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November 3, 2004
Billmon: Four More Fears
Comments
I was afraid this would drive him back into his bunker. Maybe not. I hope not.
Posted by: Colman | Nov 3 2004 15:24 utc | 1
So, once again we have an alliance of Corporations, religion, and military roaming the globe, raiding and plundering other people’s tresures. It took Europe 500 years to wake up from it, how long will it take the US? Join the army, spread xtianity, and get some shiny stuff while here at home we build more prisons than schools and libraries. Our kids have to hold bake sales and sell magazines door to door for school trips and supplies but we can drop a $2 million bomb and wipe out an innocent family in Fallujah. Onward god’s soldiers, just don’t come home if you get injured or maimed.
Max
Posted by: Max Andersen | Nov 3 2004 15:58 utc | 2
I have repeated myself on this subject quite a bit in the past, and I’m sure will not stop doing so. The vast majority of all Christian churches were totally against the war in Iraq and their leadership sought repeatedly to tell this to Bush. The Pope, the Orthodox Patriarchs, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the World Council of Churches, the National Council of churches of the US, the Middle East council of Churches, and all leadership on down of Orthodox, Catholic, Episcopal and many Evangelical churches have all publicly taken stands against this war, from before it happened. And quite publicly called the so-called Christian theology motivating a lot of it hogwash. It is a minority even among Evangelicals that hold these beliefs. Among large churches it is the Southern Baptists who are the exception in terms of supporting these policies. Please do not lump all Christian churches into the Bush camp on foreign policy, esp. the Iraq war. The truth is quite the opposite.
Posted by: x | Nov 3 2004 16:06 utc | 3
“– Sen. John Kerry calls President Bush to concede presidential election, CNN has learned.”
Posted by: cc | Nov 3 2004 16:40 utc | 4
Looks like the surrealism of the last 4 years is going to continue unabated. Unfuckingbelievable.
Anyone have info on the details of moving to another country?
Specifically, Canada?
Posted by: dave | Nov 3 2004 17:01 utc | 5
“Four More Fears” Exactly.
Fear rules the day and the next four years as well and there’s
not a thing we can do about it.
Posted by: ByteB | Nov 3 2004 17:04 utc | 6
PINK FLOYD
Oooo You cannot reach me now,
Oooo No matter how you try.
Goodbye cruel world, it’s over.
Walk on by.
Sitting in a bunker,
Here behind my wall,
Waiting for the worms to come. ( Worms to come. )
In perfect isolation,
Here behind my wall,
Waiting for the worms to come. ( Worms to come. )
Waiting, to cut out the deadwood.
Waiting, to clean up the city.
Waiting, to follow the worms.
Waiting, to put on a black shirt.
Waiting, to weed out the weaklings.
Waiting, to smash in their windows and kick in their doors.
Waiting, for the final solution to strengthen the strain.
Waiting, to follow the worms.
Waiting, to turn on the showers and fire the ovens.
Waiting, for the queers and the coons and the Reds and the Jews.
Waiting, to follow the worms.
Would you like to see Britannia,
Rule again, my friend?
All you have to do is follow the worms.
Would you like to send our colored cousins,
Home again, my friend?
All you need to do is follow the worms.
Posted by: Jonathan Kan | Nov 3 2004 17:04 utc | 7
x
But, christian acquiescence to the death-cult republicanism comes in other flavors: all those tidy certainties about cultural conduct, and most importntly, the usual false consciousness of religion that materiality is subordinate to heavenly reception. Maybe it’s time to read Hegel’s Phenomenology again.
I deserve to be gainsaid of course,if I’m wrong. Christianity is a giant part of the problem. As I understand it, people like me are going to ‘hell.’
After all, Tetelestai!
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 3 2004 17:05 utc | 8
Material realities are supposed to be subordinate to Love, in Christian theology. And “hell” is a place of consciousness without love and all that it means. That is theology.
“Many will come in my name but by their fruits you shall know them.” This is also a part of Christianity. Abusers exist everywhere, including on the non-theological spectrum. We have great examples throughout the past century or so to pick from among them as well.
Posted by: x | Nov 3 2004 17:12 utc | 9
One and a half years ago, Billmon wrote a masterpiece – The Dao of American Politics (Link to part one)(Link to part two). At the end, he wondered which Dialectics would America heading – “Ethnic Democrats vs. Enron Conservatives” or “Enron Conservatives vs. Limbaugh Conservatives”? So far, the answer is later… 🙁
Enron Conservatives vs. Limbaugh Conservatives
In this scenario, the Democrats collapse back on their hardcore base of African Americans and government employees. This means the real dialectical struggle will be for the future of the Republican Party. This could pit a relatively (underline that word) moderate pro-business faction — interested mainly in tax cuts and free trade — against a hardline, neo-fascist faction interested primarily in bigger defense budgets, imperial intervention in the Middle East and a powerful police state, cough, homeland security state back home.
The first faction would represent a continuation of the existing synthesis — Clintonism with a scarier face. The other would be just plain scary: a Limbaugh conservatism reaching for unfettered control of the most powerful military machine on the face of the earth.
A pro-corporate, less extreme GOP faction might attract more moderate, more affluent Democrats (let’s call them the Lieberman Democrats) who wouldn’t want to remain in a party dominated by poor blacks and public labor unions. Such a coalition might also make a play for the Hispanic vote — one of Karl Rove’s pet projects. Supply siders and libertarians would probably also break in this direction.
The Limbaugh conservatives, on the other hand, could appeal to Christian conservatives obsessed with the “Islamic threat,” as well as the military and its camp following whores, the defense contractors. It might draw from what’s left of the Democrats’ white, blue-collar base, and from a much larger population of disgruntled, downwardly mobile independents left behind by economic globalization. The neo-cons and harder-edged foreign policy realists no doubt would hustle to get to the head of the parade.
Under this scenario, it’s not implausible to suggest the Democrats might become the first major American party since the Whigs to vanish from the scene. Whether they might later reform and reappear — as the Republican Party rose from Whig ashes — is beyond my hypothetical crystal ball. But it seems unlikely, given the scale of resources required to build a competitive major party.
The End of American History?
It also isn’t pushing it to suspect that victory for either GOP faction might represent the end of the small-d democratic dialectic in America, and the start of a much grander imperial dialectic played out on a much global scale. Indeed, this may be where history is heading, no matter what political scenario comes to pass in the next few years.
The economic changes since the first Reagan administration have all tended to diminish the “national” character of the American economy. Globalization has made it harder to use economic policy to build coalitions and reward domestic constituencies without taking the international angles into account. The Clintonites realized this early and often. Thus their obsession with the (highly globalized) bond market. The Bushies haven’t figured it out — yet. But they might, if the current economic stagnation degenerates into something like a run on the dollar.
At the same time, 9/11 seems to have convinced much of the US foreign policy establishment that endless intervention in the Third World “zone of conflict” first defined by George Orwell almost 50 years ago is the price that must be paid for national security. This may not be a simple case of simple self-interest. Given the exponential rise in the potential devastation of a major terrorist attack, the elite may be right — absent an isolationist revolution in American foreign policy that would take the USA off the Al Queda target list.
But in a globalized economy, old-fashioned isolationism just isn’t tenable. A global capitalist economy needs a global capitalist cop, and there are no other qualified applicants for the job. This is a problem, since American voters, by and large, still don’t like to think of themselves as custodians of an empire. Isolationism has deep emotional roots in the American psychology; cosmopolitanism — in the European sense — has none.
This means any American party or faction trying to sell an imperial foreign policy needs to offer a vehicle that even an isolationist will want to drive. In the 1950s, that car was anti-communism. In the double zeros, anti-Islamism seems to be emerging as the preferred make and model. The fact that the world’s largest gas station happens to be located in the heart of the Islamic world makes the auto analogy particularly apt.
Will all this lead in time to an American revival of “old-style” imperialism — British Raj style colonialism — in the Middle East? Or will the Cold War model of imperialism by remote control (with frequent on-site visits by the technicians) prove workable in the 21st century? Again, the CPU on my crystal ball is way too slow to handle that one. But it does seem at least possible that the dynamic of American politics may never again be simply — or even primarily — domestic.
This, in turn, raises the question of how long the foreigners are going to be willing to be excluded from the political debate. Can imperial politics be limited to imperial masters? The British never really had to face the question: They dismantled their empire rather than extend legal equality to the natives. The Romans, though, went the opposite route — eventually extending citizenship to all free-born males in the empire, from the Egyptian desert to Hadrian’s Wall.
It’s hard to imagine America going that far. But the growing interest (both political and financial) that the rest of the world now takes (must take) in our elections, and the economic (if not military) influence it can potentially bring to bear, makes it hard to imagine the American political process will continue to be exclusively controlled by the people holding the blue passports with the eagle on the cover.
Which also means the dialectic of American politics, which we have followed now through more than two centuries of victory, defeat and compromise, may be heading towards its end.
Posted by: Jonathan Kan | Nov 3 2004 17:16 utc | 10
/me and GF are rather shocked. the govt and our media are all giddy about the great win of W, and in all media which allow comments, these unanimously shocked and disgusted.
i would indulge in a bit of schadenfreude and shout “hey amis, how is the taste of what your CIA as been doing around the world since ever ?”, but this is too serious for teenish jeering. whatever the american govt does will affect us all, and here in europe we’ll in first row to be fucked over and over.
bad shit to come soon will be fallujah razed and probably all of iraq made into an american version of gaza, war against iran (read WW3 and some nukes with that please), americans disappearing into the gulag. somebody predicted civil war in the US for 2005, but i doubt it. my take would be that all potential leaders will be gone before anything like that even begins to organize.
i am sad and disgusted, but mostly i am scared. i can only hope i’ll manage to get out of europe before the nukes start flying.
Posted by: name | Nov 3 2004 17:22 utc | 11
I went to sleep on the edge of Victory and just awoke to discover that the Soros Party Candidate had removed his Halloween mask and he was Neville Chamberlain.
Ahhhhh, welllllll, when one has 5 Estates, appearances must be maintained.
Can ANYONE IMAGINE HOWARD DEAN CONCEDING ON THE BRINK OF VICTORY? Allowing his election to be stolen from him?
Posted by: jj | Nov 3 2004 18:00 utc | 12
perhaps we all should have voted for the greens or Nader
would feel better today than this talk of healing and lack of guts
Posted by: Siun | Nov 3 2004 19:06 utc | 14
I am with you Siun. Screw these wobblycrats. It is bad enough to get a candidate shoved down your throat who then tries to sell himself as right of Bush.
I am thru with the lot. Only third party for me from now on. I always liked the Green Party so I will now be a faithful supporter of their candidates instead of an un-appreciated and un-listened to follower.
Posted by: Dan of Steele | Nov 3 2004 19:27 utc | 15
I’m glad I voted for Leonard Peltier here in California.
59 million Bush voters tell me that they want to stay the course. I’ll just take a few more steps back and watch them get what they want. No whining about the electoral college. The ur-fascists will have their party. I’ll save my noisemakers for when their hangovers are at their worst.
Posted by: biklett | Nov 3 2004 19:40 utc | 16
Funny thing…. instead of seeking solace from the bottle or a friend, went to my own dog-eared copy of HST’s White Album at bedtime last night…..
But this morning I want none of it.
Because I’ve come to the realization that I’m just not ready to give in to the UnderToad damn it!
I know that we would like to question the whole of democracy. I can’t believe Bush won either, but there isn’t time to despair. What is needed now is action, not hopelessness. What is important is that there has been tremendous progress in mobilizing people to create change. Remember, more voters turned out this year than in the last three decades. Although it might be said that we can’t expect change overnight, there really was a very rapid shift in the way we view politics. We have become unafraid of voicing our opinions, using our power, pooling our resources, and allowing our differences to aid us instead of keeping us apart.
These new ways of looking at ourselves politically redefine what it means to be an American. It takes what used to be a very passive identity and turned us all into revolutionaries. In a short time, we activated activism, something that lay dormant in many of us and had not been awakened until now.
The Bush administration will be sorry they won this battle, for they now look forward to losing the war. Ultimately, a government cannot defeat its people, no matter how much power they assume or how corrupt they are. Even though today feels like a defeat, there is no loss. There is only opportunity. Now we have the chance to challenge everything, fight everything. The possibilities are tremendous. All the polls, all the posturing, all the opinions that we endured during months leading up to the election provide us with a valuable education on how we think and act as a country.
…
There’s more, and I think she’s right. We have the momentum for real change on our side. So let’s make the next four years unbearable for Bushco.
Posted by: sukabi | Nov 3 2004 20:51 utc | 18
I’m with Sukabi and Ross. I used to believe that to work alongside those one disagreed with was essential for survival. But the Religious Right reset the rules, and now, what we have left is to disgrace them completely.
Needless to say, I’m not in a conciliatory mood.
The voting machines were used to steal this election. There’s no way that Bush got 17% more votes out of America yesterday than he did four years ago. Forget Billmon and the hell he loved to give people for voting for Nader. Get over to blackboxvoting.org and learn the truth. You have been screwed. Whether you figure that out or not is the next fork in the road ahead for each of you.
Posted by: Darla | Nov 3 2004 22:29 utc | 21
I fell asleep on my couch last night with the television on. The pundits were humming on four gears. In the dark part of the morning, my cat came into the room. I heard a low-throated mewl and thought she’d brought a mouse inside so I half-opened my eyes and looked around, but I didn’t see anything. She was quiet and I wanted to sleep, and so I did.
This morning I got up and found the intestines and liver of a rodent, bigger than a mouse, on my rug. The broken end of a foot was chewed off and lying a few inches away.
After class today, I saw a young guy wearing a red shirt with a silk screen of Reagan, the the style of the archetypal Che, with the words, “Vive la Revolucion de Reagan.”
I walked over to him and asked him if he supported Reagan’s death squads in Central America. He huffed a little laugh and said, “I don’t know…”
And so I said, “So, you supported Reagan using Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, who helped the Nazis to exterminate Jews? He helped Reagan in Central America, too.”
I walked away from this young “revolutionary” and said, “The thing is, you don’t care. And that’s what’s amazing.”
Oh, before I left the house this morning, I picked up the rodent intestines with a plastic bag from a grocery store, then put it in another plastic grocery bag and put it in my trashcan. Have to remember to take out the trash before my whole house smells like rotten flesh.
59 million Americans voted for Bush.
Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 3 2004 23:12 utc | 22
Everyone assumed that new voters were Kerry voters; that Bush would get the votes he got in 2000, minus a few pissed off people; and that no one new would vote for Bush. I think fear-mongering nudged some non-voters (who were previously apolitical but, if pressed, would probably identify more with Republicans) to vote for Bush, thinking that Kerry would force them to enter gay marriages and yell their conversion-to-Islam oath in French.
It’s hard to believe that Kerry — a war hero with a privileged background and a standard political record… all fairly standard stuff for a politician — could inspire more fear than draft-dodging, pot-smoking Bill Clinton, but I guess it’s that ‘post-9/11’ world thing creeping in.
Still, it is an inescapable fact that about 40% of the US will always vote Republican, no matter what they do. These people want someone to worship, not someone who works for them, as an elected public servant should. They actually abhor the ideals of personal freedom and balance of power that the founding fathers intended. They’re a heartbeat away from endorsing a permanent theocracy for America, Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned.
For those who asked, mls.ca to buy and rentersnews.ca to rent in Canada. Good luck.
Posted by: kat | Nov 4 2004 0:12 utc | 24
Canada’s not as open to fleeing Yanks as it once was. Age counts against you, there’s a points system… Forget NZ or Oz — unless you are young and in a strategically desirable profession, or a wealthy retiree, they don’t want you. I did all this research shortly after the first stolen election. Anyway the old “landed immigrant” days in Canada are over. It takes a lot more to get in now than buying a chunk of real estate. And they may not care to be overwhelmed by a wave of migrants from the South; now that raises some lovely images on the inner screen — Canadians patrolling the border, chain link and searchlights, Americans swimming lakes and rivers to get to freedom in El Norte…
Don’t take offense fauxreal, I try to laugh so as not to cry. I heard someone in my office this morning say, “Four more years” and I couldn’t bear it. I left and took a two hour drive. No radio, no music, nothing… chilled and looked at the trees. Four more years of *that* voice and that stupid face…..
Posted by: beq | Nov 4 2004 0:37 utc | 26
I dream of life in montreal but tried 10 years ago halfheartedly to move to toronto … an emigre from newt gingrich I told them and with at the time unusual and valuable skills and significant job offer… they did not buy it
Posted by: Siun | Nov 4 2004 1:00 utc | 28
Well people, it’s been a long day. But we must push forward.
The strategy going forward is to push the morals agenda down to the states. Federalism is based on states rights. We must beat the rethugs at their own game and challenge them that moral issues must be solved at the state level. Judge picks will have to be moderate. On the federal level we must convince people that the progressive economic agenda is the best for the country. The gun issue must be dropped and forgot about so it dies down in four years.
The progressive economic agenda won’t be hard to take over. Large deficits, coming high interest rates and states being left behind because massive military budgets only benefit certain states. Large pork barrel projects.
But the moral values agenda must be pushed back down and attacked at that level. Bushie used those issues to divide and conquer. At first he said gay marriage was a state issue, then he used it on the federal level. We need to push states rights again. I know this won’t be popular in many quarters, but it must happen.
We must get the whole federal debate down to war and economics. Thats it. Comments please.
Posted by: jdp | Nov 4 2004 1:14 utc | 29
59 mio voted Bush? Well, now, that makes 59 mio people I won’t mind when they die, whatever death it is, old age or Al-Qaeda induced.
I’ve said it for the last 6 months, this is WAR. You take no prisoner, you show no mercy, the goal is the complete annihilation of the Enemy, because if even one of them survives, that cancerous scum might contaminate again the rest of the people. The fight won’t be over as long as there is one fucking fundie Repub alive on the face of the Earth. Or if you prefer, since they don’t mind having their rights trashed, since they can’t even think properly, since they don’t want democracy and freedom but theocracy and blind obedience to the Fuhrer, maybe could the Dems sell abroad into slavery the entire contingent of mio of Repub voters; remaining Americans could surely use the money to pay back a bit of the monstrous federal debt.
And those who expect help and sympathy from the rest of the world, well, if you begin the revolution, and I mean it for real, then maybe volunteers will come, help will come, weapons will come, like they did when the legitimate government of Spain was under attack by the fascist thugs.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 4 2004 1:20 utc | 30
Robert Lowell:
A car radio bleats,
‘Love, O careless Love . . . .’ I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody’s here–
All of this reminds me how so little of politics is grand, as nietzsche puts it, and how too much of my time has been spent dancing with a marionette in my mind who looks like ernest borgnine and insists that the works of pat boone are the only songs worth humming. I’m sick of courting this stupid ugly girl; tired of caring if these stupid ugly people do anything more than blink at the end of history.
I’m gonna live my little life. “I will not scare.”
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 4 2004 3:33 utc | 31
slothrop- yes.
I’ve gone through a strange process over the last two days. I woke up yesterday optimistic about my country for the first time in…oh four years or so. I thought the high turn out combined with the need to address the disenfranchisement of African Americans four years ago could mean Kerry could win.
but I’m not a “red stater.” I live in one, but in a city that’s like Austin in the middle of Texas. I didn’t know that the man-kissing ballot measures included in eight states would bring out so many new Bush voters. I also didn’t realize the depth of the belief in America’s right to invade any country at will because, of course, we have the right. we’re America.
but now, knowing that so many people in this country are so fundamentally at odds with my values, I’m finally able to put the election theft of 2000 behind me.
I have expended far too much energy detesting George Bush over the last four years because he so offended my basic beliefs about fairness, not to mention what he actually did while in office.
But, with the new election results, I cannot blame Bush for his election. It’s useless to expend any energy detesting 59 million people.
Cheney is calling this vote a mandate, and no doubt the Bush League will treat it as such. Democrats are already talking about how they need to address the “values” issue, which no doubt means a further drift to the right in this country. And even if the dems didn’t say this, Republicans control both Legislative Houses, even if Chafee bolts to the Democrats.
Whether it’s a mandate or not, as we all knew, a Bush win means he will be allowed to put more reich wingers onto the Supreme Court. Norquist is already talking about “dealing with” social security. Read The End of Evil to find out what Americans have given Bush a mandate to do in foreign policy.
Knowing these things, knowing the election has been decided, makes my choices much easier because I no longer have the illusion that things can or will get better.
So it’s time for me to return to the things that gave my life meaning before everything went to hell four years ago. For the first time in a long time, I feel free to do this, because I no longer feel any responsibility to try to fix my government.
It’s horribly “fixed” already. I think we should change our name to The United States of Alabama, though. Judge Roy Moore, mullah.
Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 4 2004 5:21 utc | 32
What next?
We have just received another lesson on how hard it is to base one’s judgments on reality. The “realistic” tactical support for Kerry as the most electable “anyone but Bush” candidate has turned out to be a fantasy, whether that be because the electorate really does divide as the numbers suggest or because of widespread and well-executed voting fraud. That a moronic draft-dodging spoiled brat who was demonstrably asleep at the switch on 9/11 and then lied to incite the nation to a criminal war in Iraq should be viewed as a strong president to be rewarded with 4 more years seems incredible, and yet it has happened.
What now? Each of us will live and act in accord with our own best judgments on where to begin the new long march. Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand streams of thought contend! Learning how to achieve small local victories could be one starting point, with practice in the construction of wider coalitions as its logical continuation. All much, much easier said than done, especially when it comes to the search for allies.
There are, however, some natural allies waiting to be courted: the libertarian, isolationist constitutional right, and, more generally, those derided as “RINO”s
by the Fundies (Republicans In Name Only).
It might be fruitful to try to find and to focus mercilessly on some “wedge issue” which could be hammered upon to open up fissures in the majority coalition, but, again, this is much more easily said than done in view of the demonic role that the left plays in the theocrats’ ideology and the left’s own reluctance to
renounce outdated shibboleths. (For example, European style socialized medicine is certainly light-years ahead of the U.S., but no one would claim that its oft bloated bureaucracy and sometimes uneven results is the last possible word in the evolution of social systems for the distribution of medical care.)
It is indeed perplexing that the morality of war (especially wars of (choice) agression) never seems to be considered a serious point of discussion. More generally, the problem posed here may be not be solvable: if morality is subordinate to patriotism there is no hope or perceived need for dialogue since the “correct” answers will be graciously provided by our duly elected government.
Before this election I would have doubted that this was a majority view in the U.S. Now, I’m not so sure.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 4 2004 6:56 utc | 33
The trolls are out in force. Don’t bother with the
postings of Pete, Roy, or Ralph.
Why are they bothering right now?
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 4 2004 9:10 utc | 34
I was born in Ohio, and have lived in all 4 of the major cities, and also in one of those poor rural counties near the Ohio river. This is’nt really important, except to say that whenever I got the chance I ran for the state line, and then beyond. I can’t really put my finger on it exactly, but after decades away now, and the remenents of family and friends and aging memories still there, I still can’t imagine going back. There’s just something about Ohio that beckons naught.
I suppose now and in some measure, my new residence here in “Ecotopia” for some twenty-five years, just makes the old girl looks a little bit haggered, if not plain worn out. Of course lots of states here in America have been through the mill, have been used and abused and then used again, but in Ohio there’s this disconcerting sense, that it’s suppose to be this way, it’s to be expected, it’s what normal is. And this plays out in small ways and in the big, the old and the new.
No one flinches an eye when the owner of a perfectly intact mid 19th century Neo-Gothic home strips all the scroll-cut trim off and covers it with vinyl siding. And who cares what happens to the countless small towns and all their businesses when latest big box store opens, no one notices as arson takes out one building, or a block, at a time. Like the original old growth hardwood forests, all clear cut for charcoal fired iron smelters in the mid 19th century, before them, and all the 20th century strip and shaft coal mining that even today, colors so many streams turquoise with sulfur — it’s just normal. Recently, in one southern town a long abandon strip mining site puncuated with slag heaps and those turquoise ponds was bulldozed flat as the new location for two public schools. And then there’s the cities, all suffering from (white) flight strip mall suburbanation, and inner city blight. I lived in Cleveland some ten years after the riots of the late 60’s and remember often going through that Hough neighborhood and ten years after it still looked like Dresden, blocks and blocks of burned out buildings, dirt blowing across the streets, ramshackel store fronts, men huddled around fires burning in 55 gallon drums on the sidewalks. The rest of the city, like Columbus, Toledo, and Cincinatti were’nt much better. It’s hard to believe that at one point, Cleveland was the most wealthy city in America, if not the most beautiful.
So what Ohio means to me, like it has recently ment to the country, is a place that carries with it a predictability — a certain acquiescence in the face of challenge. A historically ingrained lack of imagination and political will that manifests itself in a disregard for the other as the norm. It’s no suprise that religion plays a promenent role in the political sense with it’s appeal to scapegoat the other, as somehow being a moral act. The rejection of abortion and gay marriage, as a moral stance, politically is an acceptable repository for replaced ethnic hatred, that is exchanged for both self interest and the greater good. This keeps Ohio (and other places) stupid to cultural, enviromental and economic life.
Now I’m as far from Ohio as I can get (literally) but can’t seem to shake it’s presence.
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 4 2004 9:23 utc | 35
@b I guess it’s a twisted sort of compliment:
your site is important enough to merit being trashed.
Obviously I enjoy the company here, but I can’t imagine
anything more innocent than a bunch of hard-nosed idealists (anti-matter to the Millsian “crackpot realists” who run the world) trying to exchange ideas.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 4 2004 9:52 utc | 37
Quote:
There’s more, and I think she’s right. We have the momentum for real change on our side. So let’s make the next four years unbearable for Bushco.
***
I am sorry to bring bad news to you but it’s a nice dream. You are not aware of what is coming…for you Americans and the world…Maybe that’s good…for you…
But “I’ve been there done that” and there is really nothing to hope for at this stage in USA or the world generally…not for quite some time…mark my words…
Posted by: vbo | Nov 4 2004 10:41 utc | 38
If one seeks a precise “fear” for the near future, then
globalsecurity.org
gives all the detail necessary to conclude that before the end of 2005 (maybe well before then) we will see some sort of pre-emptive
attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. By now “pre-emptive war”
has been “normalized” so Yanks will be surprised and disappointed when the rest of the world reacts with horror. The modalities
remain to be clarified (at least for those not participating)
but a joint U.S.-Israeli operation seems most likely, with Bushehr,
Natanz, and Arak, and Esfahan as probable targets. It is interesting to note that on Sept. 30 2004 John Kerry said “Iran and North Korea are now more dangerous [than Iraq]. Now whether preemption is ultimately what has to happen, I don’t know yet.”
We may be reasonably sure that some sort of provocation (casus belli ) will be manufactured. Indeed, the provocation may provide the Bush administration two birds with one stone: an excuse for both the
agression against Iran and the “sad necessity” to re-instate
military conscription. The bright side of Kerry’s loss is that we won’t have to watch “our man” do this.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 4 2004 10:55 utc | 39
After venting here people you’ll all need few days off…go back to your private life for some time to heal…
There is not much you/we can do…I know you/we will be back here on the net where we can find few oasis of sanity like this one…
I don’t know why I was optimistic at some point…I know better…those things just can’t end up any other way then history teaches us…all we can do personally is follow our instinct and our values…Have you read Erich Maria Remark ? There were people like us in pre – WWII Germany…they were not welcomed anywhere…you can’t be a refugee unless their interest served made you a refugee…those books come in mind right now…But all we can do on personal level is to follow our believes and our instinct and our destiny…
I’ll take few days off net too. For quite some time my TV’s sound is turned off and I don’t watch it anyway… All tho all this wasn’t surprise for me after Australian election (and this is (bad) replica of USA and it functions same way) I still feel very angry and powerless …believe me I am not happy of what’s happening/will happen in Australia thanks to this Howard/Bush alliance…It looks like “it” is following me everywhere I go… and all I need is for my family to live in peace…so desperate…
Posted by: vbo | Nov 4 2004 11:57 utc | 40
Oooooh… Trolls.
Kinda sorry I missed ’em. I was speaking with the wounded, of which there are many. Like my father, whom I assured would be receiving his one-size fits all brown shirt, arm band, and copy of Mein Kampf in the mail. Mother can braid her hair and buy a dirndl – won’t that be cute? They’re leaving the country next week on vacation and are manufacturing accents to deceive the Scots, who might otherwise wish to lecture or abuse them.
My daughter is sad and disgusted. My jogging partner’s in a deep funk. A childhood friend is ready to light a torch, grab the pitchfork, and storm the castle. There’s a sign-up sheet for the people’s revolution in the break room. Or was, until someone with no sense of humor – no sense of humor atall – took it down.
Will the sky fall? Will the world come to an end? Will the Reichstag burn and RFK stadium fill with saluting masses? I don’t think this is what some among the angry and disappointed fear so much as want. Who’s waiting for the Apocolypse now, side by side with the goofy Rapturists? But if it should ever come to that, think of the opportunities for heroic resistance. History brings on darkness so that the brave might apply themselves.
Right, rgiap?
Posted by: Pat | Nov 4 2004 13:28 utc | 41
@ Pat: Tell your friends and relatives that if they think they have it bad, how is this? I got a phone message at my office this morning thanking me for voting for little dubya. How in your face is that?
Posted by: beq | Nov 4 2004 14:21 utc | 42
anna missed, @ 4:23 am…. I have the feeling that I don’t know Ohio at all, and in fact I’ve only been to the state on two or three occasions in my life. I only read about it in the papers–when it makes it into the papers. The events at Kent State remain, for me, a kind of definition–not the shootings there as such, which could have happened in other places, but the subsequent stonewalling by Governor Rhodes, and the compliance of the people with that stonewalling. I should go back and study the whole thing, which remains resonant to this day. Do you remember the photograph of that young woman–and her name escapes me at the moment (was it “Genovese”, perhaps?)–crying out over the body of a fallen student? She was hounded all over the country for years thereafter, proving that the thing called “Ohio” (nsofar as it’s represented by Kent State) is hardly confined to the geographical boundaries of Ohio!
Posted by: alabama | Nov 4 2004 14:49 utc | 43
Sorry, beq. Just the Campaign doin’ its unintentional best to feed the revulsion.
Posted by: Pat | Nov 4 2004 15:17 utc | 44
No time for fear. It’s a counterproductive emotion. Gotta pressure Conyers to initiate impeachment procedures again. Really wish Billmon wasn’t wiggin’ out on us. The whiskey bar was gaining influence. Hope the alcohol motif didn’t have the same degenerative effects that the drugs did on HST.
Posted by: b real | Nov 4 2004 16:11 utc | 45
What really hurt about this election is that it shows that rationality is a minority in the USA. Anyone who depends on rational thinking for their jobs should be scared; science teachers especially and secular humanists.
The true believers will never be converted to vote for progressive candidates. The only possibility is to wedge out Republicans who have a reasonable grasp of reality; libertarians and true conservatives, to get a majority. This means progressive programs are dead in the USA but it may prevent an Evangelical Inquisition that converts or kills Atheists and Muslims.
Posted by: Jim S | Nov 4 2004 16:59 utc | 46
The sequel to the famous SETI program, SAI program (Search for American Intelligence) provides its latest findings. More people believe creationist superstition than evolution scientific theory. In fact, there’s roughly 10-12% of US people who think God hasn’t had a hand in it.
It’s time to come to the obvious conclusion, the fairy-tales-based fundies can’t be brought back to reason. They’re way too far into lala land. If the Dems and the liberals want to prevail again, the only way is to suppress the fundie vote, in a way or another. The Israeli example shows it’s pretty close to impossible to destroy their political power because liberals and conservatives prefer to fight each other rather than deal with the nutcases – and in Israel, ending the religious influence in politics is basically a question of national security if not mere survival.
Maybe they can be convinced that voting is a sin?
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 4 2004 17:23 utc | 47
@CluelessJoe – Excellent. There has to be an unprecedented psypops-type movement to play off those superstitions and guilt. What are the strengths of their world views? Can the definition of what is evil be influenced to neutralize their organizational unity? Can their allegiance be hijacked? Gotta go read up on wild bill donovan…
Posted by: b real | Nov 4 2004 17:50 utc | 48
Ah yes, it must be the religious folks. I’ve met quite a few secularists and avowed atheists from Israel who absolutely support Sharon, despise all Arabs and think collective punishment is just what the Palestinians deserve.
On the other hand, check these folks out:
Rabbis for Human Rights
While you’re at it, you may wish to check these religious folks and their activities out as well:
Christian Peacemaker Teams
Of course I’m one of the nutcases who thinks God actually does have a hand in things (you know, like countless scientists throughout history who felt that science and mathematics, for example, were in fact reflective of the beauty, truth and goodness of the divine at work). I even believe I possess a soul which requires of me independent thinking and discernment! Fancy that!
Posted by: x | Nov 4 2004 18:01 utc | 49
@Pat no the sky doesn’t fall — unless you’re an unlucky Non-White-Person in some country whose destruction will free up some valuable resources — or merely look good on American TV at the right moment to distract from malfeasance or incompetence elsewhere. The sky doesn’t fall all at once.
“What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. . .
“To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted.'”
The German professor went on:
“Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing). . . . You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. “
(From a longer post over at Speakeasy.) The sky doesn’t fall all in one day — tanks won’t be rolling through anyone’s ‘hood tomorrow. Not in the US anyway. What happens instead is a long slow rot, a long slow erosion that is already well advanced and accelerating — the Constitution disdained and mocked; due process and decades of jurisprudential tradition and precedent spat upon; checks and balances thrown out the window; a (somewhat) free press gradually transformed into the capitalist version of Pravda; fundamental moral principles set “temporarily” aside. Rust never sleeps. The American public has already obediently habituated itself to cabinet wars, elective invasions, occupation and looting, detention without warrant or counsel, secret tribunals, repudiation of international treaties and obligations, secret-police powers, erosion of posse comitatus, torture, a “President” who behaves more and more like a late Hapsburg (one of the dimmer ones at that), even a goddamn gilded crown mounted in the Lincoln Bedroom, of all the puerile nose-thumbing gestures. What more can we possibly get used to in another 4 years? It’s not the sky falling that worries me — that gets people all riled up. It’s the slow drip-drip-drip that gets them comfortably accustomed to living in Brezhnev’s Russia, when they used to live in (say) Carter’s America. Even Reagan’s America looks pretty good compared to the rule-by-Mafia that looks to be well on its way. And even rule by Mafia is not so scary as rule by religious zealots.
I think Juan Cole may have a point when he suggests that a more aggressive Federalism may be the only way to prevent the Bible-Belters from imposing their 19th century lifestyle on the rest of us.
DeAnander: The sky doesn’t fall all in one day — tanks won’t be rolling through anyone’s ‘hood tomorrow. Not in the US anyway. What happens instead is a long slow rot, a long slow erosion that is already well advanced and accelerating — the Constitution disdained and mocked; due process and decades of jurisprudential tradition and precedent spat upon; checks and balances thrown out the window; a (somewhat) free press gradually transformed into the capitalist version of Pravda; fundamental moral principles set “temporarily” aside. Rust never sleeps.
Speak it, De! 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Nov 4 2004 18:31 utc | 51
@alabama 9:49
Ah Gov. Rhodes, called out the National Guard at Kent State, well he’s famous also for spending untold millions of public money building the “Appalachian Highway” an East-West nowhere to nowhere freeway across southern Ohio. There was a myth (it may have been true) that the unusually high death rate among drivers was due primaraily to drivers falling asleep at the wheel — you could drive for long periods at 70mph without seeing another car, anywhere.
I think I was back from Vietnam for maybe a week when Kent State happened, I’ll never forget my grandfather rushing past me in the driveway, holding up the newspaper headlines to show my Dad, and saying “they should have killed 50 more!”
I guess he did’nt know I had joined the protest movement……
Ah…Ohio
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 4 2004 20:16 utc | 52
skies don’t fall
an appearance of normality is always carefully cultivated
yet in the early morning silence if you listen hard
you can hear the jackboots and the sirens in the distance
Posted by: Blackie | Nov 4 2004 21:22 utc | 53
Moving to Canada
1. I am not an expert – double-check everything here. I’m gong from memory, and this is not an area of expertise for me.
2. Self-employment is one way. Have a 1-mill cdn business. You do not have to have paid for it, but you have to own it. The best known example is the “Hong Kong special” One apartment building and one strip mall. In effect people from Hong Kong were able to “buy” Canadian citizenship. Current cost for something similar $300,000. (guestimate). At one time it was probably available for $150,000. This may or may not be available currently.
3. Certain professionals
3b. It helps to know French. As a guess, you do not want to apply in Quebec. Laws there are different than in other parts of Canada.
4. Refugees. A few years back Canada granted refugee status to an American Indian. This was overturned on appeal by the government. It’s rare for the gov to do things like that. The moral is the Canadian gov does NOT want you. Canadian acceptance of refugees from the US has been rock steady in numbers ZERO. There is hope for refugees though:
Best way – be shipped to Iraq. Skip to Canada and claim refugee status on the grounds that the war in Iraq is illegal Kofi Annan says so amongst others. Under Canadian law anyone who is required to commit war crimes is eligible for refugee status. If the US offers alternative military service then this will no longer work. Some big warnings: US war resistors league recommends against coming to Canada. Talk to them first. The people taking in US war resistors in Canada (Quakers ) (hell don’t be afraid to talk to almost any mainstream church. Wouldn’t be surprised if most would try to be helpful.) also recommend against trying to come to Canada. Talk to them first. Remember – the Canadian gov does NOT want you. They will not make it easy for you. You will need a lawyer. It could be years of fighting. (A quick look through refugee law did not show this section – but I know it is there somewhere.)
http://canadainternational.gc.ca/GTC/Going_To_Canada-EN.htm
There is some good news. The people of Canada like the Vietnam vets who came over. Canada’s gain – your country’s loss. Some of them are trying to help new refugees enter Canada. Good luck to you (and us). We need more people like you.
Posted by: Barb Dwire | Nov 5 2004 2:44 utc | 54
sadly, the Barbed one is correct.
Even war deserters have a time coming now.
Amy Goodman did an excellent piece a couple of weeks ago about two young guys who are holed up in Toronto seeking refugee status as concientiuos objectors.
It doesn’t look good for them.
This is all part of this Fortress North America crap (ie. Canadian commodity kings will give up just about anything to keep the border open to the free, mostly one way flow, of goods).
Essentially, this means that that map of the United States of Canada (vs. fauxJesusLand) was less of a joke than most likely realize.
sorry, was talking about the USC vs JesusLand map on MattY’s site.
Sadly, it may be even more true now than it was even then.
Posted by: bcf | Nov 5 2004 23:50 utc | 57
All this talk about ‘leaving.’
I know, I share this interest in asylum–it’s a natural reaction.
But America is about possibility. I’m not going to be a quitter. This is my country too. goddamnit.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 6 2004 0:45 utc | 58
@slothrop sympathy. but it isn’t mine… I’m already an expat, living in the US. just a very long-term Gastarbeiter 🙂 and since PA1 and possibly 2, we resident aliens have approximately zero civil rights, even less than you citizens. all HSA has to do is get McCarthyite enough to define opinions as weapons of terror (and they are perilously close to it) and I could, in theory, become one of the Disappeared. no rights, no phone call, no counsel, no forwarding address. despite having paid income tax all my working life and 20 years of property taxes as well. the odds on this at present are, I think, fairly low (or I’d be gone already)… but at present there is damn-all standing between me and Gitmo or its equivalent, except the mood of the US Gummint. I read history, and the McCarthy era is fresh in my mind: it can happen here, never doubt it. I do love your country, Comrade Slothrop — hate it, and love it, and am bewildered by it, and have built a life in it — but oh, how I do fear your government… and thoughts of a judicious, planned exit are not far from my mind this week. this is not the America my parents came to, looking for wider horizons.
deanander & slothrop
i think it is well to remember that a great number of people, most famously – paul robeson – had their passports revoked & could not leave america – the destruction, the terrible destruction of this great great giant of a man – was done systematically by a concerted personal attack on him & refusing to let him leave
america has no shame
i remember on twwo occasions my mother wept – one being the judicial murder of ethel & julius rosenberg & the other being able to meet robeson when he was a very reduced man – reduced by your government into madness & fear
how many of those fucking christians in the bible belt – could have been a world class athelete, the first black lawyer, a fine if limited actor – a singer of the rarest kind , a linguist who could speak something like 37 languages – & a man devoted to research – i will always be in debt to the likes of him – those who will never walk our earth again
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 6 2004 1:41 utc | 60
not to pick an old bone cher Rgiap but they are not Christians, only Paulists. epigones of an epigon.
Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 6 2004 1:44 utc | 61
Paul Robeson loved to sing spirituals himself and spent a great deal of his career doing so. He was the father was a minister and his mother a Quaker abolitionist.
Posted by: x | Nov 6 2004 2:06 utc | 63
we need very much the men & women of his calibre
but am reminded again of brechts
unhappy is the land without heroes – no – unhappy is the land that needs them
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 6 2004 2:12 utc | 64
well…how easily I forget. America is really the land of the myriad peoples who were killed by Europeans.
sometimes I conveniently forget that the provenance of American culture was not immigration, but created by Native Americans.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 6 2004 2:53 utc | 65
remembering g–
During Robeson’s, and one of America’s, darkest times, 1952, I think, when they wouldn’t let him out, some Canadian activists got a big flatbed truck and drove down, picked up Robeson and drove back up to the Peace Arch Border crossing which is South of Vancouver, North of Seattle.
There were 40,000 people there, from both sides of the border.
They backed up the truck up and kept the wheels on the American side but the flatbed extended across to the Canadian side.
So Robeson literally straddled the border and gave a performance that lit the skies on fire.
There is magic in what brave people do.
(here’s a link)
There is magic in what brave people do ross k
yes a thousand times yes
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 6 2004 15:08 utc | 67