{"id":2483,"date":"2004-07-28T22:35:53","date_gmt":"2004-07-29T02:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/07\/28\/dowbrigade-endorses-kerry-the-kiss-of-"},"modified":"2004-07-28T22:35:53","modified_gmt":"2004-07-29T02:35:53","slug":"dowbrigade-endorses-kerry-the-kiss-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/07\/28\/dowbrigade-endorses-kerry-the-kiss-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Dowbrigade Endorses Kerry – the Kiss of Death?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

The Show goes on. Finally, a little popular culture. John Cougar Mellencamp
\n just finished singing "Small Town" and now Bill Richardson, America’s
\n most unlikely Latino, is speaking in Spanish. Being in the midst of all
\n of this artificial intrigue and theatrical suspense
\n has
\n the Dowbrigade
\n feeling
\n at times
\n as though we are
\n trapped
\n in a Shakespearean
\n farce within a farce. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, no one seems to want to admit the farcical aspect of
\n the event at all – they are all taking it so, so seriously. It is clear
\n to this observer, at least, that the Democratic Party, as currently constituted,
\n is suffering from a serious goofiness deficit. Hey you guys, lighten
\n up a little.  It’s just a TV show.<\/p>\n

Or a Shakespearean double-farce, depending on one’s frame of reference.
\n The minor farce is 35,000 people putting on a super show for the media
\n and, through them, to the not-insignificant portion of the world’s population
\n that pays attention to what passes in our times
\n as "news".<\/p>\n

35,000 people play-acting at selecting a candidate, going through forms
\n and formalities encrusted in tradition two centuries old. The last Convention
\n that went into extra innings, the public waiting breathless like the
\n crowd in St. Peter’s Square waiting on the white smoke, was 1948, the
\n last time
\n the rules required a 2\/3 majority for selection.  The last Convention
\n when the outcome was in question when the event began was 1960, Kennedy’s
\n Convention. The last Convention to generate any real news, although not
\n from the Convention
\n Floor, was 1968 in Chicago, and we all know how that worked out.<\/p>\n

Even more recently, the Conventions we remember from our youth featured
\n floor fights over platform planks, controversies over the seating of
\n competing slates of
\n delegates from the same state, inadequately vetted VP candidates resigning
\n in disgrace after electroshocking revelations.  Even these minor
\n sideshows have been purged, leaving a cross between a beauty pageant
\n and an infomercial, but with less content and suspense than either.<\/p>\n

The major farce, in which this Convention forms the stage-setting second
\n act (Act I being the peripatetic primaries in the populist prairies and
\n rural redoubts of the "me-firster" states), is a full, four-act comedy
\n of errors called the "Modern American Electoral Process".<\/p>\n

Any review of this piece of work which attempts to label it a farce
\n must start with the fundamental question: Does it really matter who wins
\n this election? Although the politically sophisticated may scoff at the
\n very idea, we are personally convinced that the main reason over half
\n of the eligible Americans can’t be bothered to vote is because they have
\n concluded it really doesn’t<\/em> matter.<\/p>\n

Now, we know that our twisted political sensibilities place us well
\n outside the American mainstream.  But we still believe strongly
\n in the principles on which this country was founded, and the proposition
\n that
\n Democracy,
\n although imperfect, is the best system do far devised for man to foster
\n freedom and facilitate the human community, mind and spirit. We consider
\n ourself a patriotic American.<\/p>\n

And to our way of thinking any possible political
\n candidate or movement that could truly
\n change the currently disastrous decline of this country will not and
\n can not come from the two traditional major parties in American politics.<\/p>\n

The Democratic and Republican parties, as presently constituted, are
\n simply incapable of to recapturing or recreating the true spirit of the
\n founding fathers in a form
\n which can stand
\n up to the challenges of power and corruption in the 21st century, and
\n stand out as a beacon lighting a path into a livable, sustainable future.  They
\n are too indebted to big money, to the economic cartels and power centers
\n which
\n are used
\n to
\n setting the rules and shaping the policies of our "democratic" government.
\n Even campaign finance reform, we fear, is incapable of exorcising the
\n deep roots and structural symbiosis between the major parties and the
\n economic interests that support them.<\/p>\n

Howard Dean alluded to this himself when he spoke with the bloggers
\n on Monday. He was talking about the incredibly liberating experience
\n of being funded by thousands of small donors, and owing nothing to the
\n traditional
\n fonts of campaign finance. He was able to do and say what he really wanted,
\n without worrying about biting the hand that was feeding him.<\/p>\n

So he did, and said, and bit down hard, and the hand ended up slapping
\n him upside the head anyway.  Maybe
\n they weren’t funding his campaign, but thanks to the unholy alliance
\n between the economic power centers and the ownership of major media his
\n infamous scream, without the roaringbackground crowd track that made
\n it barely audible in the hall at the time was repeated 27,000 times over
\n a two
\n week period. A loose canon who owed nothing to the business community
\n was way too risky for the unseen arbiters of American political taste.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, is the fact that The
\n One<\/a> is not going to come from
\n the established parties or use the traditional mechanisms of party politics
\n reason enough to sit out these recurring Presidential elections, or
\n "waste" your vote on a protest candidate? In the past two elections the
\n Dowbrigade voted for Dr. John Hagelin, a PhD .Physicist from MIT and
\n head of the Natural Law Party<\/a> which
\n claims that if everyone on the planet would just meditate for an hour
\n a day, and contribute 10 cents to a World
\n Peace Fund, it could eliminate poverty, wipe out hunger, and defeat
\n disease. We selected Dr. Hagelin on
\n the theory that
\n if<\/p>\n

political
\n promises
\n were
\n by nature hot air, why not vote for the guy with the most imaginative
\n and idyllic political fantasies.<\/p>\n

This time around, however, we feel somewhat differently.  When
\n comparing the major party candidates this year, we need look no further
\n than their differing
\n behavior during America’s longest fighting war, the nightmare of Vietnam.<\/p>\n

It is still almost inconceivable to me that a guy like John Kerry, a
\n Yale graduate from the right side of the tracks, a man so privileged
\n he was a member of the Skull and Bones at Yale (like Bush), a secret
\n society open only to selected sons of the Masters of the Universe, would
\n purposefully pursue not only military service but the kind of combat
\n leadership
\n role which demonstrated both his ability to lead men in life’s most perilous
\n endeavors, and his willingness to make any, up to the ultimate, sacrifice
\n for this country.<\/p>\n

George Bush, meanwhile, basically got the US government to pay for his
\n flying lessons and wash his clothes for a couple of years. There is accumulating
\n evidence that he used his breeding and influence to minimize his inconvenience
\n and perhaps skip out on the last few months, serving his own interests
\n rather than his country’s.<\/p>\n

Hell, that sounds like the sort of thing the Dowbrigade is famous for.  But
\n then we are not running for president. Seen in this light, for us at
\n least, the choice between these two is simple and unequivocal. Kerry
\n is the standup guy, Bush the standby guy.<\/p>\n

In addition, although neither of these men is ready to challenge the
\n cornerstones of corporate control over life in America, one can make
\n the argument that such a leadership would be more likely to emerge, and
\n sooner, in a Kerry America than in a Bush one.  We are not of the
\n school which claims that Draconian repression of liberty serves the cause
\n of
\n freedom by inciting people to take political action rather than accept
\n malignant mediocrity or opt out of the system altogether.<\/p>\n

Even though Kerry doesn’t truly "get it", his basic decency and belief
\n in opening up the system hold promise of creating avenues of expression
\n and innovation neither he nor we can predict or imagine, and that might
\n present new-paradigm solutions and a path out of the moral morass in
\n which we
\n have been mucking around for some time now.<\/p>\n

Finally, and the clincher in our computations, is our increasing conviction
\n that who wins this election WILL make a difference, in a million little
\n ways,
\n in our
\n private, personal everyday lives, and in the lives of people all over
\n the world. At work, in the education of our children, in our personal
\n finances, in our chances of being touched by terrorism, in our ability
\n to enjoy to what we want on the radio. television and on the internet,
\n read, write and think without fear, to travel the world in safety and
\nwith pride
\n in our
\n passport,
\n in the
\n faces of the poor, the foreign, the dispossessed, the deranged, it will
\n make a difference. <\/p>\n

Accordingly, and after much forethought and trepidation, (for it is never easy for a Harvard man to endorse a Yale man for the highest office in
\n the land), we hearby publicly declare that we endorse and will vote for
\n John Kerry, and use our limited platform to encourage others to do so.  Especially
\n those of you who may have dropped the voting habit along the way.  Give
\n it a try, you might be surprised at the result, and it just might turn
\n out NOT to be a farce.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Show goes on. Finally, a little popular culture. John Cougar Mellencamp just finished singing "Small Town" and now Bill Richardson, America’s most unlikely Latino, is speaking in Spanish. Being in the midst of all of this artificial intrigue and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}