Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Democracy: Maybe Still a Good Idea (?)

The election results yesterday represented a victory for both the Democrats (they won things!) and TradeSports.com (apparently its prediction markets called almost every if not every race correctly). Since I favor both prediction markets and not going to war with Iran (which said in April that it has "40,000 trained suicide bombers ready to strike Western targets" (a quote from the linked article, not from anyone Iranian, I don't think)), I am almost kind of happy.

In a way, though, it's actually harder to understand this election that it was to understand 2004's. I'm sure some people who voted in 2004 didn't vote in 2006, blah blah, but the overlap must be huge. So who are these people who thought Bush & co. were super-cool two years ago but have since changed their minds? Were they paying attention at all? I can (almost) understand voting for idiotic and repulsive reactionaries on hardcore, principled grounds. But how can you be like, yeah, this year I don't hate gays that much, kinda not that into terrorism being bad, black ppl maybe kewler than i thought in '04 lol? I can only imagine voting for (social) conservatives out of some bizarre but deep-seated commitment to stupid ideas; I can't really enter sympathetically into the thinking of someone who supports a social-conservative agenda half-heartedly and desultorily. These people are out of their fucking minds, but the only thing crazier than siding with them all of the time is siding with them only some of the time.

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