Getting Presidential
It appears that my goal of a new front page picture every Monday turned out well. This week ends my accidental presidential series. I hadn’t intended to mock the candidates for three weeks in a row but each one seemed to need it so badly.
McCain was actually the hardest to get an idea for. The guy is just so goddamn crazy a satirist must wonder where to begin. But eventually his “bomb Iran” joke stuck out at me and I decided to point out his tastelessness with an equally tasteless cartoon. This is in no way going too far – I won’t be the one commanding bombers above children. “A leader we can believe in” was just too incredibly tacky to not make fun of, so that goes in too.
And for change we can believe in, we turn to Obama. I was going to make fun of Hillary first deriding and then praising him, but she was too hideous to look at. When I first saw the sticker displaying Obama’s face and the words “you’re going to be seriously disappointed” I thought it was amazing. However, most of his supporters will likely be so glad to have their guy in power that nothing he does will disappoint them too much. He could, after all, use his position in congress to end the war quickly if he wanted to, but he’d rather have the power. If he is elected he’ll likely continue the modern Democratic tradition of velvet-gloved mass murder.
Speaking of power over principles, the Libertarian Party’s choice of Barr and Root is what began this whole presidential theme. Some talk about how great it is for the LP to nominate a “serious” candidate, but how anyone can take these guys seriously is beyond me. Wayne Root speaks like an irritating motivational speaker with the substance of a politician. Bob Barr didn’t even announce his candidacy until a few weeks before the LP convention, and it is obvious he wants to save his political career by being a big fish in the small LP pond. You don’t need to have read any Rothbard to see that they both do a bad job of pretending to be libertarians. The two ganged up and used all the dirty tricks they could and still barely beat a real libertarian for the nomination. Some still think the LP is worth fighting over, but to me this episode confirms my suspicion that electoral avenues are a waste of time. There will always be scum to rise to the top of the electoral system, enough will fall for their bullshit, and the benefits of working within the party are highly unlikely to catch up to the costs any time soon.
So what is a responsible resident of America to do? Vote against the system. Instead of supporting evil, work actively for liberty, the only alternative there is. A new public face of libertarianism needs to contrast the no-longer-useful strategy called the Libertarian Party.
And by the way, all the pics will be available in the archives section of my site. Spread em like they were peanut butter…kind of.
