Essays & Opinions
Often in Error, Never in Doubt!
A Word of Thanks to Ralph Nader?
January 7, 2006
This 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:
- voters
who were disenfranchised
- voting
systems and procedures that failed
- the
party-line United States Supreme Court vote declaring George W. Bush the
winner
- Democrats
who voted for Bush or not at all
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:
- War in
Iraq
- Abu
Ghraib
- Secret
CIA prisons and “extraordinary renditions”
- The
Patriot Act
- Secret
(and possibly illegal) domestic surveillance by the NSA
- Supreme
Court nominee Samuel Alito
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.]
Return to top
Justice...And Trees
Some 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:
TREES!
Eric Chevalier
Copyright © 1976
I am walking down a city street on a nice, cool, clear and clean
day when I spot a large tree, leafy and green. It is a sight which
refreshes me. Suddenly I hear a loud screech and the sickening
sound of metal impacting metal. I turn and see that a car has
run a red light at the intersection behind me and collided with
a motorcyclist. The cyclist lies in the street, bleeding, apparently
injured very badly.
Angry at the obvious stupidity of the car driver, I dash into
a nearby hardware store, grab a rope and rush to the accident
scene. The guilty driver is stunned and does not protest as I
lead him to the tree.
Quickly I fashion a noose and throw it over one of the branches.
I place it around the driver's neck; stand him on a nearby garbage
can and then tie the other end of the rope to a convenient fire
hydrant.
I kick the can out from under the driver.
Very satisfied, I walk away thinking, "Where would justice
be without trees?"
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.
Return to top
Of Shopping Carts and Parking Lots
Copyright © 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!
Return to top |