Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
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Never may Happen
Posted on February 7, 2004 in Blogging Citizenship IRC/Chat
I’ve decided to take a sabbatical on politics, at least for a few days. No Undernet, a curb on political comments on this blog, at least where the 2004 shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot-Democratic-politics-as-usual election goes.
I might be back to the #political channels on Undernet in a few days, a few weeks, a few months. Maybe Never. Some say “Never say Never.” I say “Be realistic. Never may happen.”
What happened? I got tired of stating what seems obvious to me. I got tired of seeing fights with no resolutions, the bitter partisanship that prevents Democrats from seeing that John Kerry isn’t good for them or, for that matter, Republicans from seeing that George W. Bush isn’t good for them. I got tired of the shadows people leap after. The same people who jumped for the Patriot Act, who jumped for the fictitious WMDs in Iraq are jumping again for Kerry as “more electable”. And some people, who told me that they were sick of the DLC politics as usual aren’t there when it is important to make a stand. The Anybody but Bush rhetoric is killing the Democratic Party and preventing us from seizing an opportunity for reform. All the Republicans have to do to ensure that we keep to the groove is run Jeb Bush in 2008. Corporations will get the kind of Democrat that they want. Alan Greenspan’s job will be safe.
Stay tuned. In a year, I will be waving my hands trying to stop the Buffalo Herd from jumping off some new cliff and they will be there, doing it to me again. “But the problem is Bush,” they say now. “We must focus on Bush!”
The problem is the people who won’t fight for what they want in their own party, in the land they claim to love.
To those who claim that their “anybody but Bush stand” stems from conscience, I say this: Conscience is when you stick to your view and are willing to make the sacrifice of life or freedom in the name of nonviolent resistance. What you are demonstrating is partisanship, which requires no such sacrifice. Partisanship is not the same as conscience. Don’t cheapen the latter by confusing it with the former.
Tomorrow, I shall write about the sounds of my neighborhood. Politics moratorium on this blog shall last at least until Tuesday. On IRC, indefinitely.
