ON POLITICS: Notes of a Reluctant Radical
"He alone is worthy of life and freedom,
who each day does battle for them anew."
Goethe
When I initiated The Online Gadfly in the Spring of 1998, I intended
to focus most of my attention upon my professional specialties: moral
philosophy, environmental ethics, and policy analysis. I have since come
to appreciate what I should have realized at the outset: that all these
disciplines are inextricably involved with politics. In addition, I did not anticipate, in the Spring of 1998, just how urgent
political issues and citizen involvement therein might become. And so I have added this section of
political commentary to The Online Gadfly.
(Commentary continues below).
Re: Election 2000 and Bush v. Gore:
The Hijacked Election
(November, 2000)
A Day of Infamy (Bush v. Gore).
(Bush v. Gore)
(December, 2000)
We Dissent (Collected Quotations Regarding
Bush v. Gore)
"None
Dare Call it Treason," by Vincent Bugliosi (The
Nation)
Coping with "Post Democracy" (January, 2001)
Post Modern Politics (April, 2001)
Lest We Forget: Notes on the Late Election (April, 2001)
Bush Win's Florida -- NOT! (February, 2002)
Short-Takes (Brief
Political Comments)
Time and intervening events, most notably the historical scandal of the Supreme Court decision,
Bush v. Gore have thrown up a
curtain of amnesia about events immediately prior to Election Day, 2000. And now, due
to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, even Bush v. Gore has
faded from the national conversation. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, during the Presidential campaign, the Gore
forces chose neither to
study nor to learn from the mistakes of preceding Democratic candidates --
particularly that of Michael Dukakis in 1988. Accordingly, the GOP
effectively repeated in 2000 and again in 2002 the strategy of the 1988 campaign of "Poppy
Bush," with manifest success. Reduced to three words, it was a
strategy of smear, spin, and misdirection. Because the
Democrats failed to refocus their attention on the campaigns 2000 and 2002, with the purpose of learning
from them, they repeated their errors in 2004, leading to the same result.
As if all that were not enough, we now find ourselves
at "war." It is a new kind of war, not against a state, but
against non-governmental "network" of fanatics who, appear to be both
nowhere and everywhere. And so, predictably, the Bush regime is waging this
"new war" with the equipment, strategy, tactics and rhetoric of the
old." Worst of all, these usurpers have given themselves the license
to wage this "war" indefinitely.
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