The election's here! Who are you gonna vote for? Me, I'm a Romney guy. He has a proven ability to work well with the other side, balanced the budget as governor in a Democratic state, turned around a problem-ridden Olympics, and made a fortune turning around ailing businesses. It's an almost perfect resume for the job he's after.
But you're an Obama person, right? If you're an artist you probably are, since artists are usually among the first to throw a brick through the establishment window. Yes, we're a volatile lot, but I think the Deity still likes us.
Anyway, I'll be away from the computer for most of today and tomorrow. I'll be back Thursday morning. See you then!
13 comments:
Very brave of you to admit you're voting for Romney here among the artistic folk. I'm sure it will become a controversy of paragraph-sized comment proportions.
ardy - Nope. Just a simple observation that Romney supporters with artistic inclinations always cite managerial competence and expect that argument to stand on its own, which it doesn't. Nothing about either candidate stands on its own, so an argument that's one paragraph long only deserves a rebuttal that's one paragraph long. Anyone who would go on for paragraphs about this is either a spambot or a brevity-challenged debater. Besides, it doesn't matter - the election will be over in less than twelve hours and Obama will probably win. So basically no one has to care about this.
I'm another of that rare breed known as conservative artists. write down one Romney vote for me too!
I'm hoping it becomes respectable to earn a buck again instead of pressure to take one. Capitalism isn't evil itself but, like organized religion, the bad apples within the ranks certainly can do much harm to popular opinion.
Did you vote for George W Bush, Uncle Eddie?
Brian: Haw! true, so true!
Jeff: Bush!? Yikes, I'm dying to answer, but this isn't a political site.
I feel highly duped. All this time, I knew Romney was going to fail because he had been way too centrist in my opinion and very vague on so many issues, though his running mate Paul Ryan did have some good ideas that might have delayed the upcoming fiscal cliff. For most of the time, I was going to vote for Gary Johnson, the third party candidate, but I changed my mind a couple of days before and voted Romney because Georgia has been a historically red state and I'm against illegal immigration. The fact that Romney actually supported the TARP bailouts was a big turnoff for me. Big mistake on my apart. Congratulations to Obama for winning a second term nonetheless.
The main reason Romney lost was because he came across as a really unlikable, "greedy" establishment type businessman and "evil" capitalist, even though he shared a lot in common with Obama on so many issues. A lot of people thought he was going to be another George Bush, which was also where a lot of the uncertainty came from. He was basically a Rockefeller Republican and a Democrat lite who wasn't aggressive enough in trying to argue his case from the time he was nominated for as the GOP candidate, even though Herman Cain and Ron Paul would have made for far better choices since the latter had been really gaining momentum and popularity. He also didn't make too any appearances on conservative talk radio to try to appeal to his base or try to make himself relevant and hip to the younger voters who were flocking to Obama and his Jay Z concert.
Plus, I think the current Republican Party itself is highly incompetent, inefficient, outdated and has been compromised by the types of religious nuts that Barry Goldwater warned about many decades ago. They need to get away from that kind of lunacy and adopt a more secular position so that in 2016, they might try getting a no nonsense type of man like Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey that can tell it like it is and gain massive appeal among younger voters simultaneously. Note, I consider myself an independent voter not bound by any party lines and I would happily support a Democrat if they were willing to cooperate with other people to balance the budget, etc. and supported the principles and objectives of pure capitalism (NOT cronyism mixed with socialist and capitalist ideas like we have now) and didn't see it as a system where everyone's a greedy, heartless person trying to screw everyone else over.
Vincent Waller's going to be really upset that you wrote this. He did some really good drawings of how the Republicans have thrown everyone else under the bus, many pro-Obama drawings and a couple of funny Romney drawings ridiculing him. Could you do a detailed post on why a lot of artists tend to be against the establishment and be a lot more liberal in their thinking, especially the majority of the people working in Hollywood? Maybe the amount of mathematics one knows also factors into this.
Reading the (accurate) observations in the previous Levittown post on the Left's contradictory attitudes to economic progress and modernity, a major contradiction on the Right came to mind, one too rarely explored: the mismatch between on the one hand believing in free trade, free movement of capital and goods, and the greatest possible deregulation of commerce as the best recipe for economic success, and on the other hand restricting economic migration.
If free competition, free movement of goods and capital is the most efficient recipe for success, then how can stopping someone working where they want be efficient? Isn't freedom of choice also better than state regulation in that market?
Roberto: I'll take a stab at replying to your last point, though I don't know enough to give a decent answer.
The Hollywood left in the thirties was influenced by the Depression, which made it seem like capitalism had failed, and by Russian and German propaganda which made it seem like the totalitarians were doing just great.
Hollywood writers, artists and actors who were sympathetic to communism were treated like royalty by the local party and weren't subjected to the severe discipline that ordinary members were.
Also 30s Hollywood was influenced by the same Romantic Era intellectual trends that were influencing everybody else. Socialism was in the air.
I don't see anything wrong with socialism as long as its voluntary, like it mostly was before Marx. Before Marx a lot of socialists (at least in America) believed in transforming society by the peaceful example of successfull socialist farms and communes.
After Marx socialists believed in apocalyptic revolution and the violent supression of dissidents. Ordinary people who simply had a different opinion were regarded as dangerous reactionaries.
Marx was not a nice guy in his personal life, and his personal meaness carried over into his philosophy.
But the fault isn't entirely Marx's. You can see craziness and the zeal to persecute in the philosophers who preceded the French Revolution. I don't mean Rousseau and Voltaire, but crazies like Morelly, Babeuf, and Mably. There's a great book about them called "The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy."
Those guys were probably influenced by Calvin's Geneva. The Calvinists ran Geneva by an extremely strict legal code which was credited at the time with producing virtuous citizens.
Then there were influential apostles of harshness like Machievelli and Neitzche (in the pre-WWII translations).
I love The West but it has a dark side which makes rebellion appear romantic. It makes crazies like Sid Vicious appear to be heroes.
DeTocqueville (spelled right?) realized that and thought a moderate Christianity could tame this dark side and still allow for freedom. He may have been right, but Christianity is falling on hard times and there's no widely held ethical/cultural belief to replace it.
Fascinating, isn't it?
Kellie: An interesting thought! As a libertarian I'm sympathetic, but as a purely practical matter it seems that in hard times any government will naturally favor its own citizens.
Yes, if a politician needs scapegoats, blaming people without a vote seems a smart move even if it's logically inconsistent.
That was a wonderfully tight and concise response, Eddie. I'd pay to hear you lecture!
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