9/22/98

From: <deleted for privacy>

>>> I really, really hope this list isn't going to suffer a long argument
>>> between Starr supporters and Starr haters, Clinton supporters and Clinton
>>> haters. There are plenty of other forums for that discussion.

>> [John Galt]
>> In keeping with <deleted's> expressed preference, I will not post again to
>> this list on this subject. I still feel very strongly that it is a men's
>> issue, however...

>That's not my point. I agree that there's a men's issue buried in Clinton's
>trouble. I'm happy to read about it here. I just don't want to read reams
>of Clinton stinks, Starr stinks, [repeat]. Sounds to me like we are in
>accord on that point.

>If you *really* want to defer to my preference, well, I wish you would find
>another way to separate quoted text from your text. I'm just not set up to
>parse your "insert a slash and start typing" syntax. Couldn't you get your
>client to put in a leading '>' character in quoted lines? It's lots easier to read...

------------------------------------------ < reply separator >

Since this is likely the last time I will be posting, at least until the election is over and based on the results perhaps not then, 'tis easy to comply with your request by hand insertion of requested characters; which I must add, under the definition I understand, does NOT indicate a sexual relationship.

I watched the entire testimony last night and some of the "commentary" and I think the person who summed it up best was Erica Jong. "It's like we have a national death wish."

I see now why the social station of men has eroded so terribly. If that videotape represents "High Crimes and Misdemeanors", then coming home late for dinner really is Domestic Violence. Nothing means anything anymore. But the most frightening thing is: no one is screaming about it. And when someone does scream, people either turn it into a personality issue, or just want it to go away.

The point I'm going to make here is a simple one, so allow me the indulgence of beating it completely to death. What I am going to point out is mostly relevant to US citizens, but since we have led the way down the road to insanity, others might want to watch where it leads.

This thing has drug on for 4 years and the only results we have are "would you consider inserting an object in a person's genitals to be sexual relations?" I have no clue how many millions have been spent on it. The $40 million is just the tip of the iceberg; the real question is how much the media has spent covering it.

Phil noted in the other contemporary post on this topic, and Nick has noted, the media's reliance on empty talking heads to explain to the public what the public thinks about all this. For any man who has suffered through an intervention by the courts or family services into their family on the thinnest of grounds; I would think that the parallel would be obvious between a lesbian Psychiatric Social Worker from a dysfunctional family using the power of the court to authoritatively tell him how to raise his kids, and whether he can see them, and all these twits who never had the political savvy to be elected hall-monitor in 4th grade telling Clinton how he needs to run the country. For those of you who like football, I would hope that you see that every aspect of the lives of men in the US has come to be run by an endless army of Monday morning quarterbacks who have never even touched a football.

The US voters can end this whole thing in 6 weeks, settle it definitively and make it go away, by demanding and exercising the most fundamental constitutionally guaranteed right: the vote.

PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

I have heard some guys rumbling about armed overthrow of the gov't, which each day that passes I consider to be more unlikely. The voters have staring them in the face the perfect opportunity for a completely bloodless revolution which has the potential of fundamentally changing the way that the principles of gov't are applied without changing the principles themselves. The representative nature of the Congress was not meant to create career politicians, in fact the framers of the constitution were very wary of that vile animal. It was a realistic manner of dealing with distance, and the communication and travel limitations which distance imposed. The structure now is being used more to deny citizens access to government than it is being used to enable access. Distance is now dead, communication is instantaneous.

What the idiots do not realize is that in having thrown away the rule book, now *anything* goes. If the US voters start making noise and demand their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote in a way it has never been used before, congress can not fall back on precedent to deny voters the right to vote; because nothing they are doing has any precedents.

PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

If US voters, particularly men, start screaming to put a recall/ reconfirmation vote on the ballot in the federal elections coming up in six weeks, congress and Bill Clinton have no legal authority to deny it. If they try, then voters WILL clean out congress, Or, if they don't, then they deserve whatever kind of government happens while they sit around on their passive and smug asses.

PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

The media is in on this hatchet job. In the past 3 days I have sent out more than 300 emails to reporters, editors, news desks - every kind of media contact I can think of - and the result has been: NADA. I seem to be proposing a dangerous idea: instead of listening to these so-called "experts" tell the voters what they think, ASK THE VOTERS.

Let the voters speak: PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

For years I have watched feminism wave its wounded finger around at the world and lament how bad she has it. And I have watched in horror as men have done the same. Now I have gone beyond horror as I watch the "freedoms" which we prate so about drifting out of people's reach when all they have to do is reach out and take hold of them. If they will not, then there is nothing anyone can really do.

Everyone seems to be pointing somewhere else and bitching about how bad they have it and waiting for someone else to make it better. And when someone tries, that person is often viciously attacked over the most trivial criticisms of the WAY they are trying to make it better. The entire culture seems to have sunk in the pit of "Do It For Me." ( must be said with nasal whine )

People shrug, roll their eyes, and say "what can we do?", then when I tell them they start coming up with excuses why it can't work "They won't let it happen", "oh, that's too much work", and the one which pissed me off the most - "we live in a communist country." ( I wanted to strangle the woman who said this. I write to some guys who really do and this stupid bitch doesn't have a clue how good the US still has it.)

People are so mired in the feminist values of victimhood, passivity, and blame that they won't even say 5 simple words PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

If everyone on this list would send a message to every email address and fax machine they have saying PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

and asking them to do the same, this thing could take off like a chain letter. Think of it as multi-level marketing of democratic freedom. But I do not have much optimism that people will because everyone I have talked to about this in the past few days (and I've talked to a LOT) looked at me like I was totally crazy. "What a lunatic! PUT IT ON THE BALLOT! - what a crazy idea. It will never work."

No, it won't unless people want to make it work, and I'm not sure that I believe any longer that they want to.

All we have to do is start demanding that ONE question be added to the ballot in the ALREADY SCHEDULED AND FINANCED upcoming federal election:

"Shall Bill Clinton be retained as president? ___ yes. Congress shall cease talk of impeachment and pardon the president of past crimes, Ken Starr goes back to sniffing someone else's toilet seats, we get a full-time president back, and people can get on with their lives. ____ no. Bill Clinton resigns, effective 1/31/99. Every president gets a "first 100 days", Bill Clinton gets a last 100 days" to do "community service" and try to clean up some of the mess that he's made, and we can get on with our lives.

There will undoubtedly be Judges on the ballot about which the exact same question will be asked. Of course there is no binding law or precedent, but NOTHING in this god damned farce has any precedent. Any of you ever play poker? Their hands are BUSTED if we don't FOLD ours.

If they can put a god damed pornographic short story on the web overnight, and 2800 pages of evidence in bookstores in book form from Friday to Monday, they can sure as hell put ONE question ON THE BALLOT in 6 weeks.

Anyone ever take Civics? Remember a principle called "NO taxation without representation"? That is exactly what the special persecutor implements. He can keep reaching his hand into my pocket as long as he wants and there isn't shit-little or nuthin I can do about it. Anyone remember that some men fought a war over this about 222 years back. Remember when we celebrated the 200th anniversary of that as the BUYcentennial SELLabration? (actual ad in paper)

That's what those guys fought for, so we could SELLabrate them fighting a war for freedom so we could BUY stuff to make us feel better while we waved our fingers around and whined that we don't have any freedom any more.

There is a reason why we don't have any.

If the US voters do not demand that the assholes in congress PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

then get out and vote their choice, then they deserve everything that happens to them.

Setting the precedent of recall elections by popular demand would also give men the opportunity to act directly on things like VAWA II by demanding that the lawmakers PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!

Men have the opportunity to demand more voice in a government which has progressively stripped them of their rights so that gov't can fund the entitlements of others. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether one is pro- or anti- Clinton or Starr. The point is do you want your voice to be heard, your opinion to count for something, and the opportunity to call the bluffs, and call the question? Or do you want to sit helpless by watching this nightmare dominate the national agenda for the next months or years.

PUT IT ON THE BALLOT! let the people vote, heed the will of the majority, then shut up and shovel some fucking gravel.

For more on the issues - www.oocities.org/RainForest/Vines/3951/put-it-on-the-ballot.html

This opportunity will never come again.

Whatever kind of government you have from here on out, it will be because

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

JG