Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Why this election sucks

I am so glad that the election season is over, and we can stop listening to all this election crap. Now I predict the courts will be doing battle for another few days and there will be fodder enough for countless books and angry Americans to complain to their grandchildren.

This has been a crappy campaign, and whoever wins should not be too proud of himself. Whoever the winner is, he failed to unite the American people. The electorate will be angry for the next four yeas.

This campaign saw the rewriting of all the election rules. Thanks to the internet, campaign donations were transparent, a very annoying fact. Second, all sort of loopholes were found to evade every campaing finance law and we saw the financing of campaigns by billionarires with juvenile agendas. Third, campaign propoganda hit an all time low with the likes of Michael Moore's junk, and all the partisian follow-up. Fourth, the debates made any sane person want to cry about the fact that one of the two debators will be the next president. Fifth, the number of lawyers involved in this election threatens to rewrite the nature of democracy itself, where elections are not decided by the people, and they are won by the side who can disqualify the most of their opponents votes. Sixth, third party candidates are increasingly marginalized. After the last election where it looked like there was a shot, now it will be a long time for a third part candidate to get any respect. Finally, thanks to the entertainment industry, we will most likely have the highest politically-illiterate number of people voting ever. The election can normally rely on the fact that people who know absolutely NOTHING about the candidates are just not all that interested in voting, so that the actual electorate is somewhat informed. This year, we all suspect that there will be a high number of people voting just for the sake of pressing the shiny buttons in the secret box. MTV did a great disservice in getting out the stoner vote. These people are neiter informed nor concerned about the fate of the nation. There is no need for them to vote .

Knowing that the winner will not change the face of this countryvery much, many Americans will look back on this elecetion and ask themselves "What was I thinking?" To them I answer "absolutely nothing".

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