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A Lesson On What's At Stake In The 2016 Election
Posted by Pile
(16093 views)      [E-Mail link]
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 Now that the 2016 race is down to the two primary candidates, there will no doubt be a lot of argument over whether there are any viable third-party candidates and discussion over the similarities and differences between the Democratic and Republican nominees.
It's time for a BSAlert history lesson to succinctly illustrate exactly what's at stake... and the stakes are higher than you can imagine... |
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Let's go back to the year 2000.
Al Gore got the Democratic nomination. George W. Bush was the Republican nominee.
Like now, the population back then was not hardly excited about either of those two possibilities.
In fact, many popular leftist icons weighed in with unambiguous statements.
Ralph Nader said, "There's no difference between a vote for Gore and a vote for Bush."
Many feel now as many felt then, that the two-party-system had left them down.
But the idea that both Gore and Bush were equally bad choices continued to resonate among certain groups of voters, determined to carve a new path.
Noam Chomsky has been making similar claims:
"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population."
It's hard to imagine now, people arguing that there was little difference between the two candidates, but there were heated debates about this.
Of course, the two candidates' pros and cons were never fairly framed. Just like the right equates Clinton's lies about an affair with Bush's lies about WMDs, there are false equivalences large enough to build a sports stadium within.
George W. Bush's family was clearly entrenched in the fossil fuel industry. Al Gore was an environmentalist preaching the necessity of alternative renewable energy and the need to address global warming. George W. Bush refused to acknowledge man-made climate change. Gore was no war hawk. Bush certainly was.
Enter Ralph Nader, an icon of the left, a consumer activist, who wanted to carve out a place for his green party. It was incredibly ironic that the year he decides to run an all-out race to the White House, he's up against Al Gore, the most environmentally-aware candidate ever to garner a major party nomination. It truly was a bizarre time in our nation's history. And given the fact that Nader would not acknowledge Gore's credibility in the movement, a time that ushered in dire consequences.
In the end Nader, the third party candidate, cost Gore the election and forever changed the course of both American and world history. Some may argue Nader did skew the election, but those arguments split hairs over subsets of state results and argue that Nader voters wouldn't necessarily have gone to Gore... their arguments don't hold water despite the many web pages one can Google to claim otherwise.
Nader put George W. Bush in the White House.
We know what happened next...
* 9/11 (which could have been avoided had the President paid attention to intelligence reports)
* The passage of the USA Patriot Act, which gutted the Bill of Rights and destroyed peoples civil liberties
* The creation of the Dept of Homeland Security, another bloated and ineffective beauracracy
* The "no-fly list" an unconstitutional blacklist of people punished with no due process
* The appointment of incompetent cronies to positions of great power and the subsequent debacles they presided over (such as the Hurricane Katrina disaster)
* The continued rolling back of depression-era regulations on financial institutions, directly leading to financial and housing crises, and then the fleecing of taxpayers to bail out the banks just before W left office
* The invasion of Iraq, prompted by fabricated lies, costing America 3000+ American soldiers' lives and 800,000+ innocent middle eastern civillians
* Numerous illegal and treasonous activities from the administration outing their own CIA agents who provided evidence contradicting their WMD lies, to the establishment of secret torture camps, etc.
* The creation of ISIS, the destruction of untold amounts of priceless cultural artifacts, communities and the ruination of goodwill from almost every other civilized nation on the planet
* The inability to even hold those accountable for 9/11, or recognize the true source of terrorism
* Rolling back of plans to promote alternative renewable energy and instead pushing for more gas-guzzling vehicles via tax incentives and more domestic fossil fuel production which resulted in more environmental disasters
The list goes on and on....
There may have been some similarities between Gore and Bush, but there is no rational argument that would suggest a Gore presidency would have done many of the things cited above. Eight years alone, of disregarding the climate change crisis is a singularly serious charge that may have potentially fatal consequences for everyone on this planet - only time will tell, but it's one of dozens of horrible subsequent chains of events that would have been avoided with the installation of Gore instead of George W. Bush.
Fast forward to 2016
Here we are again. In the exact same situation.
People comparing Hillary to Trump, suggesting they're both equally unappealing and unhelpful for the country.
The differences in these two candidates policies are as night-and-day as Gore and Bush, and in some cases mirror those two candidates.
Trump is anti-environmentalist. He is a climate change denier.
Hillary not only recognizes the significance of climate change, but has a comprehensive plan to address it, and is pushing for more alternative renewable energy.
It's deja vu all over again.
And the Bernie people are determined to cloud the issue and suggest Hillary is just as corrupt and untrustworthy. They are as wrong then as the Nader people were wrong in 2000.
And the potential consequences are just as serious. |
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Hillary volunteer/supporter
Posted by De Lucia on 2016-06-14 12:57:45 | | I totally agree with everything you said. I have been saying George Bush had to steal two elections because it was only a matter of time until a person of color or a woman got the Presidency. So what if Gore wasnt exciting, he was correct. There is no comparison or equivalancy between Trump and Hillary and Bernie is going to exploit that because he is supported by Karl Roves PAC and he lies as much as Trump about just everything. He is a fake, not a Democrat and makes me sick. He is taking orders from Rove and those cronies who are the angry white greedy guys behind the curtain. How do we get heard when there are so many berniebots who are not understanding the severity of dividing the Democrats. President Obama has done everything he can to promote a progressive agenda while the republicans opposed him and obstructed his office and they disrespect him like they feel it is ok to do to Hillary. We women are sick of being bullied by angry white greedy men it is time for a woman, a mother and grandmother to lead this country away from the McCarthy era of the 21st century. |
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