Heart of Darkness Roundup
The last few days have been a real grind, for me personally, because of work, but for most Americans too, I'm betting. In the free moments when we weren't presenting a year's worth of research to our Swiss funders, I'd sneak away to check the latest news from the campaign trail, only to be surprised at each new low reached.
There was the absurdity of the Al Qaqaa mess, with the GOP howling that 1) it didn't happen on their clock, 2) if it did, it was the troops fault, and 3) that anyway it was unfair for the press to bring this up during the election. There was the Osama tape, with the GOP saying 1) it wasn't fair for Kerry to politicize it and 2) it was really an endorsement for Kerry. (A Fox news anchor said he thought he saw Osama wearing a "Vote for Kerry" button.)
The truly craven gay-baiting push polls going in my own home state, where voters received automatic phone calls that said, “When you vote this Tuesday, remember to legalize gay marriage by supporting John Kerry. It’s what we all want. It’s a basic Democratic principle.”
And of course the ingenious, Orwellian tactic of accusing the dems of exactly what the GOP is doing (from a automatic phone call going out in Pennsylvania): "John Kerry's trial lawyer allies have a scheme to keep you away from the polls tomorrow as part of their hardball strategy. Democrats are trying to intimidate Republican election workers. They're hoping to win through fraud, harassment and law suits what they know that can't win at the ballot box. Don't let them get away with it... Only you can make sure that the American People—not trial lawyers, not foreign leaders—decide our next president."
And, though its desperateness was encouraging, the outlines of a pathological blame-the-liberal-media narrative for explaining a Bush defeat were appearing: "Rep. Peter King, one of our "moderate" Republicans, just said on Crossfire that there's a 'new axis of evil' composed of 'UN 'bureaucrats, The New York Times, and Dan Rather.'"
But then there were the moving images of people lining up to vote, the thousands of volunteers going out to act as observers, the sense of solidarity that I can feel even from the other half of the globe. Not to mention the upticks for Kerry in the polls.
All this tells me that a great battle is taking place, not only in the swing states and the polling booths but, if I may use tired but necessary language, within America's soul. It's not that half of us are evil and half are good, it's that our political process, our public debate, our discourse, our press, and our sense of ourselves, have been under siege. A minority group with a radical agenda and a ends-justify-the-means vanguardism have pulled out all the stops to try and retain power. Their supporters are not (necessarily) bad people, they are simply misled. (58% of Bush supporters said they wouldn't support the war in Iraq if Iraq didn't have WMDs or links to Al Qaeda. But 75% think Iraq supported Al Qaeda!). The question is not, in the end, Kerry or Bush, not Democrat or Republican, but simply whether our democracy, our nation, is strong enough to push back against all this manipulation and vote out an administration that has crossed the line.
I am confident that it is.
There was the absurdity of the Al Qaqaa mess, with the GOP howling that 1) it didn't happen on their clock, 2) if it did, it was the troops fault, and 3) that anyway it was unfair for the press to bring this up during the election. There was the Osama tape, with the GOP saying 1) it wasn't fair for Kerry to politicize it and 2) it was really an endorsement for Kerry. (A Fox news anchor said he thought he saw Osama wearing a "Vote for Kerry" button.)
The truly craven gay-baiting push polls going in my own home state, where voters received automatic phone calls that said, “When you vote this Tuesday, remember to legalize gay marriage by supporting John Kerry. It’s what we all want. It’s a basic Democratic principle.”
And of course the ingenious, Orwellian tactic of accusing the dems of exactly what the GOP is doing (from a automatic phone call going out in Pennsylvania): "John Kerry's trial lawyer allies have a scheme to keep you away from the polls tomorrow as part of their hardball strategy. Democrats are trying to intimidate Republican election workers. They're hoping to win through fraud, harassment and law suits what they know that can't win at the ballot box. Don't let them get away with it... Only you can make sure that the American People—not trial lawyers, not foreign leaders—decide our next president."
And, though its desperateness was encouraging, the outlines of a pathological blame-the-liberal-media narrative for explaining a Bush defeat were appearing: "Rep. Peter King, one of our "moderate" Republicans, just said on Crossfire that there's a 'new axis of evil' composed of 'UN 'bureaucrats, The New York Times, and Dan Rather.'"
But then there were the moving images of people lining up to vote, the thousands of volunteers going out to act as observers, the sense of solidarity that I can feel even from the other half of the globe. Not to mention the upticks for Kerry in the polls.
All this tells me that a great battle is taking place, not only in the swing states and the polling booths but, if I may use tired but necessary language, within America's soul. It's not that half of us are evil and half are good, it's that our political process, our public debate, our discourse, our press, and our sense of ourselves, have been under siege. A minority group with a radical agenda and a ends-justify-the-means vanguardism have pulled out all the stops to try and retain power. Their supporters are not (necessarily) bad people, they are simply misled. (58% of Bush supporters said they wouldn't support the war in Iraq if Iraq didn't have WMDs or links to Al Qaeda. But 75% think Iraq supported Al Qaeda!). The question is not, in the end, Kerry or Bush, not Democrat or Republican, but simply whether our democracy, our nation, is strong enough to push back against all this manipulation and vote out an administration that has crossed the line.
I am confident that it is.
posted by Benjamin Lessing at 9:16 AM
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