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COMMENTARY
August 25, 2004
Surrealism
If the U.S. presidential election were held in Canada John Kerry would win a landslide with at least three-quarters of the vote perhaps taking even Alberta. But they don't hold it here. (My reader will immediately grasp why no Republican administration could ever wish to annex Canada. Conquer and enslave us perhaps but no plan that involved an extension of the franchise could fail to subvert the invaders.) The world at large and even the arguably-allied West might well vote differently from the Americans given their druthers. But they aren't Americans and no matter how similar or dissimilar their societies they do not carry the responsibilities which our southern neighbours bear. The U.S. simply IS the world's uncontested superpower -- the adult in the planetary kindergarten -- and with that comes an outlook no one else can fully share. Do the Americans know what they do impinges on everyone else's existence? Yes to some small degree; though a perceived self-interest will triumph in the U.S. is it would anywhere. There is however a generosity of spirit in the American outlook that is missing everywhere else I have travelled and it belongs with their power. And ignorance is bliss: no other nation could cope so well as the Americans have done with the abuse they receive (Israel offers the nearest comparison Taiwan is perhaps third and the German people for historical reasons often get more abuse than they have earned). In each case the ability to ignore insults has required a little artifice in addition to the usual human insensibility. But it helps to be hidden within the biomass of a huge country. Those who mock the U.S. electoral system with its thick encrustations of special interests their wild extra-party advertising legislative gerrymandering myriad voting machines and the odd hanging chad generally fail to preserve some sense of proportion. Look at elections in Algeria (blood running in streets) Zimbabwe (systematic intimidation) Venezuela (poll-fixing by a revolutionist many of whose supporters claim he is the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar and no I am not being facetious). Like India the U.S. has very independent courts to settle disputed results free speech and media and for all its size a robust sense of participation. On top of which this year there will be international observers. But having said all this I am at least slightly alarmed by the course of the 2004 elections. I have mentioned before my worry that a fissure is opening across the West which is at its most apparent in the U.S. where the "two cultures" are closest to equality. The respective Christian and post-Christian cultures no longer share moral assumptions and the Republicans and Democrats become increasingly not political parties competing for the allegiance of a broad middle but rather proxies for respective sides in the "culture wars". I am not myself neutral in that battle I am not post-Christian and I cannot possibly look at candidates George W. Bush and John F. Kerry with the impartiality that media people (most of whom are on the other side) are accustomed to faking. For me as for half of the U.S. Mr. Kerry is from Mars. For the other half Mr. Bush is. There are precious few swing voters. But again this cultural confrontation is not limited to America. The people who voted for Silvio Berlusconi in Italy could probably live with Mr. Bush; the values Mr. Bush represents (whether well or poorly) are not confined to Texas. What has become surreal in the U.S. presidential campaign and which I hope will change after the Republican convention next week is that the main topic of discussion is Vietnam. This is so I suspect not only because Mr. Kerry has chosen to campaign exclusively on the rather murky record of his personal service in Vietnam 36 years ago -- that is weird enough -- but because Vietnam is a proxy issue. Iraq is being ignored; all questions associated with the larger international conflict that began on 9/11/01 are left undebated. The insistence on discussing the cockroach in the sink when there is an elephant in the room must strike any foreign observer as peculiar. American democracy is not threatened by radical or unprecedented or demogogic views or by any prospective mechanical failure in the system. It is instead suffering from the inability of either political party or the media to speak openly about what is going on. Is the U.S. as a nation thus acting in its "strong silent" mode? Or are government and people alike at a loss over what lies before them? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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