November 01, 2004
John Kerry for President
by Liza Sabater
About a week or two ago I read at BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis the following request :
So a call to bloggers: If you haven't yet said where your vote is going, please do. Don't assume we know; maybe we just discovered you. Out with it.
Since then, I have been trying to articulate why I will be voting for him this coming election; and it all comes down to the reason why I chose John Kerry over Howard Dean in an early nomination poll conducted by Move On last year :
No More Blood For Oil
Back then, when people felt like none of the Democratic hopefuls were strong contenders, I saw in Kerry the possibility of a seasoned Washington insider and Vietnam veteran capable of getting the United States out of the quagmire that was unfolding in Iraq.
It was an unpopular choice at the time, what with everybody in the blogosphere rooting for Howard Dean, but I felt we needed more than youthful optimism. And I remember feeling unhip; but something told me at the time that, even if Dean didn't make it to the ticket, what he started would change politics within the Big Blue party. What I did not expect was that it would change politics. Period.
I cannot understand the minds of people who have no trouble sending others to die for the sole purpose of lining their own pockets. I cannot understand how can anybody be so ruthless, so arrogant and so certain in their actions that they will gamble away the future of a country.
I'd rather have a president that would "flip flop" before sending more people to die than a president whose faith gives him certainty no matter the facts or the outcome.
Still, what is most present to me after four years of Bush, is that Iraq and "the war on terrorism" are the last battle-cry of an old cultural and political economy. Bush and Co have tried in the past four years to turn back time. They do not know how to conduct business out of openness, cooperation and freedom. They only know how to exploit markets, anihilate competitors and lockdown supply.
The Open source movement, the blogging community and the very real consequences of people having to tap into their creativity and free-agency in order to find work and put food on their table is changing the economy that has kept Big Business, Big Media and Big Government unchallenged.
I do not believe the likes of Enron, WorldComm, Microsoft, Sony, NewsCorp, Halliburton and both the Republican and Democratic parties will ever go away. But the challenges they have recently received are making these dinosaurs a thing of the past. They may fight to the end with government, the market and the law, but the Patriot Act, Digital Rights Millennium Act, No Child Left Behind Act, and even the Federal Marriage Act are just delaying the inevitable.
Cultures change, and once that happens, the balance of power and economy changes as well. I feel the irony in all of this is that deregulation, which had been the cornerstone of Reagan and the Republicans for the past twenty-five years, has comeback to hunt them in the guise of a P2P world of technological, cultural and now political production. Deregulation is a blog, and big media, big business and big politics are scared shitless with this brave new unregulated world.
Albeit the fact that people within the Democratic Party looked at Howard Dean and his internet Deaniacs with suspicision, there is no question they have had an incredible impact on these elections. And what is more, I will go out to say that, if it not had been for Howard Dean and Joe Trippi, John Kerry could not have become the next President of the United States because, yes people, he will win thanks to the internet revolution that propelled by the Dean/Trippi alliance.
It is because of this that I am voting Democratic, no question about it. There are more than enough people in the party willing to explore these new technologies and instead of manipulate them and locked them down under proprietary licenses, they are distributing them freely, virally, nomadically.
Cultures change and with them their means of production. The 21st century has seen the birth of a new world disorder that only those who understand it will be able to thrive and prosper. P2P is not about oil or blood. It's about prosperity through cooperation. P2P is the mark of a post-national, post-United Nations world. I vote for Kerry and Edwards because I am confident they will be good for the open-source, open-technology, P2P revolution; putting an end to the culture that has no qualms of investing in an economy based on blood for oil.
No more blood for oil. It's as simple as that.
An uncomplete list of blogospheric endosements:
Lawrence Lessig
John Forbes Kerry for President | Oliver Willis
The Dead Parrot Society: Dead Parrot Endorsements
Presidential Enblogments 2004 :
The Left Coaster: The Case for John Kerry
Pandagon: Why I'm Voting For John Kerry
Posted by Liza Sabater in 2004 Elections, John Edwards, John F. Kerry
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