What’s Wrong with Voting Against George Bush?

The right-wing pundits on the Sunday morning news shows this week seem to think that the best critique of John Kerry and of the Democratic Convention, voters, and ticket in general is the notion that most of the party’s supporters are still just voting “against George Bush.” The idea, here, is that voting against something is not enough to carry the day.

Ridiculous, I say.

I am voting against George Bush. I’m sure Kerry has his problems. If any of you who regularly read this blog went to college with the man, I’m sure you wouldn’t have been friends with him. He volunteered for the military, for chrissakes. How many people who you relate to went to Ivy League colleges in the 60’s but, instead of trying to get out of service, dropping acid, or conscientiously objecting, actually went to Vietnam and then volunteered for gook-shooting duty on a boat? Sure, I would have preferred someone like Kucinich. But I’m a weird-ass lefty pinko artist writer, and I doubt the Democratic party will ever support a candidate with whom I truly resonate.

As I realist, I understand that Bush is a problem on a very different order. And I believe it is okay to vote purely to rid the nation and the world of a dangerous, misguided, deluded sociopath and the rapacious clique who control him – while there’s still enough integrity in the voting system to exercise such authority over the executive branch. This may be our last chance to use our blogs and our voices towards such a purpose.

Indeed, the attack on Democrats who are voting simply to get rid of Bush strike me as hollow as early attacks on Jews and early Christians who believed in an abstract God. To the polytheistic peoples around them, these monotheists were basically atheists. The God they believed in had no form. They were understood simply as iconoclasts, who very purpose seemed to be to smash the idols that reigned reality.

And if those of us voting against Bush must be understood that way, it’s fine with me.