Debates redux: limiting the scope of dialogue
Speaking of debates, it hasn't made much news that 2 Presidential candidates, David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party were both arrested on Friday night in St. Louis, when they protested their exclusion from the Presidential debates.Now, this strikes me as significant on two counts. First, what have we come to when we require fully armored cops to patrol the grounds of the debate? Those cops are there for one reason only: to repress dissent. What kind of "democracy" (yes I know that technically and on paper America is actually a Republic) ignores valid viewpoints and then represses those who express those views with violence?
This is yet another example of the problem I have with American politics: the two corporate parties are different in some small ways, but they are so similar to one another that every other viewpoint is marginalized, officially in this case. Have a view that's different from the official Republicrat or Demican viewpoint? Step outside, and we'll have our thugs beat you up.
What to do, what to do... 4 more years of Bush would be horrid, no question. But this system, as I have repeatedly said, is utterly broken.
posted by JWL at
6:27 PM |
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