~ We haven’t been devastated or depressed or demolished at the angry red planet. we felt it would be prudent to refrain from making any immediate, knee jerk posts about our late national troubles, lest we end up with something which later proves embarrassing, such as ‘we are never voting again’ or ‘we are moving to Spain’ or ‘fuck all y’all Christian bigots’. now that we have pondered the matter for a day and a half, as well as read thousands of rant and raves on the Internet, we feel that we can make a few notes for posterity that are are unblemished by any strains of emotion and desperation.
First and foremost, lets absolve ourselves of any misconception that there will be any unity or healing between the factions. Fuck that. We have realized that we do not merely disagree about solutions to national problems with the right, we literally have divergent conceptions of what the United States of America is supposed to be. We at the angry red planet know that it is an product of the Enlightenment, engineered by men who, despite their aristocratic faults, were progressive intellectuals who desired a broad expanse for thought above all else; however, our contemporary right wants to impose restrictive, nativist codes of thought and behaviour upon anyone in its boundaries. This will destroy the Founding Fathers’ experiment; for this, We hate you. Rather than heal or unite with our neighboring crusaders, we will maintain our bitterness, savor our rancor, and clutch our anger close to our hearts. There is a place for you in this country to abide by and honour your own codes, but not for a moment will we harbour the notion that we should compromise and allow them into public contract.
It was all we could stomach to even suggest the possibility that it would be alright for someone to vote for Kerry Edwards, for they had stated for the record that they were opposed to marriage between men and between women. If we could not tolerate the Kerry Edwards statements, we sure as shit are not going to ‘unite’ with any of the bigoted fucks who turned out to vote for the amendments to various state constitutions; and that includes the Kerry voters who voted for amendment 1 in Georgia. Fuck all y’all. And fuck y’all in 2006 and 2008.
(a corollary: We understand Kerry’s argument that he voted for ‘authorization’ and not for ‘war’, but we consider that to be bull crap; if you don’t see that giving permission to start a war to a guy who clearly is hellbent on starting a war is the same as agreeing to the war, then you are a dipshit.)
our fellow non-republicans—liberals, leftists, progressives, independents, and the democrats—are in turmoil and have immediately begun to lay out plans for 2006 and 2008 that consists of learning how to have some ‘values’ and building some ‘infrastructure’; they base this reaction upon a simple exit poll which stated that ‘values’ were what determined the vote for millions of Americans. you won’t find any plan of attack or proposal for infrastructure in this post, for a couple of reasons. for one thing, we consider this to be a cultural war, not a semantic debate; for another, we know what these assholes value, and under no circumstances shall we pander to such bigoted isolationism. instead, this post contains a few selections from our epiphanies and postulations of the last couple of days. our plan of attack for the upcoming years will be enacted, not described.
(semantics: We have determined that you can not suss out these right wingers’ ‘values’ and subsequently have a discussion on their terms. a case in point is the number of deaths in iraq—on both sides. they, the right wing, sincerely do not care if people die; you can not even rationalize with them that few deaths is better than many deaths, because the lives of other people mean nothing to them. the lives of arabs across the sea mean less than nothing. pointing out the incongruities between their values and the inhumanity of illegal war is a waste of time, as they do not value human life. the deaths we have caused in our wars and in our neglect of the poor at home needs to be removed from the discussion, as the notion is unimportant to the right.)
other fellow non-republicans, stop calling people in the south and midwest names such as ‘ignorant red state crackers’. no state is 100% red; it is a disservice to the millions of voters and workers and canvassers against bush who live in ‘red states’ who tried their best to unseat him. in addition, no state—save for two or three tiny new england backwaters—turned out entirely blue. every state is a ‘red state’; they only look ‘blue’ in the end because your cities outweigh your hinterlands. take cook county from illinois and peep what colour is left. the weak pejorative ‘cracker’ as a synonym for an uneducated, religiously righteous redneck is also incorrect; 75% of the black voters in georgia voted to deny rights to Americans who are gay. no race has a monopoly on prejudice.
(crackers: months ago, we touched upon an event that drove us from a group of folks of similar political persuasion. we had mentioned casually that there were going to be americans voting for bush, and we quickly were informed by someone from santa barbara. that no one would vote for bush. various pieces of evidence, facts, and hearsay were provided. ‘granted this is all true,’ we noted, ‘but you should prepare yourself for the fact that bush is popular; we can’t go 10 yards without peeping ‘bush cheney’ signs.’ we were then informed that we live in ‘bumblefuck’. at that word, we ceased the debate, and broke off communication with santa barbara. there are a number of levels at which barbara’s statement is fucked.
1. not everyone is wealthy enough to live in santa barbara; condescension from a ‘progressive’ towards people to poor to live in her community is not admirable.
2. not everyone has the same information that the elite santa barbarans have; one must accept that ‘bumblefuck’ might know less or more that the santa barbarans
2b. prepare yourself that ‘bumblefuck’, upon given the same evidence, will draw different conclusions than the santa barbarans, based on divergent backgrounds, environment, and circumstances.
3. calling someone’s home ‘bumblefuck’ is an effective method for ensuring that they will assume a different position than one’s own; if our environment and circumstances are so great, why would we share ideals?
4. everyone must live somewhere; at that point, it is not ‘bumblefuck’
5. considering that bush never polled below 40% of voters, it is not rational to assume that nobody will vote for him; it that were the case, we would only need one nader or kerry voter in each state.)
perennial thug rudy giuliani stretched reality to suggest that the relationship between kerry and bush—by extension, their parties and supporters—is equivalent to the relationship between thomas jefferson and john adams; those guys hated each other at the close of their bitter contest for the 1800 presidency. years afterward, they started an amicable and brilliant correspondence about politics, texts, and planting which lasted for years. when we see the amercian public or politicians reading and writing about anything that does not involve ashlee simpson, donald trump, or laci peterson, then we will revisit this proposal, until then we will consider giuliani’s head to be up his ass.
is it worth moving out of the county—fleeing to canada or new zealand or some other place where they politely speak american? the backlash to this desire is that we are supposed to buck up, stop whining, and get ready to fight back; parallels are drawn to the fact that unions and women and blacks didn’t get what they wanted at the outset. naturally. however, for what exactly are we fighting? as stated above, this is no longer the great experiment begun by jefferson, adams, madison, and even the asshole hamilton. america is a conglomeration of fatasses who are more interested in making payments on a new HDTV and riding lawnmower and suvs with dvd players than they are in participatory democracy. americans are teenage girls getting plastic surgery. americans watch ‘cribs’ and include burger king in a weight loss regimen. americans drive cadillac suvs while living in whitefoord. americans are so obese that they are causing drag on airplanes. americans construct hideous buildings like symphony tower super walmarts. americans willing choose ignorance and provincialism over introspection and contemplation; they do not believe in science or modernity.
(coincidentally, it is curious that we just picked up the latest ‘national geographic magazine’, which features a story on evolution; the title ‘was darwin wrong?’ is followed with ‘no. [but 88% of americans will not believe anything in this article is true]’ )
in other words, there is a gaping divide between the occasional self serving newsweek article that describes the greatness of the united states – offering examples of madison’s bill of rights and the citizen soldiers of world war 2—and the mundane reality of millions who just do not give a shit about anything beyond filling their own fatty lives with muffin bars, ‘the oc’, and ipods. it is one thing to desire to defend the ethics of the declaration of independence and the bill of rights; it is another to defend people who are not interested. are we expected to be like chauvinistic missionaries, leading supposed savages to our faith? we reckon we are not; the information is out there, we can no longer expend energy coddling these two legged vermin and teaching them to be adults. we say that people can either get on board or be written off; Americans, you are now with us or against us.
we have been unable to find ralph nader’s concession speech; the nearest admission of defeat we could locate was a november 2 speech which he gave at the press club which seemed to reveal a premonition that he would not take the white house. nader concluded his speech with two names no americans will recognize:
“As Eugene Debs once said and as I.F. Stone once said, the only struggles for social justice worth fighting for are those where you lose and you lose and you lose until you win”
'john' responds:
i recommend the inclusion of ‘netflix’ in your compendium of american distractions.
5 November 2004 _ 16h21m26 EDT [link]
'ashley' responds:
net – flix? is that similar to edonkey or bittorrent? it sounds like something a domesticated (emasculated) male would use for video entertainment.
5 November 2004 _ 21h51m50 EDT [link]
public response: