Don't get me started on the "why I don't vote" rant. It's something that folks will just never seem to understand: when it comes to governments all across the world, all throughout history, the people almost NEVER truly have a say in whom they get to choose to represent and/or lead them. It's always about the Golden Rule - "He who has the gold makes the rules" - and about elitist exclusivity.
I can think of a slew of common, everyday folks that'd make better Presidents than the vast majority of those that get elected to office. Will any such folks ever get elected to public office? Nope. They don't know the "right" folks, they don't have rich families or self-made wealth, they don't have the connections to make it happen. They didn't go to Yale or Berkley or Georgetown or whatever Ivy League yuppie snob school, they didn't let a bunch of lobbyists take them under their wing and help them get those good-ol'-boy connections to work their way up the political ladder in exchange for looking out for their special interests and doing favors for 'em if/when they do get into office.
Doesn't matter what country we're talking about, politics is politics. Some countries use crude violence and military brute force to do their work, others ride on a wave of popular public sentiments, and others still will simply throw a lot of money around at the right times and places to make things happen for their own benefit. Democracy, Communist regime, monarchy, totalitarian dictatorship, whatever ... always a case of a handful elitist chumps with their own agenda and their own power asserting their will upon the populace of many. It's never really going to change - not in our lifetime, I don't expect - because people will usually just tend to turn a blind eye to it, or fail to see the historical pattern of it, altogether.
Really, it's not at all those that don't vote that don't have a right to complain, but rather those that DID vote that DON'T have that luxury by right; as long as you're casting a vote for one special-interest lobbists' puppet or another, Democrat or Republican, you're contributing to the mess. There will always be a mindless butthole placed in public office one way or another, whether you, personally, voted for them or not. IMHO, if you voted for Bush, you contributed to the mess we all have to live with today; if you voted for Kerry, you contributed, anyway, because he's just as much a loser as anyone else that was on the ballot back in '04, and your vote could've been better spent on someone else that wasn't solely backed by dollars and the good-ol'-boy system.
And that's just the problem: THERE AREN'T EVER ANY CANDIDATES ON THE BALLOT WORTH GIVING A VOTE. The everyday folks that truly would make better public officials never run for office (or at least not successfully) because they either don't have the connections/funding, or they're smart enough to realize what a sucky job it would be, anyway. I mean, would YOU wanna put yourself under the public microscope and have every little thing to do or say analyzed, scrutinized, and judged by the media and, thus, the masses? Where every time you come up with a genuinely good idea and try to push it through legislature, it gets warped and twisted around and screwed up by a thousand different other politicians and special interest groups to a point where it has no effect, or maybe even an opposite effect from that for which you sought to aim? Nah, I'll pass on that job ... too much like working middle-management in retail for me.
I don't have anything against voting, per se; I just haven't seen anyone even halfway worth voting for in the past ten years or so. If you don't like the crap you see taking place in the White House or Senate or House today, then hey ... don't look at me. I didn't vote for any of the jerks. But when they finally get someone on the ticket that actually could do some good on their own (and actually stands a chance of winning), THEN you'll see me among the first in line at the voting booths.
And, FWIW, even though I'm pretty much anti-Republican for the most part if John Kerry's on the ticket in 2008 as the Democratic candidate, he's sooooo not getting my vote; I don't vote for anyone just because they run under a certain party flag.
(How do I keep getting sucked into these off-topic non-Mustang debates, anyway?)
Two days ago, Kerry stirred controversy when he told a group of California students that individuals who don't study hard and do their homework would likely "get stuck in Iraq." Aides said the senator had mistakenly dropped one word from his prepared remarks, which was originally written to say "you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." In that context, they said, it was clear Kerry was referring to Bush, not to the troops.
Yeah, I'm sure he just happened to leave a few words out- Some highschool teachers used to say stuff to that effect, "Well, there's always the military"