Respectfully, Bush is not Nader's fault. Ignorant, selfish, spoiled, fascist mainstream and even duped progressive Americans who seem to love being lied to are mostly to blame. Gore definitely won the 2000 election and didn't fight for the presidency he won when even then there was tremendous clear and what has proved quite perennial evidence of felony voter fraud by right wing apparatchiks. Read Greg Palast's writing from before the election. Bush et al was a walking impeachable offense well before he was sworn in and has gotten vastly more impeacheable. Have we lost our collective minds to allow felony voter fraud in a presidential election?
For the majority's case, I don't think Nader is going to get anywhere near the minuscule 3% of the national vote that he got in 2000. By and large he will be an un-popular candidate due to anti-Nader media propaganda from all quarters, like propaganda by LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle syndicated columnist, Robert Scheer. Nader intends to bring truth and debate of despotic dictatorial corporate hegemony into the mainstream national corporate media. I believe him! Still, he will be hated and probably have his life threatened by large numbers of Amerikans every day thereafter. Even my very progressive lawyer quipped that he wouldn’t mind if Nader were assassinated. Nader has amazing chutzpa, wisdom and a not self conscious sense of noble sacrifice to lay himself down on this ponderous, death threat wielding altar of provincial mass US American ignorance. But this is the time that such sacrifice needs to be made by someone. Too many people feel exactly as you the reader might. I'm sure everyone out there is a person, like Nader, who every day walks their talk risking vast unpopularity and certain assassination with success of their goals.
I think that Kerry and Edwards are ultimately more of the same untrustworthy globalization, Project for The New American Century (PNAC) supporting corporate police state types whatever their campaign rhetoric. We US Americans have with great collective carelessness given away our democracy to corporate dictators especially over the past 24 years. We’ve lost our collective critical consciousness to understand the terrifying de-volving world social and economic disaster that’s happening now and that the US public, business and government are responsible for. We have no right at all to this kind of selfish insularity. Citizens of less rich and less democratic countries are not allowed the luxury of ignorance, inaction or, worse: selfish bourgeois apathy and fuzziness. When the US hiccups, or has a $7.5 trillion deficit due to a wildly radical "spend-everything" illegitimate despot right wing lug-nut president, the rest of the world feels it personally and drastically way before the collective US public does. We in the US have a stern obligation to respond stridently and quickly to the mistakes of ourselves, our businesses and our government. It is the US government, people and businesses that suck money, a majority of the world's assets and an ever cheapening and mistreated labor force off the rest of the world to give you what’s left of your quality of life here in the US. Respond before you feel what our socio-economic victims around the world feel.
PNAC policies are not going away without radical, immediate and clear re-framing. Nader can re-FRAME. Nader is our friend, therefore. His re-framing is definitely more timely than ever--not less so as Robert Scheer inaccurately asserts recently in his column. Nader is at least one we need in an age dominated by corporate media distortion. Nader is himself un-impeachably for the common person and won't compromise his values for political purposes. Is a Bush military/corporate dictatorship necessary to wake the collective US? It is highly unlikely, given the history of this despot Bush et al, that such a group will hand the White House over even to pro-globalization Kerry after November under any circumstances. It's time we started attacking the republicans, republocrats, the military, the super wealthy, their policies, the secret and permanent features of our US governance with the venom that we've used against one who continues unwaveringly to be one of this country's greatest truthsayers and advocates for the people, Ralph Nader.
We've taken too many cues from the lying PNAC neo-liberal neo-cons, including their penchant for petulant Rovian vengeance--this time against one of our greatest allies. It seems we think we must win in 2004 through indirect "moderate" methods of unquestioning party unity. Truth doesn't work that way. Fascism and corporate dictatorship and lock-step freedom hating republicans work that way. We need to spark revolution against fast approaching expanding corporate dictatorship. We must name it and frame it. Nader’s helping to get the party started. Listen to him while you still have a choice.
Frank Snapp
Oakland, CA
(510-595-3279