In recent weeks it has become increasingly apparent that John Kerry will win the primaries. And with that, he’ll be going up against President Bush in what the mainstream left are already envisioning as a Battle Royale: a standoff of fate rather than of men.
Ideology or the American way? War or peace? Special interests or the will of the people? These are the questions that both the left and right-wing voters are looking for. And I’m here to say that they won’t find them.
I’m here to tell you that this election is going to be the opossum in the road of American history – a farce; yet another compromise for those who want change in the next four years. With no foreseeable decent candidates for the 2004 election, it’s enough to consider saving the ink I cast my vote with.
When will the republicans and the democrats finally give in to the mutual attraction and go with the one-party system? Because that’s what it seems like we’re doing. During election time, no one should have to feel like they’re voting in Cuba.
Behind the filler “progressive” policy points that every democrat owns (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), Kerry’s politics are a ludicrous matchup to the slash-and-burn policies of Bush. For the past three years, Kerry has been nothing more than a lapdog for corporate interests, all to the benefit of the Bushian ideologues – we might as well run the Olsen twins against each other. Lets’s take a glance, shall we?
One interesting aspect of this year’s election is that Bush and Kerry make up two of the 800 living members of Skull and Bones, a secret society established at Yale. According to the New York Times, the 2004 election “will represent the first skull-to-skull match-up of Bonesmen in history.”
The Skull and Bones Society has been at Yale since 1832 and has been home to some of the most powerful men in America since that time. Many men have climbed the steps of the “Tomb,” their official ceremonial hall, including the elite names of Taft, Bundy, Harriman, Rockefeller, Goodyear, Stimson, Pillsbury, and Kellogg.
Along with these names, Bush and Kerry went through the order’s highly unorthodox rites of initiation. Only 15 men a year are “tapped” to join the society. The Boston Herald reports, “new members must spend an evening before a roaring fire in the Tomb recounting details of their sexual history to fellow members.”
Although generally denied, some of the members are known Nazi collaborators, including Prescott Bush, the president’s grandfather. The group is also said to adhere to an ideology that is known as “synarchy,” in which Hegel’s “final end” is reached when the state is to eventually replace God.
Of course, if I were to judge these two candidates based solely on their past memberships to elite Nazi-affiliated secret societies, I’d be labeled a conspiracy theorist. So let’s look at their most recent political records too.
With Bush now president for almost a full term, it goes without saying how poor a job he has done. Sept. 11-based freedom-rants only take you so far when you’re caught stonewalling at least three separate commissions to investigate why your administration screwed up on three separate occasions. Million dollar PR stunts only go so far when you send 100,000 troops to go and find things that don’t exist. I’ve said plenty more in previous columns.
But what about Kerry? Polls suggest that over half of America is fed up with Bush, but is Kerry going to come in and make good on his rallying cries for change? You have a better chance of finding all those stockpiles of weapons that Cheney still waves his cane about.
According to LA Weekly, Kerry “has taken more money from lobbyists in the last 15 years than any other senator.” And on top of that, the same article reports that Kerry has, in fact, come through for all those high-rollers.
When it comes down to it, he seems to be a 2000 version of Bush -before the Patriot Act, the military adventurism, the bloated bureaucracy, and the corporate debauchery. And by the way, what do all those issues have in common? Well, Bush may have proposed them, but Kerry had no problem rubber-stamping them.
For starters, John Kerry voted in favor of the Patriot Act – some of the most constitutionally buckling legislation ever written. Kerry can’t say he didn’t know who would be in charge of carrying out this act. He probably can’t even say that he read it. Does this sound like responsible government to you?
Oh yes, he’s against the war in Iraq now, but that was well after he stuck his head out of the sand to make sure the coast was clear-well after he signed a blank check for war to President Bush. And if the intelligence flaws are good enough to put Bush on the hot seat, Kerry is next in line.
Kerry also had no problem signing President Clinton’s Telecommunications Deregulation Act, which limited radio and television broadcasting exclusively to corporate influence.
When it comes down to it, neither Bush nor Kerry is a “man of the people” as they claim to be. Kerry is a man who has kept his career alive by the same step-on-your-head politics that Bush has used. To think that either of these men would be a benevolent, or even a benign head of state, is a naive fantasy.
Mark Ostroff is a Collegian Columnist.
