Has Lee Atwater's political strategy died?

Has Lee Atwater's Republican political strategy - hard-edged campaigns based on emotional wedge issues - taken its last gasps of life?

President Obama's resounding victory (despite being the first President to win since FDR with a 7.9% jobless rate) indicates - as Bob Dylan would say - that times they are a changin'.

Hate mongering - it seems - can't rally the numbers needed to win elections nowadays in America.

A new progressive coalition of women, minorities, and the so called 'millennials' or Generation Z have made their voices heard.

Though President Obama's victory spiel did come off a bit like Kenny Powers;

"And together with your help and God's grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth".

I tend to side with Jeff Daniel's Newsroom tirade on this one.

But I guess that's one of the prerequisites of being a politician - you can't actually tell the truth.

So the big question is WWLAD? Or What Would Lee Atwater Do? I'm looking at you Karl Rove.

Enemies of Peace Win Reelection

It's great that President Obama won - because he smells less rotten than the alternative and speaks with a silver tongue. But of course - it's all a facade.

The very truth of it is that the President of the United States and congress are owned by the same big money special interests that have controlled American politics for decades.

The same enemies of peace - as FDR put it in 1936 - business and financial monopolies, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering - are alive and thriving and consider the United States Government as a mere appendage to their own affairs. No one man - even if he is the President has the power to unhinge these parasitic entities.

Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

The President's reelection speech was emotionally jarring - as it was carefully crafted to be - but if the present is an indicator of the future - it seems likely to be one of more weapons proliferation, increased militarism on American soil, suppression of internet freedoms, and expanded federal powers.

Democracy is an antiquated idea and the repercussions of its faults are well represented in the inherently corrupt nature of the United States Government.

Do the 'millennials' have the fervor to throw off these shackles? Or have they already bought into the establishment's system?

Why I Will Never Vote Again

I know – it's a terrible thing to utter in the midst of nationalistic cries professing the importance of voting.

We rebelled against a tyrannical King for this right.

Don't forget to vote!

Our forefathers perished by the thousands on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima for this right.

Don't forget to vote!

Countless more died in the sweltering jungles of Vietnam so we could choose our representatives.

Don't forget to vote!

Ninety thousand U.S. troops are in Afghanistan protecting our freedom to vote.

Vote – because if you don't the Taliban wins!

But really – truthfully – it’s all bullshit wrapped in a big fucking patriotic lie.

You better vote – or they'll take away your guns, or your right to choose, or your hard earned paycheck!

So, yes don't forget to vote! And don't forget to say your prayers too!

Don't Forget to Vote!

Why Anarchists don't vote

By ELISÉE RECLUS

EVERYTHING that can be said about the suffrage may be summed up in a sentence.

To vote is to give up your own power.

To elect a master or many, for a long or short time, is to resign one's liberty.

Call it an absolute monarch, a constitutional king, or a simple M.P., the candidate that you raise to the throne, to the seat, or to the easy chair, he will always be your master. They are persons that you put "above" the law, since they have the power of making the laws, and because it is their mission to see that they are obeyed.

To vote is befitting of idiots.

It is as foolish as believing that men, of the same make as ourselves, will acquire in a moment, at the ringing of a bell, the knowledge and the understanding of everything. Of course it is so. Your elected person shall have to legislate on every subject under the moon; how a box of matches should or should not be made, or how to make war; how to improve the agriculture, or how best to kill a tribe of Arabs or a few Negroes. Probably you believe that their intelligence will grow in proportion to the variety of subjects they have to give their minds to; but history and experience teaches otherwise.

The possession of power has a maddening influence; parliaments have always wrought unhappiness.

In ruling assemblies, in a fatal manner, the will prevails of those below the average, both morally and intellectually.

To vote is to prepare shameful treachery and traitors.

Electors do certainly believe in the honesty of the candidates, and this is to a certain extent existing while the fervor and the heat of the contest remains.

But every day has its tomorrow  As soon as the conditions alter, likewise do men change. To-day your candidate bows humbly before your presence; to-morrow he will say "pish" to you. From a cadger of votes he has turned to be a master of yours.

How can a worker, enrolled by you amongst the ruling class, be the same as before, since now he can speak in terms of equality with the other oppressors? Look at the servility of any one of them, written all over his face, after paying a call to a "captain of industry," or when the King invites him to the ante-chamber of his court!

The atmosphere of the "House" is not for deep breathing; it is corrupt. If you send one of yourselves in a foul place, you must not be surprised afterwards if he comes back in a rotten condition.

Therefore, do not part with your freedom.

Don't vote!

Instead of intrusting the defence of your interests to Others, see to the matter by yourselves. Instead of trying to choose advisers that will guide you in future actions, do the thing yourselves, and do it now! Men of good will shall not have to look long in vain for the opportunity.

To put on others' shoulders the responsibility of one's actions is cowardice.

Don't vote!

What makes a great person?

I think truly great people appear just a few times during the course of our lives.

They’re the ones who inspire others.

They’re the ones who change the courses of our life.

They’re the ones who turn normal people into great people.

And when they’re gone – they don’t leave an empty void – rather a garden of other great people forged in their essence.

On Death by Kahlil Gibran

Then Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death."

And he said:

You would know the secret of death.

But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor.

Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

The Scopes Monkey on Our Back

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot, and a bounder. 

I like to quote H.L. Mencken because his words cut to the bone. And because my Great Aunt had an affair with him in the days of Vaudeville - a fact my mother vehemently denies, but how else would she have gotten his photo autographed  with a tinge of romance?

Where are the H.L. Mencken's today? Scared of telling the truth? Fearful of being labeled a racist/sexist/antitheist?

And what would he think of our society now?

Would he be pleased to know that the Republican presidential nominee believes in evolution? Or would he observe the same "degraded nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel skulls" that he did during the Scopes trial?

I believe that his final notions of the trial are as pertinent today as they were in 1925.

It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.

Well Said H.L. Mencken

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." 
-H.L. Mencken

Extortion of Humanity

Stepping back and taking a look at the symphony of shit that is the existence of humanity really gets you thinking.

Exhortation in Red Ring - Veer Munshi

Seriously - we've based our entire existence - every second of our limited time here - on an intrinsically meaningless piece of paper? Spoken like some who's broke - I know. But what the fuck?

Oh - it's backed by gold though. Or maybe even oil. Or maybe the good intentions of a nuclear arsenal.

So we have a meaningless piece of paper, backed by an aesthetically pleasing, but ultimately meaningless mineral, backed by perhaps the bane of human existence, backed by probably the destroyer of humanity.

Yes - technology is great. And without decomposed bio-material we'd be so much less than human - right? Where would we be without our iPhones? Maybe having a real conversation with someone? Hunting for dinner? Tending our crops? Slaughtering our enemies like savages? I don't know.

But I do know that technology keeps us civil. Without technology there would be mass famine, war, disease, corruption, oppression, and slavery. OK - so maybe we still have all that shit. But money and technology sure help me avoid it.