Reply #11: I guess this thread is as good a place as any to post this [View All]

I'm one of those people who will vote for Kerry because he'll be about 852 times better than Bush.

But all of the "fall in line behind Kerry" crap is getting really old really fast. And it's not even the candidate who grates on the nerves--it's a minority of his supporters here. I know just like everyone else does that Kerry is relatively progressive with a lot of his positions. We could do worse. But just tonight, I've read insult after insult directed at the "far left", and assertions that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush (this directed at posters who clearly stated they would be voting for Kerry). I've seen Einsteinian proclamations about not hiding/abetting draftees if they voted for Nader. And to be sure, I think Nader has chosen a poor time to run, and he won't get anywhere near 6% in the general election, but that's kind of beside the point.

Here's the insulting part: it's always been about the platform, not the candidate. It's been about the ideals, not the person espousing or denying those ideals. So most all of us will end up voting for Kerry, because in the end he'll be the best (only) choice we have, and he'll be many degrees better than the idiot in office now. But none of that means that we need to throw away the ideals that (presumably) brought us to this website in the first place. I'm not going to march in freaking lockstep because a bunch of people tell me to. That's way too close to the National Socialist Party or the neoconservative modus operandi for my comfort.

I'm going to do my part and cast my vote for John Kerry and hope that he represents progressive values. But just as surely, I'm going to do whatever I can to be a nagging thorn in his side if he sells out to the right, to the corporatists, to the military industrial complex. He's much closer to ideal than Bush (who doesn't even register on that particular scale), but he's not the perfect progressive, and I just refuse to become a mindless automaton in support of everything John Kerry says or does.

By the way, Ductape Fatwa, I think you're a real credit to this place. Thanks for all of your posts.