Nest Heads by John Allen for December 31, 2021

Like trying to pick the lesser of two evils.

I hate the “lesser of two evils” trope. Government is essential to any society. Some countries have done a good job of creating governments that work for the majority of the people. Ours, from the beginning, was designed to work only for the upper economic tiers. It does not have to be that way, of course, but in order for it to change, we would need an entirely new format. Getting rid of the electoral college would be a slight improvement, but we need an overhaul from the bottom up.

Having said that, throughout the country, there are thousands of elected officials who are not evil in any way. They are doing the best they can for as many people as they can in a corrupted system.

When the GQP holds power, they do everything they can to sabotage government programs, then they say, “see, government doesn’t work”.

NOTE TO LAB RAT: It’s ALL of them!

A further addendum to the rat – America has never been a “democracy” – a “democracy” is a situation where everybody gets to vote on every issue – even in ancient Greece there was NEVER a true democracy – women and slaves were never given the vote.

In America you have an either/or situation. For the increasingly few that are allowed to vote, you can either vote “Republican” or “Democrat”, and, at the present time, such a vote is still a valid expression of political will – a vote for anyone else is a false “feel good” vote that is basically useless as anything other than as a spoiler vote against the eventual “real” winner/

The last two times a third-party candidate even got within ‘spitting’ distance was when Governor George Wallace ran in 1968 (13.53% of votes cast nationally and carried five Southern states) and when billionaire Ross Perot ran in 1992 (18.9% of the popular vote but no states, electorally) and 1996 (8.4% of the popular vote and carried no state, electorally) Third party candidates never got within “shouting distance” of winning. I am discounting the 1948 Dixiecrat/ States’ Rights Strom Thurman race since, though alive at that time, I had yet to become involved in politics (Thurman got less than 3% of the popular vote and carried 4 southern states, electorally.

Note here that the republican party, having shrunk to less than 25% nationally, is making a desperate last attempt to cement their position in American politics by giving the individual state republican-led legislatures the ability to overthrow duly elected politicians with their own slates – the jury is still out on how effective this particular attempt will be, so stay tuned!

You have to be part of the periodic revolution that is the essence of democracy. Fight to overthrow the government by legal electoral means and don’t whine when you lose. There’s always another election – that’s the point.

At the time this was originally printed, it was G.W. Bush vs Kerry. Still trying to figure out how Iraq was the problem and not Osama bin Laden – Makes ya wonder if Kerry could have turned the war around and saved us hundreds, if not thousands of military and civilian fatalities.