Betalogue

Well, it had to happen, didn’t it? There were obviously (just) enough paranoid crazies in America to elect George W. Bush and his clique for a second term. For most of the international community, it’s going to be four more years of constant head shaking in disbelief each time this administration does or says something, with its complete disregard for the environment, for the rest of the world, for real freedom (as opposed to freedom imposed by brute force), for other opinions, etc.

More importantly, however, I can’t help but feel very sad and sorry. Not for John Kerry or for the many people who fought for him, at all levels. Defeat, after all, is part of the political game. No, the people that I feel really sorry for today are all those Americans who live under the poverty line, all those who live without proper health coverage, all those who have to work overtime just to make ends meet, all those who are forced to eat junk food because it’s the only food that’s cheap enough for them, all those who have to endure institutional racism and bigotry, etc. To a certain extent, they are guilty of not having voted en masse in this election. But it’s easy to understand their disillusion. What did Kerry have to offer that was so vastly different? Ultimately, the Democrats lost because they didn’t dare to be different.

The only way to get everybody to vote is to actually give a sense that things are going to be very different. The Democrats never managed to do that. And there are good reasons to think that, had they been victorious, things would not have been all that different. America still is, and will remain in the foreseeable future, a very unjust society, where selfishness reigns, “socialist” is an insult and real compassion, real sacrifice, real solidarity simply do not exist at a social and political level. As for foreign policy, well, as always, America only sees things on a massive scale. A thousand dead soldiers in Iraq is not enough to really matter. (Tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians obviously matter even less.)

For us foreigners, there are good reasons to worry — especially for us Canadians, since we are geographically so close and economically so dependent. But right now the head shaking is mostly for American people themselves. Best of luck surviving under four more years of this is all that can be said.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 at 9:40 am and is filed under Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.