Sad (The 2008 Presidential Candidates)

In one week we will elect a new president. I can't believe the offerings which the two major parties have put on the table for us to accept this year. I was going to vote for John McCain, prior to the Republican party's nomination of Sarah Palin. It's quite clear that they nominated her for two reasons: depth of experience and firm grasp of the issues.

lol.

What is not funny, is what her nomination represents for the GOP. It was a clear-cut ploy for the religious vote. The Republican Party has made the Faustian bargain permanent: they'll push the religion-in-government in agenda, if that's what gets them into power. Disgusting.

McCain was pretty bad, even before that. His notion of America is fundamentally fueled by the notion of 'service to country,' not freedom and individual rights. So many of his stump speeches included such gems as "serving a cause greater than one's self" or the flesh-crawling "going after the drug companies." The amount of apathy I've witnessed in people, who are now voting for Obama solely on the basis of the mind numbing, nebulously populist concept of 'change' is amazing.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what will get the country back on track the quickest. I think a key point to consider in this hypothesis is the fact that we have a two party system. Any idea adopted by one party makes the opposite party the advocate of that ideas antithesis, by default.

Democrats are clearly the party of "more state control." A sad coincidence is that this makes the GOP the party of "free markets," even when their policies are clearly anything but. For decades now, the Republicans have given a half-assed, apologetic defense of capitalism. What has this done to the notion of capitalism in people's minds? Every failure of Republican policy is blamed on free markets. So, for decades, Capitalism and freedom have been eroded since "it clearly doesn't work." What actually doesn't work is compromise, but most people aren't aware of that yet.

Probably the most brilliant example of the effects of compromise is happening right now. If you search through the articles dealing with the origins of the finance fiasco, nearly every article blames the problem on "decades of Reaganomic Ayn Randian Greenspired deregulation." Very little mention of Fannie, Freddie, Community Reinvestment Act, Greenspan's ludicrous lowering of interest rates, or the idea that bad investments should be paid for by those who made them.

Greenspan's testimony, blaming the "failure of self-interest" as the root cause of the financial mess, was a tragically dishonest thing. For two decades now his role at the Fed has given him a lot of notoriety and he's been regarded as some kind of mystical fiscal guru, partly due to his association with Rand. The testimony he gave will be used by the advocates of state control as a license to dance on the grave of Capitalism, declared dead by its supposedly foremost chief representative. Because of the importance with which most people respect his opinions, his testimony has done an unconscionable amount of damage to the idea of free markets in the minds of Americans. Rand's concept of the compromiser doing more harm to The Good than its outright enemies can is really coming home for me.

That said, I think it will be a great thing if Obama gets in office and the Democrats have a majority in both houses of congress. Why? Because I think in the long-term, and in the long-term, I want dividends. And by dividends, I mean THAT SWEET PREFERRED STOCK: FREEDOM. Allow me to explain with the aid of a diagram.

As you can see, we expect that The Magnitude of Suck will increase much more quickly under Obama due to his faster imposition of state control in our lives. Since the country will degrade at a faster clip, people will become pissed off at a much faster rate. The ocean of Suck will deluge us, and it will be as swift and painless as death-by-hammer-and-sickle can be. Time and forgetfulness will not accrue for people, apathy will not even be able to set in, and memories of "the way it was before Obammunism" will be much more fresh in people's minds. A Democratic party which openly advocates statism and which has control of the white house and congress will make it far easier to blame the policies of statism for The People's Woes. And hopefully, shit won't completely crash down before Objectivists can get the ideas out and have them play a major role in the swing back to Awesome.

Using my logic, you think I'd vote for Obama since A VOTE FOR OBAMA IS AN INVESTMENT IN FREEDOM! (I will castrate you if you quote that out of context).

..... But I still couldn't bring myself to do it (I already voted with an absentee ballot). I just couldn't. He's everything I hate about the left. I voted for Bob Barr, for two reasons.

1) I think it was the best way to actively repudiate both parties by showing up in the polls as a "more freedom in government" voter and,

2) I could be confident that Barr wouldn't get into office and misrepresent the ideas worse than McCain and Co.

So that's what's sad: that I'm ready for full-on delicious-crazy leftism, because I'll benefit from it in 4? 8? I don't know how many years.