I would say that apathy has become the defining characteristic of the young people today but I’m not sure that’s the case.   I think people are kind of energized by this election and that’s precisely what upsets me.   I do indeed see Obama as a change of direction for this country, but not necessarily in a direction I’m happy about.

I think we can all pretty much agree at this point that Obama will win, it’s just a question of whether or not McCain is able to steal the election as effectively as Bush did.

I’m probably not going to vote, and if I do, it’s certainly not going to be for Barack Obama or John McCain.   They’re both opportunistic hacks.   Does anyone seriously think that the answer to our economic and social problems is a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or a couple lip-service entitlement programs?   McCain is obviously worse than Obama, but only by a matter of degrees.

The number and scale of problems that we face is unprecedented, but neither candidate seriously attempts to address those issues.   We’re fighting (at least) two colonial wars to subjugate the populations of countries whose leaders we have already been controlling. We’ve been pretty much entirely in control of the world’s economic system for 150 years.   It’s unsurprising that this legacy of violence is beginning to catch up to us in terms of being counterbalanced by Europe, Russia and China, but we’re also kidding ourselves if we think that those groups pose a serious threat to US predominance.

Our problems today don’t stem from an accurate model being supplied with incorrect data, they’re based on incorrect, violent, racist, homophobic, sexist, essentialist paradigms that are largely informed by nationalistic, scientific ethical systems and the self-perpetuating bureaucracy that most every US citizen is party to and victim of.

That we live in a two-party system should be evidence enough of the corruption and ineptitude of our “leaders.” The fact that voters believe a choice between “red” and “blue” is really a choice at all is truly a coup d’etat by the ruling class.

Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that “objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long,” and I would suggest we go a step further and say that objective voters are the reason why our country has, since its creation, been a genocidal war machine with a thirst for blood and a lust for repression.   I say it’s high time we get off of the nonsense that we live in a democracy and start going about the work of local democratic politics.

This will begin by engaging with our scholarship and our community in a responsible, serious and critical manner. It also requires that we constantly interrogate, criticize and deconstruct our values and preconceptions.   It does not, however, have an ending; but this is the nugget of promise nestled in all the bleakness of our time: that the future is open and it can be whatever we make of it.