Word of Nathan

Since I never bothered looking into Ralph Nader, I decided that, what with the upcoming elections and all of the furor over Nader getting on and off of election ballots, I might as well waste a few minutes to find out who he is. Earlier in the elections, I personally was a bigger fan of Dennis Kucinich than any other candidate, but Kucinich dropped out, oh well.

There were two things I wanted to know. 1) Why should anyone even vaguely care about voting for Nader, and 2) is Nader just another corporate whore like everyone else? To answer the first question, a logical place to start was Why Ralph? - his official campaign website

Honestly, I’m still sitting here 10 minutes later trying to figure out why anyone should care about voting for Nader, because his website is so poorly laid out that anyone trying to figure out whether they should vote for him will probably end up voting for Michael Jackson instead. I click on “Why Ralph?” and the ever-so-helpful response is:
# Biography: Peter Miguel Camejo
# Biography: The Independent Citizen for President
# F.A.Q.
# Letters to George W. Bush & John Kerry
# Main Story Archive
# Materials and Writings on the Decision to Run
# Ralph’s Writings
# Testimonials & Letters

This is just fucking stupid. None of this tells me why anyone would care if Ralph won. So he has a biography there, and some Camejo idiot who is going to be his running bitc….er…mate has a bio too. Camejo who? I don’t give a fuck about Camejo; I want to know about Nader. I’m guessing it’s gonna be in the FAQ, but frankly, Nader has already lost my attention. I don’t care whether or not Nader writes letters to his lovers Bush and Kerry, I would rather decapitate myself with a sytrofoam cup than read any stories he wrote, and the last time I heard a testimony was in the Pentecostal church my parents dragged me to as a kid. The last thing that is gonna help me make important political decisions is the rabid, foaming testimony of some Nader fanboy.

But in the interest of fairness, I decide to click on the FAQ, hoping to get some enlightenment about why anybody should vote Nader. Finally, something potentially useful: “To take our democracy back from the corporate interests that dominate both parties. Ralph is running, as all third-party and Independent candidates do, to mobilize citizens behind an issues agenda — a fundamental solution revolution — for the American people that neither major party will discuss or adopt.”

Okay, my bullshit alarm went off, and the pungent fumes are starting to make my eyes water. Let’s translate these sentences into plain English by filling in the blanks. “To take our democracy [otherwise known as a nascent police fascist empire] back from the corporate interests [other than the ones I own stock in - this, by the way, answers point #2] that dominate both parties [because they won’t let me come to their parties, those bastards]. Ralph is running [like Forest Gump], as all third-party and Independent candidates do [see why I said Forest Gump? The evil Republican and Democratic bullies want to knock the poor invalids over, those slutty corporate whores!], to mobilize citizens behind an issues agenda - a fundamental solution revolution [WTF?!] - for the American people [oh no, it isn’t for Nader] that neither major party will discuss or adopt.”

A “fundamental solution revolution” - that just makes my mouth hang open dripping drool over my chest with its rhythmic brilliance! Now I can finally understand why to vote for Nader. If Nader wins, we will live in a land of horrible rhetoric that will cause world peace by killing everyone via the noxious fumes that ooze steaming from his campaign writers’ pens. Just think, everyone dead and nobody left to screw the world up.

So, why is Nader going to lose the election? First of all, he’s so boring that I’d rather vote for the first geriatric patient with a stroke I can find, since that is guaranteed to be more interesting. Secondly, he’s going to lose because nobody can figure out why the hell they should give a fuck about him and his campaign. Third, and finally, he’s going to lose because he’s named after that stupid kid on the Simpsons who is always picking his nose, and nobody in Washington wants to deal with that on government paperwork after four years of having to spray air freshener on everything Bush touched.

On Thursday afternoon, I found myself standing in line at the Royal Ontario Museum in downtown Toronto, waiting to be escorted down into a dusty basement theatre to see Velcrow Ripper’s new documentary, ScaredSacred. Another International Film Festival offering, the film seemed to be a bit off the beaten path, and both my girlfriend and I separately chose it when we were looking through potential movies to see.

I went in prepared to see a gory bloodfest, since the whole premise of the movie is that Ripper visits all sorts of “ground zeros” of the world, looking at the devastation and trying to find the “sacred” in it. What I got was something quite different - not quite depressing, not quite uplifting.

The documentary covers a lot of ground. Ripper starts in Bhopal, moves on to Cambodia, Hiroshima, Pakistan’s Afghan refugee camps, concentration camps in Germany, Israel and the occupied territories, Bosnia, and elsewhere. He seems to be doing this as much as a personal pilgrimage as anything, since he starts his journey feeling like the world is becoming a bleaker place by the day.

Oddly enough, I still find it difficult to package a reaction to this film. “Breathe in suffering, breathe out compassion.” I see Ripper being fired at by Israeli soldiers in a walled-in Palestinian village, then I see him eating a hamburger in some burger joint in NYC.

I think what makes the film so difficult for me to digest is that Ripper doesn’t offer any practical solutions to the violence and destruction he documents. Granted, this is something that humankind has found itself fairly unable to do as a whole, but somehow I found it difficult to empathize one man’s catharsis into some sort of positive personal experience. That isn’t to say that the film wasn’t touching - I don’t think anyone could watch a 14-year-old Afghan girl struggling not to cry as she describes her father being killed in front of her without sensing that pain - but rather that it issues such a highly emotionally-charged call to arms without providing a leader, in many ways.

During the question-and-answer session with Ripper following the screening, he made the comment that he found the world to be a bleak place, and that he was not an optimist. Rather, he was hopeful. Being able to find a doctor treating chemical-sickened patients in Bhopal, an old Sikh musician in Kabul who protected his instruments against the worst of the Taliban, the RAWA women’s movement in Pakistan, the couple in Serejevo creating art to maintain sanity under a hail of bullets - these things, he said, provided him with hope.

Maybe it’s too much sociological training on my part, but I find it difficult to be hopeful. Ripper himself acknolwedged that for every experience of the sacred, there were dozens of people he met who were violent, revengeful, angry - and this, I think is the broader state of humanity. Ripper recognizes something I’ve long said, that the problem is the “we and the them.” It’s that tendency of humans to want to separate themselves into friends and enemies, always a dichotomy.

What’s the solution? In all honesty, I think that nothing short of the threatened death of the planet due to, say, asteroid or supernova, or perhaps a nice alien invasion - nothing but these will even begin to make humanity unite and focus on the common good and stop the destruction, vengeance, and exploitation.

I, for one, welcome our new…