2024-07-02 NO DIFFERENCE, RIGHT, RALPH?????
Voting rights eviscerated. Corporate donations unlimited. Affirmative action rejected. Abortion rights removed. Regulations obliterated. Trump protected. And the grim irony of it is that all of these extreme right-wing decisions and many more like them would — could — never have been made but for the sanctimonious arrogance of extreme left-winger and smug egomaniac Ralph Nader.
For those who don’t viscerally understand why this wretched century is Nader's true legacy — not safer cars, not cleaner air, this wretched century — here’s a little history.
Nader was the Green Party candidate for president in 2000, running against George W. Bush and Al Gore. Gore couldn’t pass Nader’s left-wing purity test, so Nader — instead of telling his voters in swing states to vote for Gore — spitefully campaigned in Florida the last weekend before the election, moronically professing that there was “no difference” between Bush and Gore.
Actually, of course, there was quite a bit of difference. By diverting enough votes away from Gore to make the Florida election close enough that the Supreme Court could bigfoot on in and give it to Bush, Nader ignited the SCOTUS coup that began on December 12, 2000, and was completed yesterday.
The Republican Court of 2000 decided that a Republican president would be naming the newbies, and indeed Bush put Alito and Roberts on the Court in 2005 (where Thomas was already waiting, thanks to the other Bush and, it must be said, the abysmal chairing of the Anita Hill hearings by Joe Biden). Then Mitch McConnell — the Snidely Whiplash of the Senate (also the Yertle the Turtle of the Senate) — stole a seat for them in 2016 (Gorsuch), and another in 2020 (Barrett), and now we have a 6-3 majority doing its best to make sure a Republican president can replace Alito and Thomas with fresh meat half their age, and hoping that health issues also give them Sotomayor’s seat. 7-2!
“No difference” between Bush and Gore, except that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened because Gore wouldn’t have dismissed a CIA warning like “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US,” and the Iraq War wouldn’t have happened because Gore didn’t have daddy issues that made him need to finish the job his father hadn’t finished, and every egregious decision since 2005 wouldn’t have come down because the moral pygmies handing them down wouldn’t have been anywhere near SCOTUS. And in a world like that, we certainly would never have had a President Trump.
A lot of people played their parts in Gore’s loss, Gore not the least of them, and a lot of people played their parts in Hillary’s loss, Hillary not the least of them, but there is only one person whose removal from the equation changes everything for the better. Ralph Fucking Nader.
Never forget.
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