Posted by Bunny.
E-mail from ShapeSHFTR:
Dear Bunny, I enjoy reading your replies to e-mails. I have a question for you. I'm guessing that you guys are Democrats and not Republicans. So out of the major Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards, who will you be voting for? Who do you think is the real change candidate? And don't say Kucinich because we all know he doesn't have a chance to win the nomination! Thanks, just curious what you guys are thinking because you haven't been talking about the elections. - ShapeSHFTR
Bunny writes:
Hi ShapeSHFTR, I won't pretend to represent the others, I'll just state my own position and the others can enter their opinions below if they want.
1. As we've pointed out before, cats aren't allowed to vote. If you American human beings thought about how unfair this is for even 10 seconds you'd see that that's something that has to be changed. Who the leader of this country is has a profound effect on all animals, not only humans. I agree that some animals cannot operate a voting machine or punch a voting-card (dragonflies come to mind), but that doesn't mean that our interests should be totally ignored at election time. If you believe in fairness go figure something about re: how to collect animal votes. And I'm not even going to get into the whole trees issue.
2. The whole "You Must Be Either a Democrat or a Republican" mentality annoys me. What happens when neither side is willing to serve the interests of the citizenry? Or to put it another way, why do people have to choose between one of just two parties when both of those parties are actively hurting the most vulnerable among us? Poor people, the elderly, children, the homeless, recent immigrants, Native peoples, and so on. I would call the narrowness of your human elections a joke if the repercussions weren't so enormously un-funny.
3. I like some things about each of the candidates as people. All of them seem intelligent, which can be nice. Visually speaking, they all have decent smiles, et cetera. But as political candidates, the three you've named - Clinton, Obama, Edwards - I don't like their politics. Just one example, their positions regarding the expansion of war-culture, an issue we have spoken about a lot here at The Pinky Show.
Hillary Clinton: To help our forces recover from Iraq and prepare them to confront the full range of twenty-first-century threats, I will work to expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home.
John Edwards: I will double the budget for recruitment and raise the standards for the recruitment pool so that we can reduce our reliance on felony waivers and other exceptions. In addition, I will increase our investment in the maintenance of our equipment for the safety of our troops.
Barack Obama: To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . . We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. . . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. . . . I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened. We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability — to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities...
[ excerpts from Glenn Greenwald's excellent essay at Salon ]
4. Seems like every time Kucinich's name is mentioned, it's in the context of some kind of mockery or dismissive "interesting but not to be taken seriously" comment. What's funny to me is that if people would only follow-up with some critical inquiry as to why this is happening, they might actually figure out a thing or two about what's wrong with elections here in the United States.
I'm not impressed with the American political system. You human beings will get exactly what you deserve. Unfortunately for the rest of us who also live on this planet, we'll also get what you deserve.
~B.
