as often the case I find your perspective on America a bit twisted. Can't quite tell how much of it is perceptions that can only come from a distance, and how much of it is wrong... A mix I suspect.

Me I'm still shell shocked, just back from Ohio and on the ground it doesn't look at all like the picture you paint, but who knows how it will look on the history book page...

In anycase 60% of eligible voters voted, so your numbers (and majority) are a bit off. Still you are right that a plurality just didn't care who won, and that's an important point.

[ http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ na...67_youth04.html ] for the vote figures.
Abe | e.mail | web.space | 11.04.04 - 4:12 pm | #

wtf is up with these colors man? I thought you hated the 80's revival..

I'm ready for all black for 4 years of mourning.
Abe | e.mail | web.space | 11.04.04 - 4:13 pm | #

hey Abe,

I hope you're going to settle in.. I could see this really racking out anyone's conscience down South. It stunned me for two days straight.

(Btw, it's not really retro '80s. It's just wack and I dig that. Totally garish. Has nothing to do with the site. I love it.)

Thanks for the link on the percentages. There is some debate over it but I'll take your source over mine.

As for my perspective on the US--sure it's twisted, but not nearly as messed as the Texan I saw interviewed who thought that Canada was communist.

ALTHOUGH in the general US politik this isn't too far off: the entire "centre" of the US has swung so far right that, as I saw somewhere else (I think it was William Gibson), Kerry is really just a centrist Republican. (While "the Republicans" are religious zealots).

So in this climate, Canada might as well as be commie. I'd rather it be. However the sad truth is that our own centre-right PM (what you guys would call centre-left) is leaning more and more Right, and was simply waiting for the outcome of the election as to see how far Right he can lean in our Northern abode. Joy. Just like Australia.

So yah, if my perspective's skewed, it's because I return to what I said earlier, almost a year ago: the issue far exceeds Bush/Kerry. That little piece of paper known as the Constitution, already a product of land-owning white dudes who stole the continent, has really seen its last days. It worked admirably for awhile but while that piece of paper froze in time, capital kept a flowin'. And now that Constitution is so ratted and shot through with holes that I don't think it's possible to save it. The concept of the Rights of Man is on its last legs. And so are the days of the "left" _saving_ anything. If the Xtians aren't about saving but destroying, perhaps the left should get into the act.. and destroy the destroyers.

There's something else afoot and it walks on three legs. It bears the mark of the Beast. Either way, religion is back big-time..

As much as any American might not want to hear it, a two party system has simply collapsed into a one-party kiss-off. It's like deconstruction. The opposite incorporates its other. There is no real opposition between Democrat and Republican: only a play of differences, only a slight debate as to who can slaughter Iraqis the most efficiently. Kerry never set apart any ground of difference. I'd prefer Kerry any day but I think I'm still with Shaviro when he writes that Kerry would have been mediocre. Part of me wanted to believe that Kerry would be the Vietnam radical he was back in the '70s, hanging out with HST, but that's all drunken dreams. Kerry tried, but he was too corralled in on Bush's ranch ..

Rant, rant.

tV
tobias | e.mail | web.space | 11.04.04 - 7:03 pm | #

Don't have much time, but lets just say that the picture you paint has very little to do with the reality I saw on the ground in Ohio. Yeah there are religious nuts, but they are a minority, and not even close to a plurality. Truth is that Bush's team just sold itself better, way better.

I'm with you on the Dem/Repug good cop/bad cop though, although I still have a bit of faith in our constitution. Oddly enough being in Ohio gave me a bit more faith in the Democratic process, not less. As best I can see the vote was fair, or close enough to it. In the end Kerry was just a garbage candidate, and his team wasn't strong enough to close the deal. So fucking close though, I'm actually maddest at my fellow New Yorkers who couldn't find the time to make the trip, a few more boots on the ground and the results would have been radically different. That holds for me too, I should have been there months ago..
Abe | e.mail | web.space | 11.05.04 - 11:27 am | #

hi Abe,

Let me reiterate: everyone here and everywhere is thanking people like you for the effort you made. Me included.

I think you often mistake this kind of writing for an attempt to depict reality.. as the kind of reality you experienced as footsoldier pollster.. this is like coming home from Vietnam to discover half the nation is on LSD, reading Kesey and HST on the madness of the counterculture: this article is a nasty, brutish, and as it says, violent upending of the soul, a reaction to it all. This isn't an analysis. But often the violent and scythe-like words also cut through some of that protective fog we've enveloped ourselves in.

As for religious nuts being the minority: I'm not so sure. I just read some more Nietzsche. Out loud. Loud and screeching. From _The Anti-Christ_. I'm inclined to think, after this Nietzsche, this Jagermeister, and this smoke, that Bush-affect is winning over because it's appealing to that dark herd instinct in the Xtian morality system. It's not about believing but about believing someone else believes.

Whatever the case, as democratic as this election was, it only aids more fuel to the fire for terrorist action. This has shown, in the eyes of the MidEast, that retaliation against the US is now justified. The people have voted.

None of this is to discredit the hard effort you and others put into this. But DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP OVER IT, being there three months ago reeks of the kind of sacrifice mentality that I think at this moment we should all pause over & reconsider..

Rest up. There's a long way to go.

best, t
tobias | e.mail | web.space | 11.05.04 - 9:56 pm | #

Religion is the distraction. At the moment, everything I'm reading suggests that the real drivers of the neocon agenda is global dominance, but not out of any Xtian ideology, rather they are after oil/energy security. Started reading Richard Heinberg's "Powerdown" - a book of scenarios of the post-carbon world that is rapidly emerging. he also did the longer "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrialized Societies." One thing he notes is that the PNAC neocons were all admirers and/or students of Leo Strauss, the unreconstructed Machiavellian political philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago. Every key player, including their cheerleader buddies in the right-wing press, is a follower. Defense undersecretary Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol and his father Irving, several senior fellows the American Enterprise Institute, and Gary Schmitt, head of of the uberinfluential Project for a New American Century. According to Heinberg, Strauss advocated that leaders should deceive people, that they ruled through superiority and were not bound by morals, religion was the tool to manipulate the masses, secularism was to be suppressed, and that systems can only be truly united against an external threat -- and if there is no actual one, then manufacture one.

I believe that there is probably an open alliance between the evangelicals and the neocons (Preserve the Holy Land for the End Times, etc etc.), but I think the neocons are probably using the evangelicals.
aj | e.mail | web.space | 11.07.04 - 1:04 am | #

That is to say, there are ordinary folk, ordinary congregations, all across the religious spectrum (from Social Justice Jesuits to "Jesus was American!" types.). The thing is, this "strength" is also their weakness. Everything, from foreign policy to domestic action, has been against the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule - not to mention the Koran and the teachings of Buddha. But I think there is cognitive dissonance in America: years of religion-bashing has made mainstreamers irrelevant and evangelicals (self)isolated. Nobody is talking to anyone else, and everyone is promoting a different view of reality. All this plays to the neocons' advantage.

Bush thinks he's on a mission from God: I'm pretty sure Cheney doesn't disabuse him of the notion.
aj | e.mail | web.space | 11.07.04 - 1:09 am | #

And by cognitive dissonance I mean, people want to live in a strong, powerful country and have strong, powerful leaders who tell them how strong and powerful they are. Traditional Christian values such as humility, anti-materialism, "caritas" or social justice, fly in the face of that. So they get a double helping of the old hateful, vengeful God.
aj | e.mail | web.space | 11.07.04 - 1:12 am | #

"Bush thinks he's on a mission from God: I'm pretty
sure Cheney doesn't disabuse him of the notion."

I wouldn't disagree with you, AJ, especially this comment.

However I am inclined to think that nobody is actually in control. There is no one key answer: neither neocon oil interests (transnationals) nor religion. IF we boil that down, we arrive at: colonialism and religion, or capitalism and religion, and the two have always been inextricably linked (monotheistic religions, that is).

I'm inclined to think that religion might be more powerful now than we think it is. I think it is overriding logical / tactical decisions concerning oil. Religion isn't just a screen. It's quite possibly Cheney et al (yah I know about Strauss but I think his influence is overemphasized) thought they could use Bush; but I think Bush has become a power magnate of his own (divine) strength. I think all the nuts think they are in power: Rove, Bush, Cheney, etc., when in reality the juggernaut is on the verge of losing its cohesiveness, its self-control.

Simply I don't think humans can control such agendas. This is why Marxism ultimately fails; it's also why every Empire in history is a story of neverending civil war.

Thanks for the words .. further comments: let's move to the post above, where we can address this a little more specifically.

best, tV
tobias | e.mail | web.space | 11.07.04 - 10:03 am | #

e6939c 18769b4e8a
Nora | e.mail | web.space | 12.15.06 - 12:40 pm | #