dennis kucinich for president

right now i am thinking dennis kucinich is the best of the presidential candidates, after seeing some more televised campaign events of the different candidates on c-span. he is the candidate that i agree with the most, on the issues. i know a lot about him, and have for years... nothing bad. the only bad thing is that his pacifist stance might not be popular electorally, even though it is probably still the right thing to do. but he is someone who always does what he thinks is right, and he is almost always correct about what is right, too. and his wife is really hot! he didn’t have a wife during his 2004 campaign. i remember some people actually made an issue of him being single. odd. but mainly i just know he is the most consistent person on iraq, having led the fight against starting the war, back before it happened, and never changing his position once. it is all a matter of public record. and he is just a real visionary guy. the kind who can restore our nation’s standing in the world, who is not afraid to go into hostile media outlets like fox news to spread his message. now it does make sense that a lot of people would never want to appear on fox news in a million years or in any way help that network, but dennis kucinich goes on there fearlessly despite being ridiculed and the odd man out and all of that nonsense. and he is probably one of the most left-wing people in congress, going into the most right-wing media outlet, the one most openly hostile towards him and everything he stands for. he does not change his message for anyone. that is probably why fox news invites him back. to them, anyone who is a pacifist is clearly deranged, so he is an easy target. a pacifist is simply someone who opposes all war, because war is systematic mass murder just like genocide, and, to quote stalin, “one death is a tragedy. a million deaths is a statistic.” someone who supports wars is the type of useful idiot stalin was referring to, the same type of useful idiot that might have supported the soviet union and his regime there. and stalin’s regime was, quite frankly, stalinist. if you are truly pro-life you cannot make any exceptions. not even for “the enemy”, as we so graciously call those human beings who, for whatever reason, choose to fight against our military. they are not any less human than the men and women of our united states armed forces, and their reasons for fighting are probably not too much different, either. on both sides, individuals are used as expendable pawns and forced to become murderers. and what if you say our soldiers are not murderers? well what else is a murderer if not someone who kills another human being, and what else is murder but the killing of another human being? the same holds true for an executioner, but also, any member of a judge or jury or any prosecutor or legislator who helped to make the execution happen. and so, too, are the people who decide to start wars... they are the biggest murderers of all. but there is murder and there is murder, and the crime of murder, legally speaking, is something quite altogether different from murder itself. illegal murder is illegal because it is not carried out by the government or on behalf of the government. legal murder, which is usually called something else, is when the government does the killing. words like “execution”, “war”, etc. are used instead. but this is an ancient tradition, since in almost any human society there is a power which governs all, which writes the rules and carries them out, and orders everyone else around. a tribe had a chief, a feudal manor had a lord, and so on... but those individuals who were top leaders of their tribe or village had underlings, a so-called “ruling class” or a “warrior class” or both, to carry out their bidding. anyway, the rules for how a lot of words are defined are derived from the ruling class, those who are involved with the ruling of a people and in support of it. now, any society with nobody in charge would be chaos and anarchy, and of course, probably more of this thing i call “murder” than a society with rulers. but there are many different ways for rulers to rule over their subjects, even within the democratic spectrum. some people think democratically elected politicians ought to do whatever the public wants, meaning whatever the poll results show. other people think democratically elected politicians ought to do whatever they personally believe is right, even if it harms them politically. still others believe the only correct system is anarchy, fascist dictatorship, benevolent dictatorship, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, oligopoly, kleptocracy, communism, plutocracy, theocracy, constitutional robocracy, or plato’s “republic”. what is plato’s ideal form of government that he calls a “republic”? rule by an unelected group of wise men, who have established themselves as the most knowledgeable and respected philosophers in the land, through a system of meritocracy that finds and seeks such individuals and promotes them to the posts in which they belong automatically. why philosophers and not some other profession? well, in ancient greece, there were probably about 4 different classes of society, the same 4 classes i think exist in a lot of other societies such as modern american society. first the ruling class, who are in charge of everything and have all the money and the power. second the warrior or enforcer class, basically the lower-ranking minions of the ruling class, which include groups such as police or soldiers. third the working class, which in some societies might include slaves, but generally includes any low-wage uneducated poor people who have little or no chance of advancement in society. and the fourth class is the middle class or the philosopher class, those who are comfortable enough and well-educated enough to be able to debate issues, but not actually in charge of anything so all the informed opinions such people have do not matter since they have no say in the matter and are not in charge of anything. people in the middle class are not necessarily philosophers but they are the only ones with that potential. the ruling class are corrupted by their power, their greed, and their disconnect from the rest of society, so they cannot be good philosophers. the warrior or enforcer class is too brainwashed into following orders or carrying out rules or making people do things against their will, and have probably seen horrible things or been through traumatic experiences that would cloud their judgment by allowing emotion to overtake reason. the working class, or in other words the poor, but also including homeless/unemployed/other downtrodden groups, as well as most criminals, is basically a group of people who are constantly struggling for survival, who have a hard time making ends meet, who might be slaves in a society that has slaves, or maybe they are untouchables in india, but in any case, they are royally fucked by society, and have gotten such a raw deal in life that their personal biases will probably prevent them from being true philosophers who can look at things evenhandedly. the working class spend so much time struggling to survive, they simply do not have the time to philosophize, even if they wanted to, and they are not educated well, so how could they? and if they are educated, they are probably insane, like schizophrenic bums on the streets talking to their imaginary friends. the middle class, the philosopher class, refers to the people who can watch tv or play video games or do sports for fun or spend a lot of time doing leisure activities, without having it ruin their chances for survival, but at the same time, they have to watch it, and at least do some work, and earn a steady income or marry someone who does, because they are not wealthy or anything, they are just well-educated, or at least moderately well educated. the middle class makes up the majority of voters in any successful democracy; it also makes up most people on the internet. people in the other 3 classes are blinded by circumstance most of the time. one group is in charge and feels it has to justify itself to the other 3 groups. one group carries out all the orders of the ruling class and has trained itself not to question anything and just to follow orders. one group is downtrodden and oppressed and miserable and completely disillusioned with the whole system. so that leaves behind 1 final group, everyone else, the only ones who have the capability to weigh both sides of an argument equally, since this group is the least directly affected by anything that happens, and has the least interaction with the system. as for whether there are other classes such as the media or the clergy, i think within any media organization or within the religious clergy, there is the same division among the 4 classes as there is outside such organizations. some people actually make the decisions, and they are in charge. other people have to follow orders from that first group, and people in this second group mostly have to be good at following orders. a third group includes those who are at the bottom, who do crummy jobs or are not paid much and are not really motivated that much to stay in the organization. and a fourth group is the average employees, the people who do not get noticed much, but have probably been there a while, and although they are not in charge of anything important, they do well enough in terms of salary not to go anywhere. anyway, my point is, there is no point in having 2 societies on opposite sides of the world have their warrior/enforcer classes fight each other. of course, iraqi society has been destroyed, since the original power, saddam hussein, was removed, and the society has become fragmented with the lawlessness and all the militias, making it difficult to tell who is really in charge. nobody has a monopoly on the use of violent force, and nobody is there to define what is murder and what is execution, what is terrorism and what is a war crime, what is a criminal and what is a freedom fighter, what is a liberater and what is an occupier. or, there are several competing ways of defining all those things, but no consensus, no basis for an actual society to exist. so splitting into sunni, shiite, and kurd, with smaller minorities left out, a new wave of unregulated freedom of oppression has come to pass, with everyone free to use violence to oppress others, and might makes right, officials take bribes, and the police commit crimes and go on killing sprees while completely failing to maintain any semblance of order, instead helping to make the disorder worse. so, in the end, it is clear that there must be a ruling class and those who help keep it in power, or else there will be disorder and mass murder. but, the ruling class can be anyone. all communism does is replace one ruling class with another. some people will always be more wealthy and powerful than others. the only question is, to what degree will this problem occur? it can and should be minimized. and that will also help minimize the need to use the warrior class in battle. we are not a nation of spartans. let us leave iraq, because only then will iraqis be in charge of their own country. then order can finally be restored to that part of the cosmos. some will rise to the top and others will fall to the bottom and there will be those in the middle to enforce it, as well as the silent majority who are the people, not the rulers or enforcers, not homeless or unemployed or criminals. right now unemployment and crime are both out of control in iraq but those problems will fade away as order is restored. as long as we stay there, that is a disorderly state of affairs. it will only increase the entropy of the space-time continuum. so, i am leaning toward dennis kucinich for now, at least in this blog post. i know, for one thing, that it is the religious duty of every quaker who believes in the peace testimony of opposing all wars to help support candidates like dennis kucinich with similar views, to help make such policies come to pass. i still believe in the quaker testimonies, all of them. but i realize i do not always talk like a quaker or have blog posts that are quakerly, and i am still unsure about whether or not i oppose all religion. i have realized i have almost as much disdain for traditional christianity as i do towards islam, and i utterly despise islam, much as i try to be open-minded and try to be considerate of how others may have different beliefs from me and how i ought not to dictate to others how to think. i know dennis kucinich is catholic, just like nancy pelosi, the kennedys, and many others. there is much the catholic church has done in its almost 2,000 year existence which i find utterly reprehensible. but, for some reason, the catholic church still exists, and has changed a lot over time, but in some ways it never changes. it is hard for me not to judge christianity and catholicism by their fruits, by what was done in their name, by what their leaders did or had people do throughout history. all of the inquisitions and crusades, selling indulgences, burning heretics and “witches” at the stake, religious wars in europe, book burnings, and of course the holocaust of nazi germany. even if people think adolf hitler himself was not a faith-filled christian, which is something i believe he probably was, it is still undeniable that most of the loyal nazis who supported him and carried out the holocaust were christians. but the true crimes of christianity that cannot be denied are the crusades and inquisitions and religious wars, which happened hundreds of years ago, at least. and of course there was the suppression of science and the destruction of ancient knowledge, and the deliberate practice of keeping most people illiterate throughout the middle ages and a bit beyond. copernicus and galileo had problems practicing science, oppressed by the church. more recently, christians continue to reject the scientific theory of evolution of charles darwin, which is proven correct. many christians continue to reject science and seek to enslave minds, and their twisted logic leads to immoral outcomes to many important moral questions. nevertheless, for now, i am endorsing dennis kucinich, a catholic. all the other candidates practice christianity too. i just think, if jesus had such great teachings, how come his followers do such fucked up things because of those teachings? they justify almost everything with bible verses, and it is like this one book has enslaved their minds into thinking that it is the one book that contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. so they can see nothing false in the book or nothing true outside the book. back in the age of illiteracy, christianity was quite different but still quite fucked up, in fact much more so. it was simply a corrupt, power-hungry, large institution that did not want any competition, and wanted to keep people from learning to read, or having any thoughts of their own. nowadays the christian brainwashing is much more closely based on biblical teachings, yet its pod people are further than ever from finding the truth. you cannot find the truth by opposing science, since science is the only real way to find truth about the physical world in which we live. unscientific methods of finding the truth are flawed. the only flawless tool for finding truth besides experimental research is cold hard logic, in which a set of premises are used to yield a set of conclusions, through the method of proof. logic is the only other tool besides experimentation. you cannot get any logical results if you start with nothing, so you need to at least have some facts known at the start; these are derived experimentally. that means they are independently verifiable by other people. nowadays religious fundamentalists misuse logic by using it in contexts where it is not relevant, but refusing to use it in contexts where it is. instead of trying to logically come up with answers to questions like whether god exists, they start with a predetermined outcome of what conclusions they want, and then construct a logical argument that leads to that outcome, or at least an argument that seems as logical as possible. but this is an illegitimate method of reasoning, unreliable at finding any truth. a judge does not prejudge the outcome of a case before hearing both sides in court. to me, religion seems like cancer, something that uses up precious limited resources, gets people to spend time and money on it, while in return they are misled and taught false things, and manipulated into getting other people to join and spread the disease further. if you look at how a new religion spreads after it is founded, it is just like how a disease spreads in an epidemic. so now religion is such a pandemic that many people like me have developed immunity, but we must come to terms with the beast. how do we deal with this very popular way of thinking that has been around for so long? is there any reason for us to participate in ceremonies that are rituals promoting viewpoints we disagree with? it is like if you are living under a tyrant, and a few people are rebelling, either vocally or physically. will you support the tyrant’s continued oppression? will you do nothing? will you join the rebels and face almost certainly being crushed? maybe you are even such a bad person that you will support the tyrant in his oppression as much as possible. but what if you could be part of a conspiracy to assassinate the tyrant and put in place a new, hopefully slightly less despotic dictator? would you do that? is it a bad thing to help reform a system that is so fundamentally flawed that you think it needs to be completely discarded? why reform something as bad as christianity? why not simply discard it? is christianity a lost cause or can it be changed so it actually does more help than harm? or maybe it already does more help than harm? i am not sure. but the harm is far more obvious than the help. nothing is perfect in this world. jesus was a nonviolent pacifist, yet most christians are not like that. dennis kucinich is. thus he is closer to perfection than other candidates. but they are all still flawed, even him. even me. i am flawed, but not a candidate, so in my case it is less important, since i am not going to be in charge of anything important. because of my irrelevance as a person, my personal flaws are irrelevant in discussing my arguments. you only call someone’s character into question if they are an important public figure. thus, newt gingrich thought he could question the character of bill clinton, even though newt gingrich had much worse marital infidelity. ultimately, this meant that newt gingrich thought that his own character was unimportant, and he only really valued morality in other people, not himself. people like newt gingrich and william bennett are poster boys for moral hypocrisy. as for john edwards’ talk about poverty while he lives a life of wealth and luxury, i am not yet willing to classify it as hypocrisy; i think he could still justify it, maybe. it depends on whether he is willing to sacrifice his wealth for the greater good, to help the poor. it need not be giving money to charity; if he advocated significantly higher taxes on rich people like him, it would be just as good, and even better if he succeeded in enacting those policies. but dennis kucinich is someone i know i can trust. there are a lot less questions about him that need to be answered than in the cases of the other candidates. i still know too little about the others. like barack obama... does anyone actually know anything about him, other than bizarre internet rumors? can i really trust the wikipedia? or is it a communist front organization like the entire country of venezuela is? in 2004, only 3 of the democratic candidates had any real hard-hitting rhetoric, namely howard dean, al sharpton, and dennis kucinich. the rest of the candidates were lightweights who were too pathetic to have the courage to take on president bush for real. john kerry ended up as the nominee and he gradually got a bit more hard-hitting, but i could have made president bush look a million times worse than john kerry did, all using real facts, just providing the right facts to make bush look bad. now maybe hillary clinton might be able to do that kind of thing, make someone else bad just using the facts. i don’t know about whether positive campaigns are good. john edwards tried a positive campaign in 2004 and came in second in the primaries. can barack obama win if he is just positive and nice? that might not work in a campaign. he may have already made a fatal mistake by being so positive and nice. who knows? or maybe that is what people want, and they will vote for someone positive and nice. i sure don’t like people being too positive with their attitude. i am a pessimist, and would like someone firmly grounded in reality, and how awful, horrible, and rotten reality is. dennis kucinich addresses that with the pessimism about the present, but he also has a nicely appealing optimism about the future. as long as people confine their optimism to the future, i am o.k. with it, but if someone is optimistic about how things are going right now, they are delusional and not someone i can rightly support as a pessimist. kucinich has optimism and pessimism both covered, plus he has a good excuse for being optimistic: his wife. if a man who looks like him can come home every night to sleep with a woman who looks like her, how could he not be an optimist? if my life were going better, i would not be so pessimistic, but all i see is that my life and the rest of the world are both going very badly. i hope i have reason to change my attitude, instead of having to change my attitude for no reason.