Weak, like clock-radio speakers

Yesterday, I was listening to NPR, and someone was lecturing about America and how it needs to change. This person (can’t recall the name) was talking about how corporate interests dominate the policy and machinations of government, how mass media outlets that should be informing the electorate are increasingly owned by a few large companies, how campaigns are financed by external and special interests, etc., etc., etc. The crowd was more than willing to show their approval and support of his arguments constantly by means of warm, loud applause. These are the types of arguments that, in my view, are supported by the vast majority of American ‘democrats,’ and perhaps by the majority of Americans period. Find me a large mass of voters that advocate for concentration of media influence in a few corporate hands. Find me a mass that supports corporate influence in politics. I’ll tell you what you’ll find – a very small group of white men, with maybe a token minority or woman, all with the same haircut and roughly the same sense of style.

You can certainly find a load of supporters of free markets and small government, but nobody supports the dominance of corporations in government (you don’t necessarily need to tolerate the latter if you support the former), and almost everyone thinks things should change. Many people blame corporations, many people blame politicians. Many people say that they wish we had politicians and representative government that would change the negative aspects of this state of affairs, and blame those we currently have, who do not do so. This blame is valid, if not productive.

Yet the fact remains, it seems to me, that the people who WILL change things are right in front of us during every single modern presidential election campaign. Their names? Kucinich. Moseley-Braun. Nader. They are there for us. They say the types of things that we all want to hear, and judging by the applause they got during the last primary debates, they are right on target. They advocate for government pushing out special interests and corporate financiers. They promise universal health care, which most Americans support. They promise to regulate the media industry, and in general, to make decisions in the interests of the average American, rather than of corporations. And in contrast with John Kerry, George Bush, and anyone else who has a legitimate shot a nomination these days, they actually mean it.

So why does Dennis Kucinich travel to the Democratic National Convention every four years with barely enough earned delegates to split a taxi cab with? It is very odd to me that we as a country (at least most of us) want these things, and yet we continually fail to consider nominating and electing the people who will actually get them done. This goes for me too – I love and voted for Kucinich, I support almost every stance he takes on every issue, I would lay down in traffic for him if he were actually nominated for president, and yet I am willing to tolerate the fact that he has no shot at even double-digits in any given state primary. I lament this fact, but I tolerate it as the state of affairs in modern American politics.

So what is my point? That we are all WAY too tolerant of bullshit, and yet all too willing to accept our powerlessness. In addition, somewhat ironically, it is not the “system” that causes these problems. The system actually provides a choice. We simply don’t take it.

Unfortunately, these points are nothing short of the same old bullshit complaining that puts us here in the first place. And yet I cannot deny the fact that I myself have done nothing but feel some kind of fake superior insight into the problems at hand, which everyone is aware of anyway (thereby negating my original insight, and rendering me, as always, just like everybody else). Therefore, I have decided that, in 2008, I am going to actively campaign for Kucinich. I am going to get my share of doors slammed in my face, but women have been doing that to me for years, and I am quite used to it.