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Sticking To Your Guns

From mancuso@umich.edu Sun Nov 12 17:33:27 2000
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 02:26:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Joseph Mancuso 
To: letters@annarbornews.com
Subject: Letter / Other Voices Submission


   Please accept the following submission for the "Letters / Other Voices"
section.  As past experience has led me to believe that no verification of
receipt or rejection is provided by your staff, I will assume rejection of
the submission if I don't hear otherwise from you, and may proceed to
submit it to other outlets.  Thanks and hope to hear from you.

   Joseph D. Mancuso
   695 Wembley Court
   Ann Arbor, MI  48103
   734-662-0669 (daytime)
   734-995-5525 (home)
   mancuso@umich.edu

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Sticking to Your Guns

It's 12:24 AM on Friday, the 10th of November. The circus that has become of the selection of the new millenium's first President rages on, and I simply can't lose.

Until this year, I was a member of this nation's largest political block: the non-voting populace. This year (with some help from some adamant friends), I finally reconsidered. I figured out the tremendous long-term purpose and power in third-party voting, and took to the polls to play my part. My man for the Presidency was Nader, and despite pleas from Gore supporters and Bushophobes here and elsewhere, I didn't yield to the lesser evil.

Now I watch as the saga reaches laughable proportions. The Gore campaign is supporting Florida residents taking legal action disputing unclear ballots and inconsistent procedures. The Republicans are threatening to demand recounts in other states. Everyone from Jesse Jackson to Pat Bucchannan is in the act now, taking sides in all the predictable ways.

How I'd love to see Florida succeed in demanding a state-wide re-election, and even more to see the Republicans dig up some "confusing ballots" in Gore-won states and respond in kind. I'd pay good money to see this election reduced to a pro wrestling match of petty scrambles and countermoves, complete with braindead feuding and cheering television observers taking sides like screaming apes, and born out to reflect the farce of government and international laughing stock that is our nation's Presidency.

Being a staunch political apathist turned die-hard third-party supporter, I've been in both of the groups who've long since been hip to and had enough of the media deception, idealogical compromise and fabricated identities of "major party" politics. My position is simple: the government needs to be put back into the hands of the people, and the levelling of the political playing field to the point where any one of a dozen decent candidates has a shot at the seat is the only way it'll happen. Getting voters to stick to their guns and stop caving in to the actor who pulls off looking barely better than the other guy is the key to that vision, and that means getting voters to take third parties seriously by growing their support. In a way I'm glad the Green Party split the Democratic vote in Oregon, potential Bush victory notwithstanding; let the nation see what we can do, and let the people begin to realize that they can have a voice. Weathering a Republican presidential term will be a small price to pay in the long run.

Of course, I was the target of tons of campaigning from fellow environmentalists who feared the Nader-Gore split. I was reminded that a vote for the candidate who couldn't win, however great he was, was a "wasted vote". I was beraded by other Nader fans who'd caved in to backing Gore, and told how critical it was that Bush not be let into office, and how this election was exceptionally important, or how I could trade my Green vote to some Gore fan in Texas whose vote was futile anyway. What everyone forgets is that I, like my non-voting former peers still do, spent most of my life all but entirely uncaring about who our President was and what the media claimed he was and wasn't up to. The next four years would be no exception; it's the next forty I'm working for with my vote.

God forbid we've perpetuated this pathetic excuse for democracy so much that we're all still wimping out to the lesser evil in half a century. The new millenium and all the global issues it will bring need something better, and we must get the snowball rolling now.

So now here we are, a few hundred votes seperating the two armies of idiocy from the big win, and I'm smiling. If Gore takes it, the benefit is obvious; as a Green party supporter I'd have to call him the "lesser evil" by far. If Bush gets the White House, then I get to watch the tables bittersweetly turn and know that all those Nader-supporters-turned-Gore who could have held to course and invested in the future were the ones who wasted THEIR votes, because not only did they not stand behind the candidate they believed in, they didn't even contribute to a win. In the veritable freakshow of fear and posturing that was my first election as a voter, I didn't vote for panic and I didn't vote for hype, I just voted.

I guess in '04, we'll see if anyone learned their lesson.

Joseph Mancuso is a sound engineer, local musician and writer living in
Ann Arbor since 1993.  He holds a MSE in Electrical Engineering from U of 
M, class of 1996.

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(c)2000 Joseph Mancuso. All rights reserved.

Last modified: 30 August 2003 (posted)