Ignorance and Fear
I am very, very disappointed with the election results.
Ignorance and fear have prevailed.
America is staring down twin barrels of false morality and knee-jerk simplemindedness, but what's worse ó what's really, truly horrific ó is that the mass of people with their collective finger on the trigger don't have the foggiest notion that they're looking into the business end of a loaded firearm. Obliviously on they sail, content to believe that God hates fags and thought is dangerous.
Do I really want to live in that America?
Comments
As usual you articulate pretty much exactly what I'm thinking. If only this was a movie review instead of something so deathly serious. I've been spitting all morning but I can't seem to get the taste out of my mouth. Hope dies.
For four years, people in America and abroad could mollify themselves with the illegitimacy of the Bush administration, appointed by the Supreme Court with a minority of the popular vote.
Now the American electorate has formally endorsed unilateralism, militarism, the invasion of Iraq, and imperial hubris in general. Bin Laden must have a grin big enough to cover central Asia today. And Bush has no doubt already pulled out the etch-a-sketch for planning the next war on Iran, as long as we're in the neighborhood. I wonder if they'll give any thought to what happens AFTER the war, this time.
Scary shit, my brother! Which way to Quebec?
That's all I've figured out how to do so far. When I think of something else I'm sure I'll post it.
Ah, of course the HTML filter felt it necessary to edit out the opening [sigh].
Damnit, I'm going home now. Wait I am home.. damnit, I'm gonna stop talking now.
I am disappointed as well, but I really should know better. There are very few times in history when people scrapping for political power have actually realized the true nature of the power they have sought and the responsibilities which went with it. Better than anything else, this fact explains the fall (often precipitous) of every so called superpower, from Alexander the Great down through Great Britain. Winning the game of King of the Hill is the surest ticket to loosing it all.
The problem for the rest of us (and the whole non-human environment as well) is, as the African proverb so succinctly puts it, "When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." Most of us, at least as political power struggles are concerned, feel a powerful affinity with the grass. Just imagine how the real grass (water, air, fish, insects, etc.) must feel.
What is, perhaps, most disappointing is that this king of the hill view of power seems to infect all of us. How else could a whole nation of supposedly literate people be entirely duped - by both political parties - into believing that this election thing was like WWF smackdown or a pro football game. Power does corrupt. Absolute power does corrupt absolutely. Until we really know that and learn to develop an entirely non-posessive attitude towards power, we are companions of the alcoholic who still doesn't believe that the bottle, to him or her, is poison.
Dave
Earlier this year, you appointed me the official Republican challenger of jefftidball.com, to alert you when this page became too cringingly political.
With this post, it becomes so. The Senator whose candidacy you carefully researched, and then supported with vigor when things looked darkest (and when I mocked you for it cruelly), came back and ran one hell of a race, and gave me not a few gray hairs after Bush kicked away two of three debates.
When Senator Kerry lost that race, he admitted it graciously. He certainly didn't accuse 51% of the American people, and an unknown percentage of jefftidball.com readers, of being ignorant, knee-jerk, simpleminded, fag-bashing, unthinking Russian roulette players.
This may be because he knows that's not the way for his party to win the next election, or it may be because he doesn't actually think that's the case, or most likely, both.
Regardless of his opinion, he certainly abjured such splenetics because he's pretty much a gentleman, differ with me as he does on virtually every area of public policy. I know you're a gentleman, and that come December, you won't look back on this post as your finest paragraph.
You're a good enough writer to express your agony, and even your vitriol, without such lazy invective.
Try it again.
No, Mr. Hite, I think Jeff got it quite right the first time.
I'm not sure what mandate *exactly* can be inferred from this election.
According to exit polls, most of the people who made the Bush victory possible didn't care most about the world, terrorism, the economy, or the enviroment.
What they cared about was "morals", which is a code word for anti-gay-marriage and anti-abortion at any cost.
Karl Rove made sure that there was a referendum on gay marriage on as many state ballots as possible so that their ultra-religious, anti-change base members got out and voted. He then put out a coordinated campaign of scare and shock advertisements to further motivate that base. They came to polls in droves. It was enough that they outstripped dozens of organizations geting out the vote for Kerry's base. It was even enough to squeak out a few seemingly unlikely Senate victories. Brilliant. If we learned nothing else, we learned Rove is still the greatest evil genius of our age.
But we learned something else in this election cycle as well. We learned that we can motivate the poor and overlooked to make a real effort to change their country, and we almost did it. Think of it, Bush is the freakin' *incumbent* and he almost lost even with 4% more people turning out to vote for him.
The people who I know that voted for Bush followed the same general pattern: Although they'd never admit it, they hate and fear gays and think that fetuses are more important than their irresponsible mothers, but they also have severe and sincere reservations about Bush policies in other areas. They held their nose and voted for him because they view their way of life as under assault, not because they agree with the whole American Empire thing or leaving the needy behind.
I honestly feel more mystification when I try to imagine why young people still aren't voting than I do about Bush supporters.
Bush will have a very different second term; his party will not be in lock-step with him and a lot of people will come to regret their vote for him. The 2006 elections will be very interesting.
Still, I wept last night.
i'd say ignorance only accounted for the winning margin. values may have been the ace in the sleeve, but bush only won because the normally moderate majority was scared shitless. they should have known better, and they could have had kerry presented his case better. this country isn't split down the middle by values, but by fear.
I want to comment on the resilience of the American system.
The American system of government has brought us through the stresses of a civil war, a great depression, major electoral crises (2000 pales in comparison to 1800, 1824, or 1876), reconstruction, civil rights, to name a few difficult issues. We have done so with the basic structure of our system of governance still intact.
Along the way, the country has steadily expanded individual rights and individual opportunity, both political and economic. There have been steps backward and steps forward. But, over the long term, it is astonishing what our system of government has allowed our people to do.
Even if one adopts the worst possible interpretation of the current election results, it seems almost certain that our system of government will adapt and survive. With it, our people will benefit.
By definition, not all presidents will be among our better presidents. At any given point in time, there is a 50-50 chance the current president is below average. At any given time, there is a decent chance that the current president is a poor president.
Historically, there are long stretches where the presidents were relatively bad. The current times may be similar to 1876-1900, with six close presidential elections and a succession of relatively undistinguished presidents. Nonetheless, the country survived and, ultimately, its people thrived.
I believe that our country and our systems will fare better than some may believe today. Perhaps I am an optimist, but I believe that our countryís history supports my point.
A battle has been lost.
There is still a war to be fought, however.
George W. Bush ran on a record and a platform of unilateral preemptive military action, religious intolerance, reactionary fascism, secrecy, and intolerance for sexual minorities and a woman's right to chose.
There are a lot of people here in the US who agree with some or all of those things. It is our job as liberals to not just disagree, but to educate as to why these are perhaps not the best ways to run a government.
The thing about a Democracy is it doesn't run itself. It needs it's participants to actually participate, and to actually agree with the fundamental principles that drive it. It would appear that the majority of US voters don't believe in the seperation of church and state. This is tragic and will have consequences, but there was a time when the majority thought drinking alcohol was evil, and that got voted in, too.
Education, time, communication, openness, and outreach are our friends, I think.
Get moving -- there's only two years till midterm elections...
Jeff, you don't live in "that America." You're in SoCal.
Seriously, I am bitterly disappointed in the results of the presidential race. However, my home county elected everyone else I backed and voted overwhelmingly for Kerry, so all's not bad in the world. There are more elections to come, and without a clear successor to W, there's hope for 2008.
As usual, I find Steve's comments to be well thought and well put. While I am frustrated by the election results, I find the views that we are going to hell in a handbasket and that this country will never recover, to be myopic at best. Such views lack historical perspective and vision for the future.
I know that many smart people, such as Ken Hite, chose to vote for Bush for principled reasons and devotion to fiscally conservative economic principles, not because they are uneducated hicks that are scared of gay people. I also think many Bush voters held their noses while voting for him because they saw him as the least worst alternative given those principles, not because they back every part of the Republican or Bush platform. What angers me, is that a conservative Christian agenda that will probably ñ at least temporarily ñ dilute our civil liberties gets supported along with those principles.
Rather than call everyone who voted for Bush uneducated hicks ñ a group that includes many people I respect ñ I would rather consider some important questions. Do I think that government, regardless of political party in power, is failing us? If so, what can individuals do? Why is such a large section of the country more motivated by so-called moral issues such as abortion than by health care, deficit spending, or the environment? Why isnít poverty in the midst of such wealth seen as an equally pressing moral issue? Will participation in existing volunteer organizations or the creation of new organizations that foster education and concern for the rights others make a difference? Iím going to do something besides writing a check and hoping someone else does this important work.
I have to say that I agree with Mr. Hite. I voted for Bush. I am not a Repulican nor a Democrat. I look at the issues and how each person presented them. I am not anti-gay, as I have a gay relative. I am pro-choice. I have to say that I am also for the war...in fact we should have invaded years before we did. We shouldn't have waited 12 years before we did something.
Reason why I didn't vote for Kerry is that I feel I couldn't trust him. Yes, Bush may have used some deceit in his reasoning for war. But just because we did not find any WMD, we all know they were there, because we had given them to him. But enough about that.
I also do not believe in changing administrations in the middle of a war. As a veteran I have seen how just the change in command of military units have screwed things up. Look at Vietnam, how did the change in administrations totally screw up that war.
Yes, we will all have to wait and see what happens over the next 4 years. I hope Bush does a better job than he has done in the last 4. But I truly believe Kerry was not the best choice. Along with Mr. Hite, I believe I am also in the minority as very few of the people I hang out with are republicans.
Now that the election is over and Kerry did the honorable thing I hope that all democrats follow his lead and try to repair the split in America. Everyone needs to support our President now and hope for the best.
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Ah, but Stacey shouldn't Bush's economic policies be completely anathema to anyone who considers himself a fiscal conservative? Your "principled reasons" argument I'll agree with, while at the same time disagreeing with almost every one of those "principled reasons."
I generally agree with the moderating tone of the comments in this discussion (i.e., many virtuous people with good intentions made informed choices to vote for Bush for a variety of reasons), even though viscerally I was right there with Jeff's original post.
But I'm not sure what to make of "Everyone needs to support our President now" as a proposition. What does that mean? Assuming it's not just a ritual expression of post-election social healing.
Does it mean we should allow him to claim a mandate and push through legislation and policy decisions that the electorate on the whole may oppose (but had no good way to express, in the context of a binary electoral choice -- remember, that huge "moral values is issue #1" crowd was only a plurality of something like 22% of the voters)? Most of the Bush voters I know are pro-choice, pro-civil liberties, and pro-fiscal responsibility -- all positions with which I enthusiastically agree. Do they and I now need to abandon those values, or step aside while they are undermined, if the President says so, because we "need to support him"?
I can't say I "support the President" (in part because I'm not willing to say I do when I don't really know what it means) and I hope I'm not "unpatriotic" for that. I support America, in that I believe in the promise of this nation and the fundamental greatness of its institutions, and I am willing to actively work for to realise that promise and strengthen those institutions. I support those policies that the President may promulgate which I feel reflect my values and the kind of America I want now and in the future. And I oppose the policies that that don't. But to be honest, I do not respect him (certainly no more than many of my Republican friends respected Clinton, and perhaps a lot less), and I'm not going to change that just because of the results of this election.
In fact, to do so would be to embrace a cult of personality over my love of the Republic itself. And I'm not gonna do that.
Sometimes the best support you can give to someone is to point out just exactly how dumb they are being, and how much you disagree with what they are doing.
There is a difference between ranting or venting and constructive criticism and coalition building.
The last four years haven't given me a lot of hope that the religious right is at all interested in actually compromising with me or anything I think is a good idea -- and they don't really have to, because they have influence and power in all branches of the federal government -- I have no leverage. No, they are free to ignore me and, frankly, they want me (and a lot of my friends) to burn in hell. Of course, that's just god's will and obvious, from their point of view.
Makes for a rather tricky negotiating position, however.
Kind of a problem for some of us.
Hold on. Is Stacey accurate up there? Did Ken Hite truly vote for Bush out of "devotion to fiscally conservative economic principles?" If that's the case, dude ... you need to cut back on whatever it is you're smoking.
And Rothecker: "just because we did not find any WMD, we all know they were there, because we had given them to him." What, exactly are you smoking? Mind you, I agree that taking Saddam out of power was a good thing. It was just done for all the wrong reasons. We didn't find WMDs because they were not there! The 1991 war, the sanctions that followed and the U.N. inspections shut down Saddam's weapon programs. You show me one, just one, piece of evidence that Saddam had WMDs on the eve of the invasion. As for "Everyone needs to support our President now and hope for the best.": Hell no! I will support every good thing my elected representatives do. I will resist and protest every idiotic thing they do. And I'll work like hell to get people into office that have the best interests of the whole country, no just some elite sub-set of it, in mind.
Sorry I came to this late. I don't want to make a political statement.
Rather let me say that Jeff, I think you have a popular and unfortunate bias. We cannot say "the smart people voted for Kerry, the dumb people voted for Bush." Probably the majority of both parties are governed by Sturgeon's Law.
Your attitude, I respectfully submit, is far worse than the "us vs them" mentality. In a fair sense, the election IS an "us vs them" situation. Two groups who disagree, and only one gets to decide the direction the country will take in the next 4 years.
It's only once you start thinking that we're the smart ones and they're the dumb ones that the "Us vs Them" mentality becomes a sickness.
There are plenty of smart, wise, moral, good Evangelicals. There are plenty of smart people who voted for Bush. Dumb people who voted for Kerry. Smart people who didn't vote.
And no matter where you go, you gotta live with the dumb people. Might as well live with the ones we got here, and figure out how to influence the process better, or shrug, go back to work, be a good person, and aquit yourself well in the next election.