THE DAILY TRAVESTY | Elections & Classic Quayle
THE DAILY TRAVESTY for February 7, 2000
    Volume 1, Issue 25
 
The Travesty Online: www.angelfire.com/zine/dailytravesty
 
   
    Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature...
    Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.
                       --Helen Keller

 
ELECTIONS by Tucker
 
So McCain is persevering in the primaries, overturning Bush.  So Gore and Bradley are still at it.  So what.  We've known for months that these, and a handful of others, would be the main players.  Maybe your predictions about the top dog were slightly off, but does it come as any real surprise who's winning these rigged elections?
 
We believe that the newspapers accurately tell us who everyone else is supporting, we nod sagaciously, and we follow.  In truth, the newspapers just make it up.  The newspapers tell us who we ought to support, and we have the idiocy to believe what they say.
 
Is anyone really moved by these candidates.  Is anyone passionate about their platforms.  Does anyone give a crap.  Doesn't it seem that they only answer questions to placate the voters, and not from an inner sense of duty, mission, or conviction?  Why would you support a candidate who's just telling you what you want to hear in order to get elected?

I think that's a major problem with national parties.  We've got, what, about a hundred million Democrats and a hundred million Republicans.  Think about it.  If you're a candidate running for a party of that size, you can't have any concrete beliefs about anything, because whatever you say is going to alienate two-thirds of the voters and throw you out of the race.  Thus your political platform is reduced to nothing except the name of your party and your ugly face.
 
The only people who have exciting, motivating dreams are candidates from small parties.  That's where democracy has to start--from the ground up.
 
Of course, everyone worries that if they withhold their Republican vote, the Democrats will win, or vice versa.  Even if they hate their party's candidate, they hate the other party's candidate more, and they at least want to cast their vote defensively to defeat him.
 
This is not the highest expression of democracy--this is paralysis and self-imprisonment.  This is an entire country of people voting for candidates who they don't support, in hope of defeating the other party's candidate who is perceived to be marginally worse.  This is absurd.

Did you ever see the Simpsons episode where aliens run for President?  Two evil aliens named Kane and Kodos abduct the Republican and Democrat candidates, bioduplicate their bodies, and run for election.  The Americans discover the scam when the bioduplicated bodies wear out and the evil aliens are revealed.  However, they can't think of anyone else to vote for, and the final vote is split more or less evenly between Kane and Kodos, who then turn America into a massive labor camp.
 
The moral of the story is that we have to break out of the two-party mindset now, before our choices get seriously bad.  Unfortunately, I'm not altogether sure that if we had two evil candidates on the final ballot, America could be trusted to vote for a third.  I think that each party would be too concerned about the other one winning the election and would cast their votes defensively.
 
To participate in true democracy, people need to stand up for what they believe, not ally themselves with giant corporate political bodies who preserve the status quo.  We need a viable third party, or even better, a fourth, fifth, or sixth
 
The more parties we have, the more dialogue goes on, and the better candidates have to be.  Do you think the winner of the Democratic and Republican primaries will worry about the quality and substance of their candidacies, when all that they need to get elected is a majority of people who consider themselves "Democrat" or "Republican"?  The presidential election isn't about the quality of the candidates but rather about the sheer numbers of Americans who pledge allegiances to parties that are "not as bad as the other."
 
That's why everyone has to vote third party in these elections.  The more parties, the more candidates, the more creative ideas, the more brave participation, the more democracy.  Vote Natural Law, Socialist, Libertarian, Green, Reform, Independent.  Vote for anyone except a Republican or Democrat.  It's the only way to save yourself.  The oracle has spoken.
 
A Word from Quayle*
Fun Fact: did you know that Friday was Quayle's birthday?  This one's a classic.

"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people."
        -- J. Danforth Quayle


*The DAILY TRAVESTY would like to honor Dan Quayle by occasionally publishing a short, enlightening piece of his profundity for your enjoyment.  This is not hard to do, as Mr. Quayle has said a LOT of wise things.  We hope this reassures you as much as it does us about the efficiency of this nation's political process.  (We swear, because you will not believe us, that all of these are real quotations.
 
fnord!!
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