Partisan at last: I'd vote for Miller Lite before I'd vote for a Republican

Last week I received an a-mail from a high school classmate, in which he congratulated me for picking up (with NA Confidential) where I’d left off so long ago with the Weekly Wad.

For the record, the Weekly Wad was an underground “newspaper” of four mimeographed pages that a half-dozen Floyd Central freshman “published” in 1975 by stealing paper from the audio-visual department after school hours.

After a brief wrist-slapping on the part of the somewhat confused administrators, who claimed to be seeking a way to challenge our energies in more positive directions, we paid for the materials and were permitted to resume our journalistic careers so long as we had a faculty advisor and refrained from creative acquisition.

Belated thanks to you, Mr. Neely, for agreeing to sponsor our efforts.

And thanks to my mom for letting me use her 1950’s-era manual typewriter to compose screeds against cafeteria food, undemocratic cheerleader selection processes, and turncoat hall monitors.

Throughout the 1980’s, I staged periodic revivals of the Wad, sometimes with the help of my primary co-conspirator Byron, and sometimes alone. By that time, the subject matter had turned toward local issues of no particular importance, like the construction of the waterfront Trinkle Dome and our annual Vodka-Thon walkabout through Harvest Homecoming.

The reference that Joe Emerson remembers so well to the Wad headquarters high atop the glittering Elsby Building dates from this era. Consider it foreshadowing of a sort, because this Blog almost was named the Weekly Wad, but at the last minute, NA Confidential sounded better.

In his e-mail, my correspondent concluded by chiding me on the topic of politics. He noted that in spite of my periodic reminders that NA Confidential is strictly non-partisan, I’ve in fact always been a Leftist Liberal Democrat (cue the ominous music and grainy footage of the Kremlin), and as such, he thinks it is my solemn duty to come out of the closet and admit to it.

While my friend’s candor is much appreciated, I cannot comply with the terms of his request, as his diagnosis is faulty.

Leftist liberal? Guilty as charged.

Democrat? No, not exactly.

Non-partisan? Well, he might have me on that one.

My fundamental position with respect to politics in the United States is that the two-party system is completely and utterly fraudulent.

In a world that revolves around nuance and subtlety, parliamentary systems of the European model strike me as much more accurate representations of political reality than our system, which always reminds me of the joke about tunes on the barroom jukebox: “We have both kinds of music, country and western.”

Neither of which I care much for.

In point of fact, I’ve long considered myself to be a European who came to be New Albanian by a stork’s garbled delivery instructions.

As a liberal, a progressive, a reluctant capitalist, a secular humanist, and an irreligious heretic, the prevailing social order in the United States isn’t particularly friendly to me at this point in time.

However, in spite of my antipathy towards it, the American two-party system is political reality, and one I have no choice but to inhabit unless I wish to “move to France if I don’t like it,” and so I’m prepared to make the best of it in the only way that makes sense to me.

Which is to say, if you’re handed a lemon, the least you can do is squeeze it into your enemy’s eyes.

Consequently, since neither major political party represents me, I always try to vote against the one that annoys me the most.

That’d be the G.O.P., whose positions generally are the polar opposite of my own beliefs, especially now that the party’s steering wheel has been seized by the religious right and the neo-cons.

If voting against Republicans requires voting for the next best alternative that has a reasonable chance of success, which unfortunately precludes doomed third parties, then this, in most cases, will compel me to vote Democratic.

It is a tactical compromise and a maneuver that doesn’t always please me, but one that I’m resigned to accepting owing to the extreme distastefulness of the alternative.

Is it possible to be a Left Leaning Yellow Dog Independent? If so, then my picture’s in the dictionary.

Not that there haven’t been exceptions, especially in local politics, which are savage enough, but generally absent the abhorrent ideological bent of state and national politics. In local races, I will consider voting for a Republican if the candidate is competent in a technocratic sense and eschews the theocratic extremism of today’s G.O.P.

But since G.O.P. extremism in Washington is a lamentable certainty, it’s probably only a matter of time before local Republicans begin staging made-for-non-news-television demonstrations about abortion on the lawn of the City-County Building, or introducing meaningless City Council resolutions protesting NA-FC school textbooks that don’t tout creationism, or erecting tablets of Ten Commandments and inviting roving bands of professional fundamentalists to camp out, chant inanities and defend the indefensible.

As a resident of Indiana, I needn’t fall back on my anti-clerical animus to be disgusted by a state G.O.P. that currently is providing abundant proof of the nonchalant hubris of a Republican-controlled government, this coming by means of its plan to relieve certain counties of cash gained by the presence of riverboat casinos.

In effect, Republican legislators are advising citizens of counties where riverboat casinos operate, and of surrounding areas that benefit from legalized gaming, to heed the words of the exiled Bob Knight and acknowledge that Republican-inspired fiscal rape is inevitable … so just kick back and enjoy the experience.

Which means that a number of Republican legislators who play to the right by opposing riverboat casinos on “moral” grounds, presumably including the luminary from Vincennes who told his colleague from Evansville that his district doesn’t want the riverboat casino, just the money from Evansville’s riverboat casino, are determined to rip to shreds whatever “morality” was deemed applicable when riverboat casinos were legalized in 1993.

What does all this mean?

Ideologically pre-determined to run ruinous deficits, degrade the nation’s currency so as to keep our Wal-Marts afloat, and fight an illegal war against a “terrorist” state, a Republican-dominated federal government systematically starves state governments of cash.

In turn, Republican-dominated state governments in places like Indiana renege on previous agreements by picking the pockets of locales like Harrison County, and by extension, New Albany, and shrouding the whole excreable process with the sanctimonious phrase “it’s a question of fairness.”

Being on the bottom rung, this leave Harrison County with no one below it to rob, except perhaps the powerless Hispanic migrant workers ... why let them send that money back to Mexico?

My simple closing question is this: Does Floyd County’s G.O.P. support or oppose this policy of outright thievery?

Answers to this question should include a discussion of “fairness” and how the concept applies to redistributing wealth within the state (formerly the exclusive domain of leftist liberals), but not to the rights of gay couples to marry.

Extra credit goes to any Republican who can answer the question without choking on hypocrisy, but I’m not holding my breath.

To paraphrase a Republican, Honest Abe Lincoln:

If I could defeat these Republicans without voting for any Democrat I would do it, and if I could defeat them by voting for all the Democrats I would do it; and if I could defeat them by voting for some Democrats and leaving others alone I would also do that.

They just don't make Republicans like Abe any longer.

Espich: Counties will lose casino taxes, but part of revenue may be safe, for now, by Lesley Stedman Weidenbener of the Courier-Journal