WHY I VOTED -- AND WOULD VOTE AGAIN -- FOR RALPH NADER

February 23, 2001

I'm writing this because a number of people, including those near & dear to me, treat me like I've lost my mind when I tell them I supported Ralph Nader.  There is a brief and convincing (to me) argument.  You may not agree with the situation as I see it, but my goal is simply to explain what I see.  I don't think you're crazy for throwing your vote away on Gore (or Bush).

As I see it, our country faces deep problems that are only getting deeper.  First, globalization makes a lot of money for some people, but it disrupts communities around the world and puts workers in an increasingly poor bargaining position, since they are less mobile than capital.  Even if business owners didn't want this to happen, they can't get off the merry-go-round created by capitalist competition and dominance.  And it isn't that these problems are the only problems;  they represent a more fundamentally wrong direction in how we see ourselves as relating to each other.  I accordingly like Nader's emphasis on prison reform and ending capital punishment (and other things);  it targets some of the worst ways in which we relate to each other, and the social sickness that results from this treatment.

Second, they also can't get off the merry-go-round of environmental destruction.  And it isn't just that I foresee big problems from this destruction;  it's also that I believe we need to have a different relationship with nature.  I think we lose our humanity when we neglect the environment.  I like Nader's fundamental policy directions here too.

Both Gore and Bush, and the Democratic Party and Republican Party, are unable to deal with these problems:  partly because they are unable to free themselves from their fossilized political commitments, and partly because the parties don't see the problems as problems in the same way that I do -- i.e., as fundamental.  Both parties are the products of a process that increasingly selects only people who share the capitalist vision of how we are to relate to each other.  Campaign finance is one way they are locked in, but they are also constrained by their parties' historical alliances, the carefully-nurtured ideologies of their supporters, the delicate compromises worked out over many years, and so on.  I'm not criticizing Gore and Bush (or their parties) for this;  they are who they are, and for what used to be good reasons.  The problem is that they can't change to face these new (or growing) fundamental problems.

I don't think the two major candidates are identical.  I would prefer Gore marginally over Bush, but I can't really look forward to the administration of either.  My vote is about telling the American people that there are these problems and that a new party can take a fresh look at them.  I prophesy  that we will be destroyed if we don't turn to face these problems, and like a prophet, my opinions are not well understood and/or are scorned, and I am stubborn in continuing to say these things.  I hope I'm wrong, but until I conclude otherwise, I will continue to support Ralph Nader and any party that takes these fundamental issues seriously.

June 27, 2003

The above analysis still reflects my thinking.  True, the Bush administration has been more horrible than I could have imagined before the election, but I believe that it was only the accident of the 9/11 attacks that enabled Bush to carry out so much of his agenda.  Had it not happened, I believe the blatant looting of our country (and particularly its future) would have been resisted more strongly.  I will also say that Bush was successful in fooling me as to how compassionate his conservatism was.  In this, as with so many things about him, it was all image and power, not reality.

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