Re: [PEN-L] Bush/Kerry Debate

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My wife and I watched the Busn/Kerry Presidential debate, as well as the first one and the Vice Presidential Debates. Towards the end of the debate she stated, "I think I am going to vote this time."   I grinned and stated, "I have decided yet, but Kerry is obviously more articulate, knowledgeable about reality, a former solider and very dangerous."   "Yea, but Bush is stupid and incoherent," was her reply. I'll vote for anybody but Bush."   I grinned and thought about the politics of the two party system as class politics, the winner take all system, the electoral scheme, the weight of Southern reactionaries historically. At the end of the debate we jumped to an interview of "Third Party Candidates" with Ralph Nader and candidates of the Green Party and the Libertarians.   I noticed that she understood everything Nader stated, basically understanding nothing of the Libertarian candidate and most of Cobbs presentation on behalf of the Green Party.   Then again I did not understand the Libertarian Party candidate. I understood his very bourgeois concept of "Lazy unfair" capitalism and rant against government spending and his distinction between a Constitutional Republic and what he called a Democratic society. What I did not understand was if the Libertarian Party understood he was basically calling for unregulated capitalism and political fascism. This is so because the demand to abolish all the agencies of government and abolish the tax system means naked corporatism and police agencies as the means of control.  Clearly the Libertarian Candidate was to the right of Bush.   Cobbs for the Green Party was impressive in his demand for working class economic and political justice and an end to government prostituting itself before the citadels of large corporation . . . but only in relationship to being interviewed after Ralph Nader.   Health care is a major issue for the peoples of America and Bush avoided this like the plague and Cobbs pimped the issue after Nader.   Da wife stated she see something in Bush body language that reveals a pathological condition and serious cognitive damage and inability. She says he is a drug addiction that withdrew from drug use without any methodology for reconstructing the personality and repairing cognitive damage. Then stated this "was obvious" to any lay person that does not suffer from a similar dysfunction.   I'm thinking all kinds of forms of mediation, capital as the subjective _expression_ that build upon and cares scarcity and hoarding to a qualitatively new level and the ruling ideology of the epoch of the bourgeoisie . . . but keep all of this to myself, because people "see what they see."   Plus  . . . Bush does act like a dope fiend, telling the same old joke a thousand times and looking for a new laugh.     In Cheney's debate she noted the use of his hands and posture as the signature of a man lying who knew he was lying as opposed to someone who simply believed in what they were saying.   She noted that Cheney and Bush were required to assert a massive amount of physical and emotional energy to avoid answering any questions directly. She has been in the mental health care field for over twenty-five years and noted that Bush has a distortion in his face and body language revealed in his walk.   "Kerry has obvious superior cognitive skills than Bush and John Edward dominated Cheney not because he is a young man but he spoke to the issues like health care and against the war and schools and education."   I said, "Yea, Kerry superior cognitive skills is what makes that mutherfucker more dangerous than Bush."   Bush basic attack against Kerry was that he and his running partners are attorney's and no one really like lawyers including lawyers. Lawyers are considered people without principles and money chasers, especially when someone else is footing the bill. Not a bad argument in our bourgeois democracy.   "I am so tired of hearing about the 9/11 bullshit shit that I could scream. People think about getting up in the morning, going to work, checking on their kids and going to the grocery store and things like that," says da wife. "But I guess some people are really scared about being blowed up in America, but I do not think that is how the majority of the people think from day to day."     I grinned. "Baby, when you vote against the devil you know and in favor of the devil you don't know, you can't complain too much when you still end up in hell with your as out."   Da wife is a non-Marxist communist. She believes as do I in government programs for everything except luxuries, with a special small exemption for women shoes and a beer allowance. When she is asked where the money is going to come from to pay for theses programs she says, "You did not ask that kind of shit when 400 billion was spent on war and the military. Can't we take 50 billion of the $400 billion your dumb ass want for war and then say nothing and spent that on programs for health and education and a tiny bit of this for shoes?"   I say, "that's kind of radical and communist baby. Some ignorant mutherfucker out there is going to say you got enough shoes and when the terrorist blow us all up we need to be barefooted or have the wrong shoes on."   I thought about the debates and I might not vote. Voting for Bush or Kerry is out of the question and was never a consideration or option for me. The only consistent voting in my life for the past 35 years is union elections, in which I did not run 75% of the time.   America needs American communist politics real bad. The polarization in American society has hit the presidential debates in a big way. Communism in American in 2004 basically comes down to government programs to cover all basic needs and it is the responsibility of the government to care for and provide for the minimum need of society.   We can fight over the meaning of "minimum."   Melvin P.