Editor,
Let me start by stating that whoever is elected in November will be better than President Bush. Then again, that isn't much, as it's virtually impossible to do any worse. While I am glad a lot of young people are participating in this year's sham election, I am saddened that this youthful enthusiasm will soon be crushed when Sen. Hillary Clinton is installed president against the will of many Americans.
When that happens - and trust me it will - roughly half of the entire population of this country would have grown up under a president named either Bush or Clinton. I wouldn't call that a democracy. I would call that a dynasty - or, more succinctly, an oligarchic dynasty masquerading as a republic. Change is good, and I'm all for it. But unless our electoral system is changed, it simply won't happen.
The Supreme Court, in its 2000 decision to install Bush as president, said, "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the president of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College."
So, there you have proof that your vote doesn't count, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, not by a bunch of communists, Muslims or anarchists.
Change is good, and I think Sen. Barack Obama is a pretty good man by all accounts. I even found myself starting to feel a glimmer of hope that positive change might actually come to this country. But I had to remind myself that it's all a big tease. I won't even mention Rep. Ron Paul, the only man truly qualified to be president, because I have as much of a chance of being elected as he does.
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Once again, the agenda has been set for us. For instance, how much change can there really be, considering the choices are once again only between Democrats and Republicans? I know there are independent candidates running somewhere, but their voices will never be heard, no matter what happens.
So, what kind of change are we really talking about here? The system is still the system, and even if Obama won the election, I guarantee he would quickly discover the limits of just how much can be changed. I can see it now: They'd congratulate him and lead him into the briefing room, show him footage of John F. Kennedy's assassination from an angle no one has ever seen, and then turn on the lights and say, "Any questions?"
Frankly, the fix is already in, and the powers that be are a lot smarter than us because they give people like me hope that a guy such as Obama has even a slight chance of victory when we all know they are manipulating the results so it will appear that it's a close race when all along, Clinton has already been chosen.
Yes, I am being cynical, but I've seen enough elections in my time to never get my hopes up. Good luck to the rest of you, and try not to be too disappointed.
Jason Darensburg
UNM student
