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Essays & OpinionsOften in Error, Never in Doubt! A Word of Thanks to Ralph Nader?January 7, 2006This coming Monday (January 9), the Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on Samuel Alito, George Bush’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. From everything I’ve been reading, it sounds like the Democrats don’t have much chance of preventing Alito’s nomination from clearing the Senate, giving Bush a chance to alter the philosophical make-up of the Supreme Court for years to come. So, when the members of “Bush’s Base” hit their knees tomorrow to give praise to Jesus, I wonder how many of them will add in a little “thank you” for Ralph Nader and this golden opportunity that he has provided? Sure, the unrepentant Nader voters will argue that it’s unfair to blame Ralph for Al Gore’s loss in the 2000 election. They’ll argue that there were many reasons for Gore’s loss in Florida, including:
All of that may be true, but none of those reasons change the fact that over 95,000 Florida voters cast ballots for Ralph Nader in 2000, and George Bush beat Al Gore by only 543 votes. If Nader had not been on the ballot in 2000, would Gore have won? We’ll never really know for sure, but it’s hard to believe that very many of those 95,000+ votes would have gone to Dubya. Let’s assume that 90% of Nader’s Florida voters would have stayed home in 2000 for lack of an acceptable candidate representing their views; that would leave 9,500 votes, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that most of those would have been given to the Gore camp. Enough votes for Gore to have won Florida and the Presidency, despite all of the other challenges enumerated by Nader’s apologists. In his 2000 (and 2004) campaign, Nader argued over and over that there are no practical differences between the two major parties; only Nader and the Green Party represented a true alternative to business as usual. Well, now that we’ve had a few years to put the 2000 election into perspective, does anyone from the Nader camp really believe that if Gore had won the 2000 election, we would have:
A sad footnote to Nader’s 200 and 2004 campaigns remains the fact that many of the issues he raised (gerrymandered Congressional districts and campaign finance reform, for example) are very legitimate issues, worthy of more discussion than these issues usually receive. Heck, in the interests of honesty and open discussion I should admit that I voted for Nader in 2000! (However, I was a California resident at the time, and the votes cast by people like me had no effect on the election results in the Golden State.) As Otto Von Bismarck said in 1867, “Politics is the art of the possible.” In 2000, there was no possible way for Nader to win. By the time the Florida election rolled around, it was painfully obvious that this was going to be a close race. Nader’s idealistic (or, as I prefer to describe it, “idiotic, unrealistic and egotistical”) effort to promote the discussion of very legitimate political issues accomplished little to push forward his goals. I truly believe that overall, our society would be much different today if Nader had gracefully bowed out of the race and encouraged his supporters to vote for Gore. As an after word, the web site setup by “Unrepentant Nader Voters” doesn’t look very active these days. There are broken links, and the main page looks like it hasn’t been updated since sometime before the 2004 election! Maybe these unrepentant Nader apologists have finally realized that sometimes, voting for the lesser of two evils can make a big practical difference in the real world. I can only hope the unrepentant Nader voters are hiding their heads in shame. [Simultaneously posted at OtherSingles.] Justice...And TreesSome background... I'm a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, class of 1977. My major was Communication Arts, more specifically film and TV production. I started out with an interest in the technical side of the business, but along the way I took a few writing courses and found them very enjoyable; one class in particular: "Writing for Radio". During one class session the instructor started out by proposing a scenario: you're walking down a street and you see a tree. The assignment: right then and there write a paragraph about the tree. Well, I wracked my brain for several minutes trying to think about the tree. What did I see in the tree? Was there something in the tree? Or was the tree itself special in some way? I started to panic, because I couldn't think of anything! In tense situations like this, my mind starts to wander, and this was no exception. After a few moments my thoughts drifted to an incident that happened a year or two earlier while visiting my sister at her college. While that incident had nothing at all to do with trees, it led to a sudden thought on how I could work a tree into a story, with nothing at all special about the tree or anything in it. Although that little story is only about 2/3 of a page long (typed, double-spaced), it's one of my personal favorites from among a huge collection of otherwise forgettable prose that I put to paper during those years. Why? For the first time, I'd written about something that I felt personally very strongly about. In the years since, I've found that writing about things that are significant to me is extremely satisfying, and much to my pleasant surprise, that's the kind of writing that some people seem to enjoy. I figure it's also a good way for people to get to know me better! (After about 15 minutes to write our little paragraph, we then had to read our paragraph to the class. After reading my paragraph, the instructor's first comment was: "A closet wacko!".) I've dug through my archives, and for better or worse, here it is:
As for the incident that focused my wandering mind... I was visiting my sister, a student at Cal Poly Pomona at the time. Karin, her roommate and I were out on a shopping expedition. While the girls were crushing the store, I decided to wait in the car and listen to the radio. The shopping center was located on a very busy street, at least two lanes in each direction. My car was parked facing the street; keeping an eye on the traffic flow gave my eyes something to do while the ears listened to the radio. After a while, I noticed a motorcyclist coming along the road; the traffic he was in was flowing along at 40mph or so. Some idiot woman then pulled out from the parking lot, right in front of the motorcyclist! The poor fellow hit the side of her car broadside and was thrown off his cycle. Fire trucks, police and ambulance arrived within moments. A few minutes later Karin and her roommate returned from their shopping efforts. We rubbernecked for a few moments, but then had to leave while the first responders were still working the accident scene. Years later I happened to remind Karin about that accident and she surprised me by saying that she'd read a day or so later in a local paper that the motorcyclist had died from his injuries. Of Shopping Carts and Parking LotsCopyright © 2004 Eric Chevalier I've developed a pet theory that you can tell a lot about a society by looking at its parking lots. As I walk through the parking lots of my local grocery stores and WalMarts, I can't help thinking: "We're in trouble!" Next time you visit your local grocery store, take a look around as you get out of your car. Do you see any shopping carts abandoned around the parking lot? If your town is anything like mine, the answer is probably not just "yes," but "hell, yes!" What puzzles me about this state of affairs is that all of the grocery stores I patronize have corrals scattered around the lots where you can leave your empty cart. My local Reasor's, for example, has so many corrals scattered around a fairly small parking lot that you don't have to walk more than four or five spaces in order to find a place to park your cart. So why do I see more abandoned carts than corralled carts? After many years of observing this phenomenon, I can't help concluding that we're a very lazy society. Of course, we all have good reasons why we can't walk the cart over to the corral. It's raining and we don't want to get wet. We're in a hurry and we can't afford to spend another 30 or 60 seconds at the store. Let the store's employees come around and corral the carts; after all, isn't that what we're paying for? But wait! Suppose you pull into your local grocery store. You park your car and notice that a previous customer abandoned their cart in the space right next to you. Now, you need to walk to the store's entrance, right? And that's where the cart needs to go, too. So, do you grab the cart and pull it along with you? I do, but I don't seem to have very much company in this effort. Maybe it is raining. But you're going to get wet walking towards the store whether or not you're pulling the cart. And no matter how rushed you might be, is the cart really going to slow you down that much? And maybe we are paying for the store's cart corrallers. But if we all pulled an abandoned cart into the store with us every time we head towards the entrance, maybe the store can hire a few less employees, saving us a few cents on our shopping dollar. Or, better yet, the cart corrallers could be redeployed to bag groceries or help us locate that can of Beanie Weenies we can't seem to find. (We can only hope...!) And it's not just shopping carts. I can't tell you how many times I've stood in line at an ATM while the patron in front of me fills out their deposit slip, stuffs his or her check and paperwork into the deposit envelope and then proceeds with the transaction. Obviously, we can't count on our deposit being properly processed without including the necessary paperwork. But next time you visit the ATM, why don't you grab a couple extra envelopes and deposit slips so come next payday you can fill out the paperwork and stuff the envelope while you're sitting at your desk at work. Thus prepared, the customer standing behind you during your next visit to the ATM will appreciate your expeditious transaction. And you will appreciate that expeditious transaction, too, especially if that visit to the ATM is accompanied by cold, wet weather! I can (with difficulty) understand why we might be reluctant to corral our carts after a shopping expedition. But I can't understand why we are so unwilling (or unable) to help roundup a stray cart on our way into the store. Or simplify our visit to the ATM with a little planning ahead. Unfortunately, every time I pull into my local grocery store, I can't help thinking that we're not just a lazy society, but a stupid and lazy society! |
