned myself to it. We were doomed as soon as we went in, and there's no way that this isn't going to end in disaster for the Iraqis. They're doomed any way it goes. The best we can do now is play damage control- we need to make a plan to consolidate US control, try and shore up the govt. as best we can, and run like hell. The Sunnis and the Shiites are going to kill each other no matter what we do- if the Shiites want to become part of Iran and the Sunnis part of Syria, well you know what? It won't be any less arbitrary than the straight-lines that made up Iraq in the first place.

Support the Kurds, they've got their shit together and have consistently proven they can be counted on- more so than us.

But this thing is melting-down like a fondue kit on hyper-drive. We're getting killed, tons of civilians are getting killed, they're killing each other constantly, and oh yeah, there's increasing rumors of a coup. We can't be there when that happens. We can't get drawn into this any more than we already are. There's going to be another Civil War, and we can't be part of it.

Oh, and while this is all going on, let's not forget the god-knows-how-many American businessmen that are making money off of this war through defense contracts- which is a horrible idea, incidentally. Private soldiers accountable to no one, who don't act in concert with the military, and who when things go wrong are totally expendable by their bosses. THAT'S the real shame here for me. Not only do you have this massive clusterfuck, but you have people getting RICH off of it, including people in our own government! How the hell is that ok?

...And no, I don't know that it will be better under Democrats. I really don't. But at this point, I have to agree with the "better than Bush" line. Change the guards. Get these guys out.

Next post: my brother and I ridicule SF Republicans.