Black day

So it looks like we lost the damn election… I had been trying to steel myself for this, but still it feels like a body blow.
I guess those of us w/ foreign passports could take the easy way out and just stop thinking of ourselves as Americans. I don’t want to do that though. I want to retreat to my bunker in central Virginia and figure out how to reform this imperial beast into something better.
But just think of all the human misery that will occur– inside the US and outside it–before that reform project can take hold.
I am desperately trying not to feel angry with those of our “fellow citizens” who voted W in this time.
Big kudos and thanks to everyone in the peace and justice movement in the US for all their get-out-thevote efforts!!! Maybe in 2008 I should make a point of not quitting the country at election time so I can join that effort more wholeheartedly.
If the Empire ever lets us vote again, that is…

28 thoughts on “Black day”

  1. A “body blow”? No, more like baseball bat upside the head. I’m angry at my ‘fellow citizens”. I gave up trying not to be around 11PM last night. I can’t think of anything else to write.

  2. Helena, I’ve been away from your blog for a while… but I do hope you post something that addresses the big question for all of us P&J folks: “what do we do now?”
    I, personally, am determined not to feel like a victim for the next four years; I *HAVE* to find a way to see this constructively.

  3. I think that we’re in for a tough time. I don’t think that your apprehension about being able to vote again is that farfetched.
    The main problem is that we as a nation are just too much in our own world. Too many of us have bought the ideology of the US being right no matter what we do.
    I also think that many people found Bush more personally appealing than Kerry, believe it or not. Bush got better ratings on character in the exit polls.

  4. I don’t feel anger towards my fellow citizens for putting Bush and the Republicans back in charge of the federal government. Rather, I feel pity for them because I think they have no idea what they’ve wrought. And I feel sorry for the rest of us who wanted change but who are now awaiting the consequences of staying on the course our nation is on. I believe those consequences will become clearer and more painful over the next four years. Even our somnolent press corps may begin to notice the more obvious ones. Hmmm, maybe it’s time to go back and re-read Emmanuel Todd’s “After the Empire.”

  6. America is just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
    — Hunter S. Thompson, 1972
    I remember reading that immediately after Nixon’s reelection. It seems truer now.

  7. No Pref– thanks for that great quote!
    Vivion– we go back to basic principles is what we do. (Things like human equality, nonviolence, hopefulness, etc.) I will write something about that.
    Also, I’m thinking that we P&J-ey Yankees should start getting some intentional inspiration from our predecessors in the White South African or Israeli-Jeiwsh P&J movements… This phenomenon now really is apartheid on a global scale and we P&J American citizens are the “whites”. I might break out my copy of Ryan Malan’s “Our bleeding hearts” once I get back home…

  8. Helena,
    It is a black day indeed for those of us who still have our intelligence. I am very angry with the rest of the country for voting W in. I think this will (hopefully) be the wake up call that the left has needed. Obviously, the election in 2000 wasn’t it. 4 years of Bush wasn’t it. Perhaps 4 more wars and the death of democracy will do it. I hope we are not too late to stop all this.
    I wish there were more voices against this war. It seems as if the anti-war movement is sleeping. What happened to the momentum we had pre-war around the world. There are rallies in England, why not here?
    I do know one thing. I no longer feel compelled to suffer this fool gladly, or the fools that voted for him. What the left can do is make Bush wish he never won a second term. They can hold him to task. They can fight back.

  9. I believe we have just validated our own Hitler.
    This election will unleash the likes of US fascist totalitarianism which this country has never seen, much less imagined. We have lost our country, our soul as a people, a country that endured for over 200 years. As radical and overwrought as it sounds, I truly believe we will never in our lifetime (I’m 52) get it back.
    I would love to be positive but to do so would be to engage in the same embrace of non-reality that carried the day yesterday.
    It is so penetratingly sad.

  10. I’m not an American, so can only grumble from afar. But I think the best comments I’ve seen are those by Jim Moore, who is generally wonderful, an eloquent Dean supporter, and has been doing some impressive campaigning on Darfur.

  11. Despite all of the hard talk on the Right, I think that this election turned out the way it did because the issue of security does not in fact touch the lives of people in most of the country. People who do not understand in a deep sense that the outside world is really there voted for the kind of movie that they wanted to see. Nothing will change until Americans grasp a little more directly the mechanics behind the bad news with which they “suffer”.
    So I suggest a simple national question, a how’s-the-weather starting point for conversation with anyone from a Red State: “Feel safer?”

  12. People get the government they deserve. Surely this is true in a democracy where the people choose their leaders (or in this case, “leaders”). The 51% who voted for Bush deserve everything that is about to come their way. Tragically, the rest of the world does not deserve what that 51% has put onto our backs.
    As for me, I do not want to be part of a country that behaves the way this country has behaved and will continue to behave. I also do not want to be part of a population that is as breathtakingly ignorant, moronic, gullible and short-sighted as this one is. I will be looking for some place to which to relocate.

  13. Shirin,
    Believe me, I’ve thought about going to Canada often. But that’s all very well for those of us with the means to do so… and we are the ones who have the greatest moral responsibility.

  15. I’m with Shirin – I had been mulling over immigration if Bush won re-election, which is now fact rather than possilibity. I keep thinking about the conclusion to Chalmers Johnson’s book “The Sorrows of Empire” where he says that the US has a rendevous with Nemesis because of the way it has conducted itself overseas. Johnson said that Nemesis is wating impatiently for this meeting and I fear he may be right.
    This rendevous will be almost certain in our lifetime if the Bush administration continues pursuing its arbitrary and solitary policies internationally. The US appears mighty beyond challenge but it is less powerful than most Americans are aware, especially against alliances of other nations.

  16. Re : “Suicide is your only recourse……………………
    Posted by dubya ( mailto:tcarter69@earthlink.net )
    at November 3, 2004 08:32 PM”
    Mr Carter, you will be laughing out of the other side of your face when the almighty dollar goes to the western lands … the lands of the dead … where it belongs …

  17. Re:”This election will unleash the likes of US fascist totalitarianism which this country has never seen, much less imagined.”
    Actually, people my age [75] DID see it, in the ’50s.
    It was called ‘mccarthy-ism’ then.

  18. I think the disasters in California gave us an indication of whether the American public is really capable of voting for its economic demise. Orange county experienced an economic meltdown from republican economic policies which are really geared toward helping the rich at the public’s expense. The blackouts are another example of this mismanagement. They produced surprising little outrage or change.
    I wonder about historical precidents for what is happening. Easter Island experienced an environmental death from the unsustainable consumption of its inhabitants. Instead of the civilization there facing its problems it formed an oppressive dictatorship. The oppressive Roman empire was followed by the dark ages in Europe. Can declining, oppressive societies heal themselves or are they doomed? I used to have some neighbors from Bangladesh and they said to me one time that you can’t assume that when things get very bad people will suddenly get their act together.
    The democratic party is schizophrenic. The interests of many of its constituencies and of its corporate sponsors are in conflict. The corporations, however, have a lock on the political system and neither Bush nor Kerry were going to fundamentally challenge the status quo.

  19. Edward,
    You might want to check out the work of Mancur Olson.
    His theory of progressive industry capture under conditions of social and economic stability fits with what has been happening in the US since the Second World War. The idea is that in between war and other catastrophes lobbying groups will become progressively stronger, and the favorable treatment that they acquire from government stifles flexibility and competitiveness. The decline can be long, but it cannot be avoided — democracy is susceptible along with all other forms of organized government. As the beast (metaphorically) weakens, it can go through all sorts of contortions, but only a massive reset can start the cycle of progressive social integration moving again.
    Or words to that effect. It’s cheery stuff.

  20. Jassalasca,
    This sounds interesting. I found The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities on Amazon which I will probably check out from the library. DO you think Olsen has much influence on policymakers?

  22. Sorry, that last was sent off in haste before running down to dinner. I don’t know the field well enough to speak with authority about who is influenced by what, or what works are in fashion and which are out. But Marcus Olson was not (he passed away several years ago) a fringe figure. I like his work because it is thought-provoking and hard to bind to the exclusive service of a given flavor of policy ideology. Or so it seems to me — others will have other, very likely more well-informed opinions than mine.

  23. Olson may be influencial with economists but does he also influence policymakers? If he is predicting our society will decline are policymakers taking this seriously and responding? I don’t see much evidence of long term planning by the U.S. government at least.

  24. Think of the choice put before the public, war or war. Democracy died when Dean was ambushed. How can there be democracy with no choice. Next, Bush cheated big time. This is the second time they stole an election. Lets face it, an evil spirit has taken hold of America. The future looks dim unless the people revolt against this tyranny.

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