STUPID HISTORY (LESSON)

Candida Pagan's "No-Confidence Party" was at Pifas but it closed last week.

It's still hard for me to think about the year 2000 as being a long time ago. I met someone yesterday who was born in that year.

I was twenty and it was the first time I ever registered to vote. I registered to vote because of Ralph Nader, I wanted to vote for him. I totally thought voting for Al Gore or George W. Bush would be voting for the lesser of two evils. While I don't still feel as strongly that way, I'm still proud of the fact that I voted for Nader that year. I wouldn't have voted for Gore the way I felt about him then. I wouldn't have even registered.



9/11 happened in 2001, after all that recount bullshit. Does anyone else feel like this happened yesterday?

Electoral College. I remember thinking this thing was a bad idea in Fifth Grade Social Studies.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

Kerry vs. Bush. Bush wins.

Now. This is the most optimistic I've been about a presidential election since 2000.

Still underlying this optimism is this:



Sorry, the only clip I could find is actually a campaign commercial for this guy, but I also found this awesome video of Dennis Kucinich:



So, when I went to The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study the de facto headquarters of Candida Pagan's brainchild political party, the No-Confidence Party, it took me back to 2000.

The basic party platform is this; write in an actual vote of no confidence (to congress?), informing them that you have no confidence in the american voting system. I assume this is sort of like the British version of a motion of no confidence, "a censure motion, a no-confidence motion, or simply a confidence motion, [. . . ] a parliamentary motion traditionally put before a parliament by the opposition in the hope of defeating or embarrassing a government."

In short, this "artwork (?)" made me think about how much my personal notion of The United States has changed over the past eight years and it made me dizzy.

Just to make this clear; though I enjoyed Ms. Pagan's project this blogger in no way condones voting any way but Democrat in the up-coming election.


Also at Pifas was this itty-bitty gallery by Sophia Wang.