Nostrabobus gazes into the Future, which has subsequently become the Past

Tonight I have not been Googling myself until I go blind, I have been AltaVisting myself, but just until I need glasses. I was looking for early Ur-manifestations of Vleeptron on the Web.

Sometimes I don't need my Heathkit TM-212 Time Machine to see the Future. Sometimes I do it the old-fashioned way, because I am not just a blog and an NGO. I am a Seer & a Prophet: Nostrabobus.

Here is Nostrabobus on 2 June 2004 predicting the outcome of the presidential election.

Not bad, huh? I called an upset, Gus Hall by 3100 votes.

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--- Original Message ---
From: "Elmer_Elevator"
To: [drugwar@mindvox.com]
Sent: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 01:26:31 -0400
Subject: Re: [drugwar] Libertarian Convention: Kubbys on C-SPAN?

Yeah, I saw the Socialist and Libertarian guys on C-Span too.

Political truth is a real flexible kind of silly putty. I got a deep sense of conviction and sincerity, and logic and reason, as they described a political world view that's essentially unrecognizeable by about 99 percent of the electorate. We live on Earth, for all its faults; they might as well have been describing Planet Vleeptron. If they're perfectly right about everything, they have five months to educate 50 percent of the American electorate to see things their way.

I've had to do some amazing feats of fast cramming for important exams in my time, but I don't see this happening.

I was struck by an absence of a moral and ethical dimension to their political beliefs. Maybe this is just a personal thing with me, but I can't get enthused about voting for logical robots or Mr. Spock. I need (as George Bush I mumbled) "the Vision Thing." I need (for all his faults) someone like Robert Kennedy, who seems to burn with passion for a more just and ethical America.

All that said, I'm going to be a real creep and just ignore the Libertarians and the Socialists, and Ralph Nader, and the Greens, and the reason why is an old and nasty story.

The November 2004 election is going to elect (or constititutionally spew out) one of only two possibilities: Bush or Kerry.

At least I'm enthused about one thing: Kerry is an unusually strong and popular candidate compared to the most recent uninspiring Democratic candidates. If he doesn't stumble disastrously and screw up catastrophically between now and then, right now I honestly don't know who I'd bet $100 on to win.

He's the first Democrat in quite a while to turn a lot of veterans (a heavily registered and active voter bloc) into an enthusiastic, even fanatic cheering section. (Gore had the solid Army Vietnam record, but couldn't light any fires among vets. I even preferred Gore's Vietnam record to Kerry's -- Kerry's vet experience has a lot of whack and loopiness to it, Gore just showed up for the draft and did his full duty, in the classic tradition of citizen-soldiers.)

I think we in the drug and gulag reform community have to grudgingly read and accept the rules of the Election 2004 game, as "unfair" and rigged as they are. And the last big rule is: Only Bush or Kerry can be the next president.

It's like a dating woman: She might really want Richard Gere or Leonardo diCaprio, but barring some kind of miracle, she's gonna have to settle for Larry Bingle and his chain of dry cleaning stores.

If we fall in love with the Libertarian candidate, or with Nader, for all the right political and moral reasons, and take sabbaticals from our jobs to volunteer our hearts out for him -- we're still going to get President Bush or President Kerry. The 2004 World Series is just not going to be won by the Nagasaki Samurai, even though they play really exciting baseball.

I'm voting for Kerry for a really tawdry, sordid reason: He's not Bush.

Kerry may appoint an inept, incompetent, confused Attorney General like Janet Reno. But the damage Janet Reno did to American justice and the body politic is nothing compared to the Nazi programs of Ashcroft. This month Ashcroft has been prosecuting Greenpeace protestors for a 19th-century crime, used only twice, called "sailormongering" -- interfering with a merchant vessel. (The law was written to prevent tavernkeepers and brothels from interfering with sailors on shore leave.) They [Greenpeace] were protesting the illegal importation into the US of a boatload of Brazilian mahogony ripped from the endangered Amazon rain forest. (I think a federal judge in Miami threw the government's case out.)

With Ashcroft, the Justice Department is firmly in the hands of huge, outlaw, corrupt, mega-greedy corporations AND fundamentalist evangelical Christians. Reno, on the other hand, was just bungling her way through calling each case as best as she could. I think she had a vision of fairness and justice; she just couldn't spell it or find much about it in the dictionary. She left a lot less damage behind than Ashcroft.

I'm sorry to say that our choice is like a choice of two pets to keep in a small apartment: A skunk or a rattlesnake. In four or eight years, the skunk may disgust us, but it's not going to bite us in the neck and kill us.

Both candidates are totally silent on the War on Drugs or the new American Gulag; neither candidate is even recognizing it as an issue that needs any reform or attention.

But the next president WILL certainly be appointing one or two new Supreme Court justices, and scores of federal judges. Collectively, for the next thirty years, these are the people who will REALLY matter about the breakthroughs or disasters of the War on Drugs and the galloping American Gulag. What little resistance to institutionalized racism America will provide to racism's victims won't come directly from Kerry (as it did from Kennedy and Johnson), but it will come from the judges and justices he appoints. Voting for Bush is an endorsement for more and worse legally sanctioned racism.

And abortion rights. Hoorah! A real choice! Bush is 100 percent stridently, publicly trying to repeal Roe v. Wade, and end a woman's right to control her body and her reproductive life. Kerry is publicly, strongly, unambiguously pro-Choice. I would almost call his relationship with
Church-State Separation clear, brave and thoughtful. Whether the next thirty years will be a "Handmaid's Tale" nightmare for American women of childbearing age, or a framework of laws and decisions and rights and doctor-patient privacy that they can live with depends entirely on President Bush or President Kerry.

Please feel free to attack me with knives and broken bottles about all this, but I have to accept The Game on its own terms. In my fantasies, I want a smart, brave, honest, visionary president. In my reality, I'm going to get Bush or Kerry. I have to psych myself up to ignore the fringe candidates and do what I can to elect Kerry, even if the best slogan he can come out of his convention with is: "He'll do less damage to America."

By the way, I'm not always this way. Here's my 2000 Nader Vote Receipt. And it made me feel great. But four years of Bush have transformed me into a very frightened voter.

Elmer