Saturday, November 06, 2004
Just a few more thoughts before I give over...
A surprisingly forthright editorial from The Mirror on wednesday. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation... You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out. These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one. As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity... The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".
Certainly part of the anger is down to self-delusion, British political life is also full of emotion and hyperbole-driven ignorance of the facts, so we like to pretend that we vote on intellectual grounds whereas Thatcher called an election to take account of a popularity bounce when the U.K. won in the Falklands. So there was a mistaken belief that this election was about the issues and the ideas of candidates on both sides when it wasn't. Almost no-one who saw the debates thought that Bush had done well, but we made the mistake of asuming that mattered. The majority of the people who voted for Bush either didn't watch it or didn't care, because their reason for voting for Bush wasn't based on political reality but spiritual belief. And sadly, this meant Kerry, and probably Dean or anyone else who stood against it, was doomed from the start.
So, the question is, will the Republicans be able to mobilise this base again? Is this a generational fluke? If the Republicans swing to the far right, will they get voted in if they promise to first strip women and gays of their rights, then portray themselves as the only ones to keep them stripped?
There's an excellent essay by Simon Schama on 'Worldly America' and 'Godly America' here.
Bush talks of reaching out to everyone, but it's reaching out in the same way as you reach out when you're swinging a punch at someone. It's as one-way as the relationship between the U.K. and the U.S., we give them legitimacy, they give us nothing but headaches. When Bush speaks of everyone coming together, he means that everyone should come together around where he stands.
Someone sent me an email they'd sent after receiving a mail from John Kerry's supporters list after he capitulated to Bush. At this point he wasn't so much angry that Kerry had lost, he was angry at Kerry urging his supporters to come together for the sake of America. He felt angry at what he saw as a betrayal of principle, that in many ways by saying that the differences that had seperated Democrats from Republicans 72 hours previously should be ignored for the good of the country meant that in many ways Kerry wasn't fit to be President. If he should tell his supporters to support policies they were completely opposed to, how could he be leader?
Luckily Kerry wasn't the chief of the left, he was merely someone who they let ride with them for a while. And it seems likely that they will not step down, when they 'report for duty' they actually mean it.
A surprisingly forthright editorial from The Mirror on wednesday. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation... You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out. These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one. As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity... The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".
Certainly part of the anger is down to self-delusion, British political life is also full of emotion and hyperbole-driven ignorance of the facts, so we like to pretend that we vote on intellectual grounds whereas Thatcher called an election to take account of a popularity bounce when the U.K. won in the Falklands. So there was a mistaken belief that this election was about the issues and the ideas of candidates on both sides when it wasn't. Almost no-one who saw the debates thought that Bush had done well, but we made the mistake of asuming that mattered. The majority of the people who voted for Bush either didn't watch it or didn't care, because their reason for voting for Bush wasn't based on political reality but spiritual belief. And sadly, this meant Kerry, and probably Dean or anyone else who stood against it, was doomed from the start.
So, the question is, will the Republicans be able to mobilise this base again? Is this a generational fluke? If the Republicans swing to the far right, will they get voted in if they promise to first strip women and gays of their rights, then portray themselves as the only ones to keep them stripped?
There's an excellent essay by Simon Schama on 'Worldly America' and 'Godly America' here.
Bush talks of reaching out to everyone, but it's reaching out in the same way as you reach out when you're swinging a punch at someone. It's as one-way as the relationship between the U.K. and the U.S., we give them legitimacy, they give us nothing but headaches. When Bush speaks of everyone coming together, he means that everyone should come together around where he stands.
Someone sent me an email they'd sent after receiving a mail from John Kerry's supporters list after he capitulated to Bush. At this point he wasn't so much angry that Kerry had lost, he was angry at Kerry urging his supporters to come together for the sake of America. He felt angry at what he saw as a betrayal of principle, that in many ways by saying that the differences that had seperated Democrats from Republicans 72 hours previously should be ignored for the good of the country meant that in many ways Kerry wasn't fit to be President. If he should tell his supporters to support policies they were completely opposed to, how could he be leader?
Luckily Kerry wasn't the chief of the left, he was merely someone who they let ride with them for a while. And it seems likely that they will not step down, when they 'report for duty' they actually mean it.
