This Election
I'm ashamed to admit that I was one of those people who, in 2000, said "Bush, Gore - what's the difference?". If I'd lived in a swing state I might have voted for Gore, but since I don't I voted for Nader; not because I really liked him, but more as a protest/attempt to help create a viable third party.
I found the 2000 election brouhaha amusing and appalling in equal parts, right up to the point when
the Supreme Court destroyed its integrity by effectively awarding the election to Bush. What I heard about the
nomination of someone named John Ashcroft to be Attorney General disturbed me a little, as did what appeared to be a
senseless and counterproductive tax cut. But on the whole, I didn't pay too much attention and didn't think Bush 43 would be any worse than, say, Bush 41.
People like me - or like I was, at least - are dangerous to democracy in times like these. All it takes to ensure the triumph of evil, as Edmund Burke once said, is for men of good will to do nothing. And not paying attention is the surest guarantee of inaction.
Until recently I believed that the three strikes of the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the economic malaise of the mid-to-late 70's ("stagflation", as we called it back then) would be the lowest point that I would see my country sink to in my lifetime. I no longer believe that. And I believe that the reelection of George Bush would guarantee that things will continue to go downhill.
Is this
shrill? Well, you could say that I have slowly and steadily become radicalized. I still hold essentially the same beliefs I've always held; in fact, I've become a little bit more conservative. But I now also believe that the principles this country were founded on - in fact, the Constitution itself - are in grave danger of being swept aside.
My wakeup call was not 9-11. I was as shocked and stunned as anyone, but I'd read books like Alvin Toffler's
Powershift and knew who Osama Bin Laden was, so I had suspected that someday terrorists would stage a successful attack somewhere on American soil. I wasn't prepared for the reality of what actually happened, but neither was anyone else.
The buildup to the invasion of Iraq woke me up. I told a co-worker on 9/11 that we'd find ourselves in a war to destroy terrorism, and that it would be comparable in duration to the Cold War. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and thought the use of the Northern Alliance as the primary fighting force supported by US airpower and Special Forces was an effective way to fight this kind of war - although I couldn't understand why the 82nd and 101st Airborne hadn't been dropped in Eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border in order to cut off the Taliban/Al Qaeda retreat.
I soon figured it out, once the Bush administration started talking about invading Iraq. In retrospect, the passage of the Patriot Act should have been my real wakeup call. Once the drumbeats sounded about invading Iraq, though, I finally started to comprehend what
Paul Krugman and others had seen as far back as the run-up to the 2000 election.
What we've witnessed in the past 4 years - if we've paid serious attention - is an attempt by a powerful and ruthless faction of the Republican party to establish what amounts to an oligarchy. The Founders crafted a system of government, with the Constitution as its main instrument, that was designed expressly to prevent this. The purpose of all of those checks and balances is to prevent any group or faction from wielding too much power.
Any group that seeks to guarantee an unencumbered ability to rule this country must, by definition, undercut the Constitution.And so it is with this administration. The Patriot Act is only the first wave of the assault on the Bill of Rights. The creation of a security state that is constantly on alert and at war is another means to upset the balance between the branches of government.So is the promotion and sanctification of an authoritarian strain of religious belief - one that is dedicated to eradicating the barrier between Church and State that the Founding Fathers erected.
We are perversely fortunate, then, that this administration's incompetence exposes its mendacity and malevolence as well as its ineptitude. From the
budget deficits to
pork-spewing Medicare and
corporate tax bills, from
failing to capture Osama Bin Laden to
Abu Ghraib, from
damaging our alliances and strengthening the terrorists to the
failure of the occupation, from taking our eyes off
Iranian and
North Korean nuclear programs to the
failure to secure explosives and other war material in Iraq, they have made a mess of everything they have touched.
Their one area of competence is the ability to successfully manipulate all the levers of large-scale public relations and mass media. There are still a large number of people in this country that are either unable or unwilling to recognize that they've been manipulated and deceived by this administration. There is a small group of people dedicated to ensuring that they never come to this realization. This election isn't a horse race; it's a race to see how many people have the scales fall from their eyes before November 2.
And it still appears to be a
very close thing. If you give Pennsylvania to Kerry and Florida to Bush, it looks like the election comes down to Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and (maybe) Arkansas and Colorado.
All we can hope for is that enough of our fellow citizens wake up to the realization that George Bush's presidency has been an unmitigated disaster because it has both divorced itself from the principles that made this nation great as well as divorcing itself from reality.
Defending America requires defending it from the enemy within - those who would destroy our liberty under the guise of protecting us - as well as defending it from the enemy without.
Brad DeLong puts it best:
There is no excuse for anyone to support George W. Bush. None. None at all..
Let's hope at least 51% of the voters agree.
