Tuesday, January 08, 2008

"um, democracies don't have queens"

Indeed, Rilla dear, it is a pity that he [Woodrow Wilson] has no one
near him to give him good advice, as it is clear he has not, in all those
Democrats and Republicans. I do not know the difference between them,
for the politics of the Yankees is a puzzle i cannot solve, study it as i may.
-Susan Baker, Rilla of Ingleside
Three things about this quote.
Firstly, Susan in this book is like this the whole way and i find it quite amusing. Nice writing by L. M. Montgomery.
Secondly, the first half of this quote could be applied to many world leaders (not least of which would be the present leader of the country in question, above). I guess not even only leaders, a lot of people.
And thirdly, the second half of the quote was a hoot for me, sums up my thoughts on American politics, uh, exactly. I've said it since I watched west wing earlier this year, I've said it in a speech earlier this year, I've said it during this ridiculously drawn out, year long campaign that's presently occurring in the U.S. American politics is much too complicated. See, our official election campaign runs only for a month or less (I say official because, of course, all year they are bidding for the votes of the public), yet America has this process whereby the public chooses the candidates (state by state mind you - if you're going to insist on this method, at least let them all nominate at the same time!) and than votes again for the winner. Why not just vote once? Well it does give the newspapers something to talk about for more than a year i suppose.
And there, I've had my online rant for the day and it'll have to last me 11 days now, I'm going away!

1 comment:

alyssa said...

Just in case you were wondering about this post's title, yes it has little to do with the post except that i'm quite sure it was said by an American. I wonder what made me think that . . . it's from the wall of shame on a facebook group: the petition to revoke the independence of the U.S.A. It's all quite hilarious.