(no subject)

[somedaybitch]

i love when total strangers call me stupid based on who i voted for.

oh wait.

eta:

*i* am not stupid. you and i disagree.

those are not remotely the same thing.

and to anyone that would counter with, "but i wasn't talking about you specifically", i reply that statement is backpedaling of the worst kind, and that dog won't hunt. when you said "everyone that...", it included me.


i originally closed comments to this but i've since re-opened them.

Comments

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

where did that happen?

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

it's not important. i don't want to start a wank!war or anything. it just pissed me off because it was, well, stupid.

and i should know better than to read posts at places where i know i'll see shit like this, but sometimes i guess i hope that just.this.once. there will be a rational conversation.

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

my cog-beh prof said that same thing in class the thurs following election day... i was so irate..

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i essentially said the same thing where i found that comment. that we just disagree and both sides of the aisle calling each other stupid does nothing for political discourse in this country.

i got back:

I was going to attempt to come up with a response, but in all honesty, Terminator 2 is playing on my tv and Phil Akin is about to die so there really isn't one to make.

sadly, color me not surprised.

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

and here, I'm going, 'did this poster mean Joe Morton, because I don't believe Phil Akin was in that movie'

but that's just me

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

because, you know, it only means said poster DOES NOT HAVE A FRELLING CLUE.

:D

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

heh

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

sadly, I feel so often that it is in fashion not to have an opinion waiting for the refinement of experience, but simply to have a dogma. I suppose that is because when experience shows you are wrong,, you have to say "I was wrong", rather than "they got a lucky break."

heh, reminds me of a conversation I had in 2001: "A vote for Nader was a vote for Bush." 'Listen, if Gore didn't have the votes to win clean, it's not MY fault. That is a function of how many people wanted to vote FOR him. I voted for Nader, because that is my right, and at the least I like his candor. If people in this country would vote for who the feel they should, rather than who is most likely to win, it is far more likely we would get the goverment we want. Additionally the loser would have to quit bitching about being robbed, and the winner would get an actual mandate.'

years later the co-worker will still not talk anything but work related issues... still bitter I guess :devil:

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

Additionally the loser would have to quit bitching about being robbed, and the winner would get an actual mandate.

ah, the mandate discussion. a term only germaine since Bush took office. if one looks back, one would be hard pressed to find many presidents elect that had a clear "mandate". who wins, wins. and who loses, loses. and that doesn't make the followers of either party right, or wrong.

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Although if we would just go to a strictly numbers based system, rather than the electoral system, it would be much more clear. Those of us in Texas who don't vote for the Texan might actually have their votes count.
BTW, ITA, discourse is what we need, not calling names like grammar school kids.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

the problem with that though, and why i don't disagree with the electoral college concept, is that large population states will override itsy bitsy states through sheer math...and that's not proportional nor representative of the wishes of the populace.

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

I can totally see that. Although I might say-coming from one of those huge states-that not everyone feels the same in those states. Either way, then it might come out unfair to someone. What makes me cranky is that since I am the minority here, my vote really doesn't count. In Texas, Bush will win. I pretty much vote so I can complain about him. If you don't vote, you can't complain.

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

mmm, hell I've been talking mandates since Reagan [cuz that's when I first got poli-sci]... and applied them backwards from there, but I mean something clearer. It is a subtle difference but imagine how congress/prez would act if they felt they might be accountable, how the voters would act if they assumed they would make a difference, instead of assuming it didn't. It is a subtle shift in power to be sure. Heh, but we might actually have a viable third party.

On the other claw what was said above about pure direct voting, paradoxically I disagree with. It is a balalnce to the popularity contests we already have... but having that buffer of decision, IS important I think, because individually people change their mind like the wind...

blah, blah yaketty, schmaketty, the bottom line for me is that this government thing... it is made up of fellow citizens and works for and is paid by me. It doesn't exist without us wishing it so. People either forget or never believe that...

huh, who knew T's eyes could roll that much?...hehehe

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

It is a subtle difference

i disagree and think it's a huge difference. go back through electoral history and find other than a few cases of a clear, landslide win. you won't find many. and that is significant. we have reached the modern era without it, and with significant, successful events taking place in the nation's history. events that modern Americans look back on with pride. which could be the benefit of hindsight, but it's there nonetheless.

it doesn't matter how much someone wins by. what matters is that someone wins. this mandate nonsense was brought up by the party/voters that lost, and i don't mean to imply that it started with Bush's victory. folks should spend some more time studying their own electoral history before they spout off.

but imagine how congress/prez would act if they felt they might be accountable, how the voters would act if they assumed they would make a difference, instead of assuming it didn't.


there is no reason for them to not feel that now. the mathematical number of voters is immaterial to the fact that they were, in fact, VOTED IN. it doesn't matter if by 1 or 1 million. both the public and the elected seem to forget that for some reason that quite frankly escapes me.


Heh, but we might actually have a viable third party.

there's nothing stopping the country from having a viable third party except the would-be members of said viable third party. it would certainly be interesting, but i don't know that it would automatically equate to "better". it would certainly blow any "mandate" theory out of the water and into deep space.

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

uh, I see the fork in my thought, and you may have taken 'ze other one... Numbers, scmumbers, from this standpoint... how many people do you know that every election cycle talk about the 'lesser of two evils' or 'both parties are full of crap.' There are a lot of reasons that they may vote for one person at any government level, but it's often NOT about liking one candidate over the other... it's often about DISLIKING one.

let's say you hate bush, and vote for kerry. let's say kerry wins. was your vote a mandate? If 20% of the voters, voted for identical reasons to yours, would they be part of a mandate?

The reality that one guy wins, doesn't equate to a mandate. Carter won and he was such an outsider that he was ineffective, nobody in congress, even in his own party would work with him. In this way a mandate is twofold, NOT just voting a person in, but voting for a representative to work with him. Americans often force opposition to the branches, because we think it's more fair, but even majorities, sometimes dont help the prez.

I am quite clearly taken with your point that the mandate thing is fluff for newsbites, but I think that's true for different reasons maybe...

I look at mandate as being a directive, as always a positive statement 'you will go do this.' not in the negative 'don't do this' Go do is very narrow, with expectations and outcomes. don't do is VERY, VERY broad, all outcomes with only one exception.
Those examples are certainly far too simplistic for politics, but perhaps you'll see where I'm at with that.

The bottom line with all that is IMHO you should vote FOR THE IDEA OR PERSON you agree with, because then you are subscribing to at least parts of what they are about, and you will work to make things happen. If you merely vote against a person or ideology, then you are saying 'anything but this' and that is exactly what you will get; anything. Later on when you have to accept that anything, you will either not own it or stop being involved at all, because it ISN'T what you asked for.

That's sort of a segue into the third party that may never exist... While it's the truth that no-one is stopping one from existing, as many do, practically, who you goin' get? It is infinitely improbable that you will find someone who is differentiated enough from either party, who HAS enough money to go it alone, the drive to win anyway, all the insider understanding necessary to appear able to make presidential decisions, and the ability to forge coalitions in the congress...etc, etc. That is to my mind based as much in the fact that people vote for who has a chance of winning instead of voting for who they actually agree with, AND voting for who they agree with REGARDLESS of party affilliations...

but then that would be my rant and this IS after all your thread... thanks for letting me be a mouthy bastard in it... heh

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

The bottom line with all that is IMHO you should vote FOR THE IDEA OR PERSON you agree with, because then you are subscribing to at least parts of what they are about, and you will work to make things happen. If you merely vote against a person or ideology, then you are saying 'anything but this' and that is exactly what you will get; anything. Later on when you have to accept that anything, you will either not own it or stop being involved at all, because it ISN'T what you asked for.

yes, this.

[pualaridesagain.livejournal.com]

i love when total strangers call me stupid based on who i voted for.

heh. I bet that person didn't even vote. Maybe they're the president of the doody-head association.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

heh.

and you know i get being torqued that your guy lost, and thus, your parties platforms may have lost by extension...but what i don't get is how that automatically translates to some kind of blind moral superiority.

someone's always going to win, and someone's always going to lose.

if we can't knock this petty bullshit off, it's not going to matter who's party's in office, because the 5yr old inhabitants of the country will be too busy throwing a four year long temper tantrum to bother with being concerned about the health of the nation, and actually, oh i don't know, participating in their fucking participatory government.