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They May Survive
Mark Hertsgaard has written that Bush can not win this election. He compares the situation with Mc Carthy, were people were intimidated into silence, but after four years the nightmare unravelled within just a few months. I now think he is right.
Only a minority is better off after four years of Bush. The majority has lost on its standard of living or has paid for it with higher debt. Conveniently for todays debate (and not by chance) the DOW fell below 10,000 today and oil did reach $53.60 again.
The Iraq explanations are gone one after the other and the public feels that there is a big mess out there, though it does not openly confess this yet. Six dead GIs today and the coming Ramadan weeks will push this – right up to the election.
So the chances are high Kerry will win, as Hertsgaard and Jérôme expect, the popular vote by a wide margin, maybe even by a million and some votes. But will he win the presidency?
Seymour Hersh says, Bush & Co are believers, not rational liars like Kissinger or Nixon. Believers are right by definition. They have the right by definition. They can do no wrong.
There are many fraud possibilities with the US election system. And already there are plenty of cases of unrightful registrations or non-registrations of voters. Given that only a few votes in a few states may decide the ultimate result, someone, somewhere will try for a fix.
Will this be detected? Yes. Will there be litigation? Yes. Will Kerry win those? Unlikely.
Like in Iraq, the real war will only start after the mission is accomplished party and the polling station close. The October surprise may come 3rd of November or even later.
With a clean since unused conscience, never being wrong, there are many ways to achieve a fix – you just have to think big enough.
The junta may survive this indecent onslaught of an election, even if it looses the vote.
Jerome I love your optimism it sways me more than any reasoned argument. ..but..
Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Both Dems. and Repubs. in the US have participated in the destruction of:
Law, civil rights, proper procedure, transparency, and accountability as they were previously coded; morality (fair dealing, etc. – somewhat intangible), the gathering of facts and their reasoned use to implement action (science, health, energy, etc.), in conjunction with the erosion of the separation between Church and State; as well as international law, treaties, and multilateralism.
The first meaningful sentence on the Kerry site reads:
John Kerry and John Edwards have laid out specific plans to hunt and kill the terrorists, offer a fresh start in Iraq so we can finish the job there, and to fight for the middle class.
Under the Plan for America section, one finds many reasonable statements specifying desirable future states-of-affairs: affordable health care for all Americans, energy independence, a new version of no child left behind, etc. The Civil Rights section quotes Martin Luther King and promises to promote “equality” (educational opportunities, etc.) and reduce discrimination.
Kerry has not said one word about reversing present laws, legislation, ways of doing. None of the things he aims for can be accomplished without that. (He certainly knows it.)
For example -elaborating one topic I know something about-, one can’t invest in technology, as he promises to do, and hope to be successful with the Patriot Act on the books.
Present laws, directives and procedures prevents the US from organising international conferences, bringing essential (or just cheap) employees from abroad in quickly or at all, pushes companies to de-localise (and not just for pay-per-hour reasons, as is usually argued), leads to the closing of University programs because of lack of paying students, creates anger and disillusionment in gvmts, scientists in other countries, who are then unwilling to collaborate, fund (joint funding), and, ultimately, buy.
Technological development (difficult to distinguish from science itself) cannot deal with Gvmt. control on issues such as : particular classes of people, ethnically or religiously defined, being seen as non-grata or suspicious; obscure moral principles as viewed through a crackpot religious filter; hazardous and uncertain funding; supression or transformation of results due to Gvmt. decree, pressure or control; imposed secrecy and fears of ‘leaks’ or spying; obligations of political correctness; control of communications, e.g. sanctions that prevent Iranians, for example, publishing papers in US scientific journals, articles being censored, a desire to control the internet; and so on.
There is nothing new here. The US has in the past gleefully castigated the USSR on this point. Today, arguments like this are applied to the Muslim/Arab world, and have been sometimes been timidly taken up by them.
If one looks at my little list up top, it is clear that Kerry had only one real issue (pipe dreams of affordable health care set aside) on which he could hope to credibly oppose Bush. That was multilateralism, as it is obscure, and relatively detached from ‘homeland laws’, and even international law, as it is still somewhat personally driven, and (perhaps more important) not understood by Americans. However, the US position is inalterably unilateral, and Kerry knows this too.
Posted by: Blackie | Oct 14 2004 18:18 utc | 18
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