Rearview Mirrors

Earlier today, I referenced something I wrote a few months before I started blogging - November 3, 2004 to be exact. I actually dug up the piece in question, and it's amusing to me what I got right and what I got wrong, as well as the generally angry tone I had immediately after the election. I remember now how upset I was that Bush could be re-elected, despite everything that had happened.

Anyway, I thought it might be amusing to share this piece, and submit to a bit of criticism with almost 2 years having passed.

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What Now?
November 3, 2004

Its no exaggeration or surprise to say that the results of this election are probably shocking to the rest of the world. Almost certainly, Europe will go to bed this evening wondering what the hell is going on in America. Large parts of the Arab world will finish their evening prayers wishing a new kind of vengeance on President Bush. The Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian leaderships will no doubt be trying to estimate how damaging this will be to their nations. Ironically, the people this election helps most may be the parties of the left in Europe and Canada. Canadians and Germans will likely be less supportive of any Conservative party that seems too close to President Bush.

But what does this mean for the United States and the World? Well, seeing as I predicted Kerry getting 300-310 electoral votes and 50% of the popular vote, my opinion has the weight and substance of wet tissue. However, there are some obvious consequences to the decision of the American electorate to validate President Bush's next four years, and arguably the last four as well. First off, Bush and the Republicans in Congress will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. The days of reckoning for Bushs policies were put off until after thiselection, but they cannot be postponed beyond the next. Unless there is some truly unprecedented shift in fortunes, the collapses of the USmilitary presence in Iraq, the value of the dollar, and the solvency of the Government of the United States will all come some time in the next four years. As bad as Bush 2.1 was for America, Bush 2.2 is going to be far, far worse. Too bad the People just wasted their last chance to hold the President accountable.

The issues that seem to have decided this election for Bush were moral issues. Put more plainly, the GOP is now the party where "We Hate Fags" is considered good policy. The fact that Bush's margin of victory was likely suburban voters who disagree with him on every facet except the War on Terror makes this frankly hilarious. Security Moms have just helped to elect a man and a party that will usher in a domestic agenda that they would never have knowingly voted for. Except that they just did.

Not a single American can say on November 3, 2004 that they didn't know what they were getting when they voted. They had the experience of four years of Bush in the White House and twenty years of Kerry in the Senate. Like it or not, voting Bush meant voting for the whole Republican package. At least those who voted Kerry but disagreed with parts of his platform could say that the GOP would control the Congress anyway. Voting Bush meant, essentially, voting to legitimize the Republican party platform as the leading philosophy of US politics. Not that the GOP cares too much about legitimacy.

Some could argue that voting Bush in 2000 didnt seem that dangerous. That no longer applies. Not only do we know how dangerous he is, but the world is rapidly entering an unusually dangerous phase. The increasing militancy of the United Statesis tearing the post-WWII order apart, and Bush no longer needs to fear the discipline of public opinion. And now, the world has the task of managing a profound economic (and presumably political) shift in the world order from Europe and America to China and India. These periods are never easy. Arguably, the last time the world faced a period like this, where antagonist nations were jockeying for world supremacy, was the period of roughly 1870-1945 when Germany, Japan, the United States, and the British Empire were all playing the game of empire at various times with various levels of enthusiasm. Two world wars, the razing of whole continents and the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions were necessary for that contest to come to a temporary resolution. The Cold War put history on hold, but since 1991, just as it was being declared dead, History has returned with a vengeance.

Now, faced with the rise of China and India as economic powers, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran as nuclear powers, and the increasing unification and opposition of Europe to American policy, the global situation is becoming tenser and tenser. Would anyone like to suggest that George W. Bush is capable of navigating the reefs and shoals of the 21^stcentury? Does anyone think that Bush would have made an excellent Prime Minister of Great Britain, circa 1904?

History isn't destiny, of course. But the people of the United States have just delivered a massive fuck you to the rest of the world, friend and foe alike. They have legitimated for American politics illegal war, torture, imprisonment without trial, and hysterical nativism a la freedom fries. Herbert Stein, advisor to President Nixon, once said "Things that can't go on forever, don't." This is a useful reminder for all of us in these days of despair. A quick list of things that can't go on forever:

-Iraq: Elections or no, the Iraqis have already voted with their guns. The Americans are in a position identical to the war in Vietnam invaders propping up the carcass of a hated government against its own people. The war gets worse with every day, with more Americans (and vastly more Iraqis) dying every day for an outcome that has already been determined. The only thing that will change between now and then is the body count. Being wrong on this count, and seeing a flourishing of democracy in the Middle East, would please me immensely. I would ask only one question: where is the good news Im missing?

-Oil: The life blood of western civilization, and getting scarcer every day. By some estimates, we are already at the point of peak global production. At best, we probably have little more than a decade. After that, the amount of oil available every year will begin shrinking, just as China begins trying to build an automobile industry. Given how long it takes to cycle old cars out of the market, we need to begin retiring every car on the market now, and replacing them with vastly more efficient models. The Prius will not save us, and it may already be too late. Who thinks that Bush 2.2 will be the presidency to take on Detroit and win? Nixon-to-China scenarios are possible, but do we want to risk the future on hypotheses? Well, 51% of the electorate just did.

-Trade: The US trade deficit gets larger and larger, despite the devaluations of the US dollar in recent months. This mainly has to do with China's decision to peg its currency to the dollar while investing billions in the same. Eventually, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo will stop throwing good money after bad. When that happens, the post-bubble recession of 2001 will look like an adolescent's grounding after missing curfew. The correction this time could quickly devalue the US dollar to the point where the worlds largest import market could close off almost entirely. Good for domestic US producers, bad for the other 95% of the planet. Except, hypothetically, to the Chinese. But do they want to chain their economy to a drowning man?

Despite an admittedly churlish desire to see the Americans take one in the gut, I couldn't argue that any of these problems are a good thing for non-Americans. Oil is obviously a problem the world will have to deal with, and the other two will leave the rest of the world with a problem regardless of the outcome. And so we come back to the original problem: In what universe is Bush the man to deal with these problems? His advisors have demonstrated incompetence and corruption in spades, and he has not demonstrated any ability to control them. Cheney was elected as much as Bush was. With Powell likely leaving, one of the last moderates in the government will be gone. With Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft now officially unbound from any sense of restraint, we in the sane world now have the experience of wondering how much worse it can get.

When Kaiser Wilhelm fired Bismarck, the British papers called it dropping the Pilot. The Democratic Party has twice produced candidates who understood the world of the 21^st century and would have helped America find its way across these unfamiliar, treacherous waters. Somehow, the American system has rejected both candidates in favor of a man who ridicules the very idea that America should pay attention to the world in any way aside from mass violence. The fact that he is more popular today then he was in 2000 only underscores the danger of our times. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, even the Prophet Muhammad all espoused the belief that people acting in consensus would never make a mistake. I fervently hope, but no longer believe, they were correct.

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Something I got wrong: "Ironically, the people this election helps most may be the parties of the left in Europe and Canada. Canadians and Germans will likely be less supportive of any Conservative party that seems too close to President Bush." Er, not so much with that one. The influence of Bush is debatable, but conservative parties have "won" in both Canada and Germany.

Feel free to put in your own additions to what I got wrong in the comments, now that I've broken the ice!