|
The disaster of 1972 was reversed by the Watergate
hearings, but they were spearheaded by a Democratic
House; we will not see a similar unraveling any time
soon. The right-wing grip on the entire government
has tightened; there will be no real investigations
into any of the criminality of the Bush cabal, and
the skeletons bulging the closet door will not be
let out. The right’s control of the media will
only tighten. We will be left to fume and fumble in
our virtual electronic world, while they take everything
they want in the real one.
Nov. 2, 2004 will reverberate the way Sept. 11 has.
But as the rest of the world stood with us then, they
will write us off now, jettisoning the benefit of
the doubt they gave us, erasing the charitable distinction
they made between Americans as people and the U.S.A.
as global thug.
I am nauseous at the thought of what this election
says about what America has become. It says that naïve
belief has triumphed over reason. It says that the
community of nations is as irrelevant to the average
American as it was in 1918, despite the fact that
this time, apathy is paired with imperialism. It says
that intolerance is as strong as it was 40 years ago.
It says the party of Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond
has triumphed by adopting the mantle of religion in
opposition to a new stigmatized minority.
It almost doesn’t matter whether we are here
because a majority of Americans voted for Bush or
if the Bush team merely demonstrated its effective
control by rigging Florida and Ohio. Both are expressions
of power; either way, they have lots of it, and our
efforts to curb them have failed.
We can beat ourselves up for flaws real and imagined
in John Kerry, his campaign or whatever else, but
that is all a sideshow. John Kerry may not have been
a perfect candidate, but a perfect Democrat would
probably still have lost. Nearly 60 million Americans
appear to have decided that prolixity and nuance were
worse crimes than lying, false religiosity, larcenous
fiscal management and of course a disasterously mismanaged
illegal war. Millions of voters agreed with George
Bush that his clothes were magnificent, and that the
boy calling him naked needs a stretch at Gitmo. America
the free decided that loyalty oaths and presidential
appearances closed to non-believers are perfectly
fine. None of that is John Kerry’s fault or
Terry McAullife’s fault. It is evidence of a
failure so systemic that I cannot even begin to imagine
a solution.
This election must mean that the American dream has
become the blissfully ignorant fantasy that a majority
of Americans passionately and deliberately choose
over reality. Their mandate will accelerate the ouster
of reason from American discourse. Bush will accelerate
his Leni Riefenstahl packaging of his failures as
triumphs. Inconvenient and unpleasant facts will cease
to exist. In short, there will be no accountability,
because there will not be any mistakes. Let me say
it again: Reason is dead. Logic is dead. Facts are
irrelevant. There are only squinty, righteous determination
and myriad enemies. Guess which we are.
Democrats were more united in 2004 than at any time
in memory. But the Republicans were able to control
the agenda yet again, and capitalize on yet another
wedge issue: gay marriage. CNN.com reported that “More
exit poll respondents— about 22 percent—called
"moral values" the election's most important
issue than cited the economy, terrorism or Iraq.”
As one wag pointed out, when those voters say “moral
values,” they mean “we hate faggots.”
And so millions of Americans voted against every rational
form of self-interest to strike a blow for personal
intolerance. I find a great deal to agree with in
what both say, but the sad fact is that gay marriage
advocates were the Ralph Nader of 2004.
Kudos again to Karl Rove—as usual, he was looking
five moves ahead on a chessboard most of us didn’t
even see. Eleven states voted on initiatives banning
gay marriage; Bush won nine of them. Without Ohio’s
homophobe vote, Bush would be back on his Crawford
ranch about now. I liked Kerry’s line about
the politics hope vs. the politics of fear, but it
encapsulates the problem—fear wins every time.
That is why I despair of the Democrats ever coming
back, at least in any recognizable form. Tolerance
and inclusiveness have not been winning ideas in most
of the red states for more than 100 years. The old
South was Democratic only because Lincoln was Republican.
Once the more socially liberal Rockefeller branch
of the Republican party lost control, and the Republicans
welcomed segregationists into the fold, the die was
cast.
Now a significant percentage of America is vehemently
homophobic, and the sad fact is that the ignorant
are reproducing faster than the tolerant. The red
states had more electoral votes this year than in
2000; that trend will soon make tolerance as quaint
as the hoop skirt. To beat the Republicans, the Democrats
will have to become them. Howard Dean may proudly
represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,
but that will never get him elected. Bill Clinton’s
legerdemain looks even more impressive today: he was
a far better Janus than Bush will ever be, appearing
as a dumb Bubba to the dumb Bubbas without losing
the core intelligence that brought the rest of us
along. I don’t see how anyone else in politics
today will walk that tightrope again.
Once plunged into madness, extremist states tend
to recover only when utterly defeated by a militarily
and morally superior foe. As frightening as it is
to contemplate, I fear we are on a course we have
little power to alter. The entropy of ignorance seems
an irresistible force, and there may not be an immoveable
object within our system big enough to stop it. Bush’s
fundamentalism and Osama’s are symbiotic in
ways that will only become clearer as the devastation
multiplies. I fear the bodies will be stacked halfway
to the moon before we wake.
I would like to believe we will somehow avoid the
plunge into darkness, but this close to our lost opportunity,
that kind of optimism looks like something from their
playbook: belief in the objectively improbable just
because it makes me feel better. If I could do that,
I’d just drink the Kool-aid.
|
