Requiem for a Candidate

In the aftermath of my controversial departure, I tried to convince dk08 to stay on at U4Prez, the place needs as many positive candidates as possible. I doublechecked his profile, and I request those of you who did and did not know him to read his resignation.

News of this no doubt fills the Hard Right Brownshirts with a certain giddiness. The creator of the PNV has left, there is no one left to champion the cause of peace, they are free to roam and spread their violence and mayhem without someone standing in their way. The lone student at Tienanmen Square has been removed, the tanks can now roll in and squash a revolution before it can take place.

dk08 is as bleedinghearted a liberal as there was on U4Prez, which meant he simply had to be pummelled for having a non-warmongering opinion. He was a soft-spoken individual, rarely making waves, trying, like many, to figure out just how U4Prez works and hoping someone would throw him a bone.

When I saw he had created the PNV (Peace & Nonviolence), I thought it would be great to have at least one antiwar profile. In the want to create a community where all voices throughout the political spectrum could find voice, certainly there could be room in the marketplace of ideas for someone who promoted the beliefs of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon, and any other heroes who dared to say the real choice is not between violence or nonviolence, but between nonviolence and nonexistence. Mankind must evolve past the bitter and petty level of tribal warfare, and after the bloodiest century in human history (and the first seven years of this century don't look much better), it truly is a wonder we haven't destroyed us all as of yet.

dk08 believed that the current path of American foreign policy was dangerous, that no country, let along America, had any moral right to enforce its own beliefs on another, and that every president since World War II was guilty of promoting war for his own sake, for his legacy, for the selfishness of American interestes, for the greed of the military-industrial complex, for the bloodlust of the American partisan, for the hate of the brown peoples of the world. He believed that there was only a better way, but that the current way could only end in total aanihilation.

There was nothing arrogant about this candidate. I am sure he wanted to win president, even if there were candidates more advanced than he was. He was fairly content to not only participate in an occasional debate, but to promote the PNV and make it a haven for those tired of the nonstop warfare this country has waged for sixty years, most of it unnecessary. Considering how over 70% of Americans think the war in Iraq has been fought the wrong way on one level or another, the PNV had a place at U4Prez.

I had previously tried to create a peace profile, but it flopped, for several reasons. As such, I could certainly appreciate someone trying to promote peace as the basis of his platform, and I was honored to present myself to dk08 and become a member of the PNV.

dk08 was always trying to find ways to make his profile more appealing. Though I made it clear to him I had plenty on my own plate with my own campaign, Independent Party leadership, the Antipartisan Pledge, the Women's Society, getting cats out of trees, looking the Hard Right bullies in the eye, and that the PNV would be his baby, I helped him in any way I could. Whether it was coming up with a few songs for his little jukebox (I will always adore him for finding "One Tin Soldier" and putting it there), or ideas for videos, or promoting a worldwide Peace Day coming up on September 21, or looking up great websites like peaceoneday.org, I tried to give him ideas for his profile. He always appreciated my ideas, whether he used them or not. But he was also especially heartborken that I was the only one of the PNV members who was giving him such input. There were about seven of us in the PNV for various reasons, and I surely thank anyone who promotes peace and antiwar causes as a point of conscience. I think he overestimated the sentiments of the U4Prez populace, hoping to make his little profile just a little more noticeable. He loved talking about Bono, and he was considering a tribute to Princess Diana, of whom the tenth anniversary of her death is coming this month.

That's all he wanted, a conversation of peace.

Because of my want for him to succeed, he left the Democrats and became an Independent. If for no other reason, because I validated his want for a simple dialogue over peace, he turned Indy.

Negligence frustrated him, but what really broke his heart was the very obvious resentment some at U4Prez had against such a sentiment. Wanting to eradicate every liberal from U4Prez with the same fervent zeal that the Nazis sought to remove every Jew from Poland, the Hard Right knuckledraggers were a constant source of harassment. You know the ones I'm talking about, I refer to them all the bloody time, because it seems whenever someone's getting gangraped on U4Prez, it's the usual suspects on the Hard Right who had some part in it.

I remember one time coming here, and dk08 was getting being roughed up by Mduminiak and Hawk. Heaven forbid they could have an honest conversation. Either agree or disagree, or live and let live. Oh no, not on THEIR U4Prez could they possibly have someone talking peace. That's tantamount to treason! Who is this dk08, is he a terrorist sympathizer? Why does he hate America so much? Why does he want to cut-and-run so desperately? The Republican talking points were flying at him pretty good.

I tried to jump in and deflect this tagteaming a little bit. These cowards usually made a few snide remarks when I come around, but when I find all they have to offer is hate, I let them talk themselves out. They were hitting dk08 on this point, that according to him, we should have given the terrorists flowers for what happened on September 11th. When he said there was such a thing as a necessary war--and even I said the same thing, that I never had a problem with going after the criminals who rammed planes into the World Trade Center, so long as we were focused in what we were doing and we caught the bastards--Mduminak's and Hawk's eyes lit up. Hypocrisy! So the PNV DOES promote war! And like the anklebiters that they are, they danced and flicked their tongues at us and gave the na-na-na-NAH-NAH chant, hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite!

Without caring for an explanation, these two delinquents patted themselves on the back, having thoroughly twisted logic to their own means, not caring who they hurt, so long as their appetite for liberalbashing was whetted. Convinced their sophistry to be superior over the desire for peace, they danced away like drunken fools.

I don't think dk08 ever recovered from that.

Now, I realize the Hard Right thugs are never interested in real discussion, in the swapping of ideas, in adult discord. They talk fast and hit hard. The more liberals they can slaughter and stack up like cordwood, the happier they are.

They weren't looking for a conversation, they were looking to gangrape a liberal.

So, here is the response we were trying to give. This is on the record, take it as you wish. Hawk and Mike, I realize you rapists have no real desire to hear this, but it is here, and no twisting of logic will change this.

While no one doubts that there are very obvious times when we need to defend ourselves, whether it is personal or national, it is imperative that we always look at each particular episode with sobriety, calmness, and intelligence. That does not give a person the right to go to his neighbor's house and start a fight because he looked at you wrong, neither does a country have the right to wage war, something that always brings out the very worst in human beings, at whim. Many discerning people of conscience know the difference between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many supported the desire to go after AlQaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Such an act, though, does not give the Bush administration carte blanche to start wars of choice. This country has had sixty years of nonstop warfare that got us nowhere, that buried us in debt, that filled our cemetaries, that toppled democracies and installed tyrants who acted in American interest before that of their own people. What is happening in Iraq is the exact same fucking thing we did in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973, all of which had budding democratic societies, demolished because of the shortsighted and bloody desires of the United States government. We talk ourselves into a blather over and over and OVER again to stir up one war after another after another. We haven't won a war in 60 years, and there are too many who see war as a sport and want to just win, no matter the toll in human lives. One million Iraqis are dead because Americans are on an ego trip.

Now, you can debate me on the topic all you like. Actually, I take that back, you had five months to debate me on this, but instead of wondering where I stood, and where dk08 and the PNV stood, you played your little freeper games. You had your chance to have an adult conversation on the subject, but the Hard Right hooligans thought it better to slit a throat than to hear an alternative. What you did was not honest, and you know in your hearts what you did was not honest. Whether you agreed with the PNV or not, you didn't have to bully it, did you?

dk08 wanted to quit after that, but I talked him into sticking it out. I believed U4Prez needed, and still needs, a viable antiwar voice. If nothing else, we could stick our noses up at the Hard Right skinheads and play hippie on the profile, talk about the sixties, play a few songs, and pray for peace, even if all around us are screaming holy hell for the war to get bigger and bigger. It will never stop to impress me how the most peaceful people on the planet, the ones who have truly figured out that we don't have to live in a world of war, are somehow treasonous and dangerous. I've never figured that one out, and I never want to. To basically call the teachings of Buddha, Jesus Christ, Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King treacherous and wrong breaks my heart.

I know it broke dk08's.

He tried, and I think he welcomed when I would come around with something new for him to promote. He liked talking the talk of promoting peace, and he truly wished there was more of it.

So do I.

I contacted him the day after I left, and he said he was leaving as a result. I begged him to stay, because U4Prez needs him, just as I had said all along, U4Prez needs positivity, it needs someone to champion peace, it cannot fall into darkness without at least his candle, however vain the light was, shining on.

I truly wonder how many candidates the Hard Right Brownshirts have tried to convince to stay. Every candidate who leaves is a victory for them, never think otherwise with these goons. Every liberal who exits in frustration is another body to throw on the pile, to hurl upon their hedonistic pyre, and with every corpse they carelessly throw into the blaze, like so many Hutu nationalist thugs tossing the thousands of nameless Tutsi bodyparts in a mass grave, laughing as the blood of their fellow countrymen, the ones they referred to as vermin, soaks their fingers and pants and shoes in Rwanda during that bloody spring of 1994, Mduminiak and Hawk raise their fists in victory, another liberal has been hacked by their machetes, another voice for peace dies, another candidate gone, another victory for the Hard Right.

Were Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ candidates on U4Prez, I have no doubt they would do the same to them. Take a good look at the Hard Right militia, pick your James Earl Ray, pick your Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot.

I have recently referred to what's going on at U4prez as a civil war. The Hard Right is playing it like the Rwandan genocide. There are about 2000 candidates there, and nothing would make them happier than to get that number down to about 50, all of them ultraconservative Republican. Most men dream of beautiful women when they masturbate. Mduminiak, Hawk, and the others on the Hard Right, they dream of dead liberals when they touch themselves.

The thought of them pleasuring themselves at the demise of dk08 makes me shudder. All true, there were few souls at U4Prez as pure as his. If the whole of U4Prez were to die away and forget his contributions, I vow, I shall never let his work slip away. To the Hard Right, he is a nameless victim, an opposition candidate that had to be destroyed, just another vermin liberal, another one bites the dust. What Brownshirt wept when just another Jew was turned to ash? For me, I mourn my friend.

And anyone who's ever had a heart, they wouldn't have the heart to break it.