 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
 Ice
Cube 
 "It's
a tried and true way of dealing with people or nations that the
ruling elite finds troublesome or inconvenient -- whoever gets in
our way. They're simply lumped into the enemy pile. "
 "You
need gas money and a car that works. Of course, my preference is
to do it in the middle of the night! Leave them little presents,
you know what I'm saying? Like the Easter bunny." "Gregory
La Cava is probably the greatest classic Hollywood director still
in need of rediscovery. The man W. C. Fields called the best comedy
mind in Hollywood is virtually forgotten today."
 "North
Korea will conduct its first test of a nuclear bomb, and the Bush
Administration will respond by putting Kim Jong Il on the Federal
Do Not Call list."
 "Carbs
are the new terror-ists. Bread is the new Bin Laden. I can't
wait to order a low-carb veggie Whopper. People are pathetic."
 "The
surreal-ists wouldn't know what to do with Harvey Birdman. Its ingenious brand of adult animation owes as much to absurdists like Ionesco and Duchamp as it does to Bugs Bunny."  "There
is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings more important
than the fact that everything is disappearing, and disappearing
fast."
 "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support
to our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be
laden with explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed,
peace be upon him." "There
was some-thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."  "In
a segment that seems designed to honor yet another one of rock and roll's
seminal yet fallen heroes, MTV just can't help talking about why it,
not Nirvana, mattered so much."  "Bush's
lame response to North Korea has made it quite clear that all he wants
is to invade Iraq again. North Korea may be more dangerous in fact,
but there's no oil there, and it simply doesn't figure in the grand
eschatological design of Bush's theocratic circle. Pyongyang isn't
even in the Bible!" "'People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in, and now
they have to realize that they can actually create that world
and fight for the things that are worth fighting for and not
feel apathetic. We are all going to die. There is no point in
holding anything back."
 "Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of bind when it
turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Realizing
we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable thing:
he's come out against gay marriages." "It's
also directly because of 2000 that people are more active. Everyone
that was pushed to the brink of sanity is going, "What the fuck?
We can't let this happen again." |
by Ross Levine Here's what may or may not happen on November second, and a few words about each possibility: SCENARIO ONE: George Bush wins the Presidency by a substantial margin, both popularly and in the Electoral College. What not very mexed missage -- err, mixed message -- does this send about the United States of America? That it's better for politicians to lie to the electorate in the name of national morale than to risk saddling them with the truth? That telling the truth might also entail presenting an outline of how you'll be adjusting your policies to accommodate it (the truth, that is), a sticky gambit when it's so much easier not to bring it up at all? If George W. Bush succeeds in this scheme, it becomes alarmingly clear that the American people are not ready for truth in this post-September 11 world. That they prefer to continue holding on to the fragile illusion that we are safer simply because we're at war, as if Iraq really is the front line in the battle to eradicate terror, and that as long as we have 150,000 American soldiers over there, the terrorists cannot do their mischief over here. So far, the illusion has held -- no domestic attacks in three years -- and a clear-cut Bush victory means the President's grand illusion has succeeded. Surely the American people overall recognize that they've been, and are being, lied to, but the majority, in this scenario, are apparently OK with that, and prefer to submerge their heads in sand rather than confront difficult choices -- the choices that come of changing direction when the number of dead soldiers has only been a thousand plus, instead of the near 60,000 it took us to get us the hell out of Saigon. This is also a signal that two other Bush products are selling well - religious piety and the idea that government is good at protecting your security but not your well-being. The religious piety aspect is self-explanatory - Bush has been running a faith-based presidency - we must have faith that his decisions and policies are always correct, we must not question them lest we show bad faith in the poor sots carrying them out, and that everything he supports, be it amending the Constitution or relieving the tax burden on those least burdened by it, are exemplary commitments of service to the Man Upstairs. The second aspect is not so clear. President Bush continually insists that we ourselves should control our affairs, not the federal government, yet his administration has seen federal expenditures runneth over in a cascade of red ink. So if the government is not to be entrusted to govern, why is all this money being spent? Or is there a distinction between national and social security, the first deserving of no critical input from the populace, while the second is better left to our own devices? A Bush victory does not indicate that the voting public has understood and accepted this conundrum, only that the President has succeeded in confusing the ballot-casters into believing that, well, consistency should not be a campaign issue. For it is inconsistent to decry the government's ability to function as a social net while at the same time extolling its ability to wage pre-emptive war and build democracies across the globe. Either the government knows what it's doing or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, why should we trust it with the lives of our men and women in uniform but not our social security checks? In summation, Bush wins, and fantasies trump facts.
SCENARIO TWO: John Kerry wins the Presidency by a substantial margin, both popularly and in the Electoral College. If the good people of Inglewood, California -- citizens who by any account would have enjoyed paying lower prices for everyday items -- could vote "no" to a Wal-Mart in their midst, then there is a good chance that the American people -- those who vote, anyway -- will reject the President's unsubstantiated assertions and decisively replace him with John Kerry. This would -- or should -- not be seen as a mandate for a Kerry presidency -- rather, it would be a declaration that Bush is such a loose cannon -- with both truth and treasury -- that we may as well try someone new at the fuse. Again, this would prove no mandate for a social revolution, whether it be with wombs or weddings, nor would it be a definitive statement on what course to assume in Iraq. What it would be, presumably, is a nudge that America once again rejoin the rest of the world -- a rebuke of the Bush presidency's insistence that the president is more a national than a global leader (except when America's global adventures serve some sort of overt, or covert, national interest). An unqualified Kerry victory would be evidence that the citizens have tired of Bush Administration spin, so artfully supplied by Karl Rove and so clumsily by Donald Rumsfeld, to name one pithy example. In other words, Kerry would be a man on probation, everybody waiting to see if he could clean up the mess, though at least his election would acknowledge that mess; you have to smell the trash before you know to throw it away. This decisive victory would mean that enough of the so-called swing states would come in for Kerry by large enough margins that state election challenges would not be an issue -- that George Bush and company would have to walk away from Washington without any stops at the Supreme Court. The hardcore Bushies would be greatly disappointed, perhaps to the point, in some circles, of burning "Ws" into the lawns of traitorous neighbors, but the Kerry supporters would not be gloating for long, nervous that, with the economy unsure whether to head up or down, with a war that came with no exit strategy, and a debt with no apparent bottom, that their man and his party could too easily end up mired in the muck left behind. One hopes, however, that a Kerry victory would finally signal the end of the War on Terror and the beginning of a war on Al Qaeda, one that we might quantifiably be able to succeed in.
SCENARIO THREE: George Bush wins the Presidency again in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. This would prove a certain invitation to civil unrest. Even if this time none of the states have Florida-like vote-counting debacles, it still might prove too much for that 50+ percent of the electorate to bear. One can imagine that in the great metropolitan centers -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco -- people on the "losing" side would instantaneously -- as soon as the numbers came in and looked immutably official -- take to the streets, and havoc would reign throughout the land. After all, "fool me once, shame on -- shame on you, fool me -- you can't get fooled again." Or, if you do get fooled again, riot. Such a scenario does have a positive, however -- it might possibly provide enough constitutional impetus to bring down the Electoral College. Even the Dakotas, after witnessing such a grave threat to democracy, might vote to relinquish some of their elective clout in the name of salvaging the American republic. When no tension exists between the College and the actual count, the former seems like nothing but an odd formality, like a figurehead king who accedes to the will of an elected prime minister. But when the College circumvents the will of the majority, it suddenly becomes the focus of unwanted but warranted attention that exposes it as the undemocratic linchpin it is -- the lowly old charlatan beyond the drapes of the Great Wizard's impressive magic act -- surely it could not survive a second illegitimate presidency for George W. Bush. Ironically, in Scenario Three, Bush's grand plan to free the Muslim world from tyranny might suffer dearly, as most of our troops might have to be called back to beat down a homeland insurgency. And one more thing if Scenario Three comes to pass -- like Salman Rushdie before him, Ralph Nader may get to know just what's it's like to live under a deadly Fatwa.
SCENARIO FOUR: John Kerry wins the Presidency in the Electoral College but not the popular vote. Could this happen? Granted, it isn't likely, but what if Kerry carries a bunch of the major swing states by very small margins, and the Bush faithful -- the "he's a good Christian" types -- urged on by their pastors, turn out in overwhelming droves in the Bible Belt, giving Bush such strong popular majorities there that they make up for the President's losses in the big three (California, New York and Illinois) and beyond where non-swing state apathy afflicts Kerry-ites who head for the polls in lighter numbers than expected. What would happen then? Surely the Republican legal machine would go into well-financed action -- they would not, one suspects, be nearly as civil as Al Gore was and just let the man from Massachusetts have the keys to the White House without, yes, a fight to the finish. That said, I would like to declare that I think a military coup fairly unlikely, but -- as September 11 has shown -- one must be prepared for any and all eventualities. It's not hard to imagine Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz arranging for an occupation of the White House, in the name of advancing our freedom. In fact, if you consider it, the District of Columbia has a few electoral votes, but no representatives in Congress, so perhaps a case could be made that D.C. is a foreign power where, at least of late, democracy is compromised, and is thus worthy perhaps of a pre-emptive invasion. If this were to happen, Bush might refuse to vacate his office at the White House, while Kerry would then have to govern from -- let's say, an ad hoc oval room on the West Coast -- resulting in a "Great Schism" a la the Church catfight of the fourteenth century, and a transition from a federal to a bi-federal government (perhaps not a bad idea, though purists like Senator Byrd of West Virginia would surely object). In short, for Kerry to win without a popular majority might seem undemocratic, but it would certainly reek of poetic justice.
SCENARIO FIVE: A Bush-Kerry Electoral College tie. That is, 269 to 269. Yes, it's true -- the College has an even number of electors, which makes this a not-so-implausible possibility. Granted, it hasn't happened in a while -- in 1800, to break a tie, the House of Representatives crowned Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr, and in 1824, they went for John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, when no candidate (there were four) received more than 50% of the vote, even though Old Hickory had a convincing plurality. In 1876, the House again decided, but that was because four states (including -- surprise! -- Florida) screwed up their elections so badly they couldn't determine who had won. Suffice to say then that the House isn't well practiced in picking Presidents, and that, with some state delegations evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, the process could get down, dirty and dishonest pretty quickly. The American people would be witness to a decidedly undemocratic side show as crooked backroom deals and nasty power plays decided the country's political future. We did survive 1876, though not without a price -- in exchange for the presidency, Rutherford Hays withdrew federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction and setting the stage for nearly a century of Jim Crow persecution. One wonders what Bush or Kerry might have to fork over to get the job -- probably enough pork to make debtors of the next seven generations of Americans. And how would we 21st-century Americans react to such a spectacle? Somehow it's hard to imagine our obese, SUV-happy society mounting a revolution to overthrow the government. Chances are, we'd just go about our business, scratching our heads over how this could happen in the world's great citadel of liberty. Again, we might have a chance at dismantling the Electoral College, but then the real question becomes: Do we Americans really believe that we're qualified to elect our own President? After all, if he or she screws up, then we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. Certainly those citizens who don't bother to vote don't trust their own judgment. They grouse that voting doesn't matter, but in reality, they're simply too afraid to take a stand, lest the outer world get a toe inside the (self-generated) bubble that protects them from it. As for those of us who do vote, the question becomes: Are we ready to acknowledge that we -- whoever we are -- are just as American as those imaginary "American Gothic" types reportedly brandishing their pitchforks in the swing states? Perhaps with the abolition of the Electoral College and more uniform and accurate voting procedures, the Presidency might begin to more accurately reflect the make-up and tenor of the entire nation, not just that of a relatively few, inexplicably indecisive states. A tie may be just what this democracy needs. 11 October 04 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is. 
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright Morphizm.com. All Rights Reserved. |
||||||||||||||||||
Hail to the
cheat."We might have a chance at dismantling the Electoral College,
but then the real question becomes: Do we Americans really believe
that we're qualified to elect our own President? After all, if
he or she screws up, then we'll have no one to blame but ourselves."
(Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
Hard to handle?
"One hopes that a Kerry victory would finally signal the
end of the War on Terror and the beginning of a war on Al Qaeda,
one that we might quantifiably be able to succeed in." (Photo:
Reuters/Jim Young)
Nowhere to
run, nowhere to hide. "And one more thing if Scenario Three
comes to pass -- like Salman Rushdie before him, Ralph Nader may
get to know just what's it's like to live under a deadly Fatwa."
(Photo: AP/Eric Risberg)
Pray for reign.
"In short, for Kerry to win without a popular majority might
seem undemocratic, but it would certainly reek of poetic justice."
(Photo: Reuters/Jim Young)
The face that
launched a 1,000 shits. "Either
the government knows what it's doing or it doesn't, and if it
doesn't, why should we trust it with the lives of our men and
women in uniform but not our social security checks? In summation,
Bush wins, and fantasies trump facts." (Photo: Reuters/Jim Young)
