An irate American lady came by the Bali Advertiser offices the other day to deliver a confused if not disturbed screed about a piece I did recently on Bush, Kerry an’ all. How dare I, a Brit, she wrote, tell her to vote for John McCain, or anyone else?
It was rather hard to make out from the rest of the letter quite where she was coming from. She went by turns from rage to self-pity, ranging the political spectrum from left of Che Guevara, to making Dick Cheney sound a mealy-mouthed liberal. She had been driven out of America, she said, by politicians, who were all as bad as each other, by hippies and (curiously) by civil rights activists, all of whom had between them ruined the nation. She didn’t come to Bali to be reminded of all that stuff, thank you very much. She had always looked forward to reading my column, but now she would never ever read it again. “From now on, I will avoid it like the plague”, she said.
Naturally I was devastated she would deny herself my immortal prose and though I do sincerely honour and respect her decision, I am left wondering how I shall manage from now on.
I do, of course, feel I have a perfect right to sound off on anything I choose, so long as it’s not illegal. Well, I would wouldn’t I? However, I do recognise that no one is compelled to read what I write, or publish it. That seems pretty fair. I would even go so far as to say I don’t go out of my way to gratuitously offend people, except perhaps the Witch of Renon and a few puffed-up folk here and there. Nor do I see it as any business of mine to involve myself in local politics and religion, indeed I think it would be foolish of me to express a view on such matters, even if I had one, which I don’t. Oh yes, and then there’s MLM and the New Age, not to mention Big Pharma. These are subjects I like to approach with a well-developed sense of balance and proportion.
Back at the Ranch....
Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Frat Boy is in deep doo-doo, as his dad might say. If he wasn’t such a jerk you’d almost feel sorry for the man, so out of his depth he is. It is really quite amazing how quickly this administration has brought the USA and its institutions into global disrepute. Now it looks as if the majority of Americans are finally wising-up to what’s going on. If I’m right, the world as a whole, not just America, can breathe a sigh of relief come next November. I hope so. I don’t think any of us can afford another 4 years of the Frat Boy and his sinister cabal of corporate carpet-baggers and testosterone patch neo-Cons.
So yes, Dear Lady, I do feel free to comment upon America and the American President. You may have come to Bali to get away from all that but haven’t you heard? Bombs go off here too.....
In short order your President has not just invaded Iraq, but has predictably made a hash of it , US soldiers are torturing innocent civilians and the country is hemorrhaging hundreds of billions of dollars even it cannot afford. This is without doubt one of the worst administrations in American history and it affects us all.
Time for a Tattered Consensus.....?
To put this into perspective, and in case anyone out there thinks I’m a vishy vashy peacenik I happen to believe, along with Ken Wilber and Tony Blair to name two, that George Bush et al were right to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. It is just they did it all wrong, mostly for the wrong reasons and clearly they weren’t up to finishing the job. As for US soldiers torturing prisoners, anyone who sees equivalence between the USA and Saddam Hussein, or who thinks such things will not happen in war on any side, needs their head examined. The problem is, this is an administration that only half thinks things through and believes it is above the law. In a way, it is encouraging to see how quickly they have been proved wrong and their errors have come home to roost.
Some people believe violence is unjustifiable no matter what. I do not agree with them. Falteringly we are entering a time when the international community has the right of final resort to step in with police action to prevent genocide and world peace being threatened by rogue rulers or nations. But this has to come via international consensus, not unilateral action by any one nation, no matter how righteous. On the way to a workable world system there will of course be occasions when the world community shirks the job or botches it. That alas, goes with the territory but this is a process already under way and broadly accepted by nations in a way it never has been before. It is not therefore ridiculous to hope that, if we are not moving into a world without violence, we are at least moving into one where it is progressively less likely that nations will make war upon each other; that decisions affecting the health of the planet as a whole, and for the wellbeing of all its people, will begin to be made and enforced. I am not speaking of world government here, I just mean some flawed process of compromise that is in all our interests and round about works.
In this context the Frat Boy and his cronies are a throw back to the stage directly before this, where each nation put its own narrow short term interests before anything else. As I say, it’s interesting to see how quickly this narrow perspective has gone wrong and proved inadequate.
It’s Mutual....
Whatever else he may be John Kerry is clearly an internationalist. That does not mean he won’t put America first, but he does at least understand a bit about the rest of the world and is able to relate to it. George W. Bush Jr. on the other hand does not like abroad and just as clearly does not understand it. That is why the rest of the world dislikes and despises him. Instinctively they fear what an America ruled by knee-jerk patriotism, narrow national interest and religious conviction may do. Forget John Kennedy, where are the inclusive Republicans like Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, even Ronald Reagan, not to mention John McCain? Not in power, that’s for sure. Instead we have ascendant that mean-spirited, tough and self-serving aspect of Republican America that is morally certain, patriotic and supremely uninterested, if not suspicious of anything outside the nation, now toxically mutated into an interventionist mould. For the rest of the world to come to the realisation that this may actually be the new American majority we may have to live with for the foreseeable future, and not a momentary aberration, comes as a nasty shock.
Because I said so....!
That anyone would actually think any American would really go and vote for John McCain because I had told them to is, I reckon, pretty funny. In the light of what I wrote, more or less in jest , I was further amused to read in a newspaper the other day that there actually is a serious movement to draft John McCain as Kerry’s Vice President......
Is that possible? Can they do that? Just remember, you heard it here first!
In fact, I have great faith in the common sense of the Great American Public, I cannot conceive that come November a majority of Americans will not kick the scoundrels out. If elected, and I think he will be, I have a sneaky suspicion John Kerry will finally hit his stride and could just turn out to be one of America’s great Presidents.
