There’s something horribly predictable about what happens when English lefties start telling red-blooded Americans how to vote.
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We in the rest of the world, who sadly cannot vote in the one election that really affects our future are depending on you to get rid of that smirking gunslinger and vote him out”, so wrote Oxford professor Richard Dawkins a tad snottily in England’s left leaning “Guardian” newspaper, who along with Lady Antonia Fraser, John le Carre and other liberal “fulminaries” were invited by the newspaper to write letters to Americans in the US swing state of Ohio in an attempt to unseat Bush in the upcoming US presidential elections just a few weeks away.
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Go back to sipping tea and leave our people alone”, was the predictable response.
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If it wasn’t for America you’d all be speaking German”, wittily observed another.
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losers and idiots”, prettily put from yet another.
These and many more remarks calculated to confirm the views of most Britons and foreigners of Americans as arrogant, ignorant and uncaring of the world beyond their borders flooded into to The Guardian’s London offices.
The US reaction is hardly surprising. One can read the same type of thing in the English tabloids any day of the week when the Germans and the French are foolish enough to make any remark about the Yookay. Any such effrontery gets a swift kicking as our yobbish press puts the boot in. But here’s the difference. That’s the UK tabloids. That’s who they are. They’ve made it into an art form, you don’t take it seriously. In America, the trouble is they do.
Large numbers of Americans really do think in these simplistic ways, it is not mere self-indulgence. However mature, educated and self-aware individual Americans may be, the collective psyche of the country is aged about four. That is what Bush and his cohorts understand and play too.
Blowing raspberries at The Guardian et al for their temerity is an all too predictable reaction and whether or not The Guardian was silly enough to actually believe anything it did would affect the election result one way or the other or was merely indulging itself in some red flag waving at the American bull, there remains a valid point behind the attempt.
If an avowedly imperial America is going to go in for pre-emptive wars whenever it feels like it and the rest of the world, the UN, it’s erstwhile allies can go hang, if the US feels no obligation to consult or co-operate with the international community when it comes to trade, international justice or the global environment, then Americans should not be too surprised if the rest of the world starts to get alarmed and wants to see the return of a more friendly and familiar America. As non-Americans we know we cannot vote in US presidential elections but we also know we can still be catastrophically affected by what an American president does. With Dubya in the White House, along with his God Squad and posse of neo-cons all financed by latterday robber barons, no wonder the rest of the world is worried. Even specially-related poodles and co-aggressors of Iraq like me are starting to rethink the world with the US seen for the first time as a potential enemy, not a friend. Not bad going in four years.....
Most non-Americans I know find it hard to believe and cannot understand how so many Americans can take Bush seriously, let alone vote him in a second time around. Anyone can make a mistake, but now you know the nature of the beast, you knowingly vote him in again? That’s scary.
On the other hand, most Americans I know or come across, who I have to say are mostly Democrats, are not at all surprised by this. Among them there is a dismal pessimism, they all expect Bush to get back in. They hold a pretty dim view of most of their fellow countrymen. “You don’t understand” they say, “you don’t know the South and the Mid West of the country”. That’s not entirely true, but I certainly have a hard time understanding the new kind of political alignments forged over the past 30 years that have led to the ascendancy of the Republican Right. It is hard for me to understand why decent people cannot see and follow their own self interest and not also wish to raise the living, health and education standards for all Americans. It is hard to see how people have been duped and spun by the partisan media, so they cannot actually distinguish between the true and the false. It is deeply distasteful and dispiriting to see God and the flag used so effectively to manipulate so many people. What is most worrying of all is the siege mentality and sense of grievance felt by so many Americans and the enrolment of and the whipping on of the rural and lower middle classes of America in such simplistic and nationalistic nastiness. The last time that happened anywhere significant, it brought the Nazis to power in Germany.
Well, I don’t think it’ll come to that. But periodically America does take a nasty turn. Last time out it was the McCarthy era. It took a well intentioned Republican called Eisenhower to put a stop to that. Then along came the 60’s, blowing away the cobwebs and bringing massive social change to the country. The Republican Right may have effectively eroded the social compact and liberal consensus forged by FDR back in the 30’s but if George W. Bush is re-elected to four more years this November, disastrous as that may well be for America and the world, it will only be a prelude to the sweeping and progressive changes that will surely sweep the nation in years to come as the majority of Americans understand how their religiosity and patriotism has been manipulated and they seek to create a fairer and more just society.
Still I hope for all our sakes it won’t come to that. It is quite astonishing the harm done by this President in four short years, and what he could do in four more is not a pretty prospect. The debates are over and any unbiased observer would have to conclude that John Kerry “won” on all counts. Not only did he win the series but he was the man who looked and behaved the more presidential throughout. Of course the pundits tell us these debates are not really debates at all but a rare chance for the voter to see the candidates side by side and somehow get the measure of the man. The pollsters say it will be very close, the nation is about evenly divided and the game rests with getting out the vote and a tiny number of swing voters.
If that is correct, it means half or more of all Americans prefer a President who likes to posture and pose with his leading aides as if he were something out of the 50’s movie “Gunfight at OK Corral” with a "Top Gun" moment thrown in. Whatever my pessimistic American friends say, I still cannot believe the majority of Americans are so befuddled by fear and religion that they truly feel comfortable with such a man as their ruler. No, I’m sticking to my guns. I seem to have more faith in the common sense of ordinary Americans than they do. I think Kerry will win with a reasonable margin and a more familiar America will re-emerge. If I am wrong and he does not, then I feel we are all into new territory as the rest of the world adjusts to the concept that an imperial America is now an alien, if not hostile power and that we are all of us, at home and abroad, in for a rocky ride.
