h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

.... as someone once said.

I think I had a lucky escape. I never seriously thought that Kerry would win, and in fact I'm surprised that he came so close. Perhaps it's because I went to bed early rather that putting myself through listening to the results coming in - I didn't hear the early opinion polls and so wasn't disappointed the next morning.

I've never been to America, so all my knowledge of America is second hand. But it seems to me that Kerry did very well to come as close as he did, given that there's a war on. Because the US President is Head of State, he symbolises the country in a way that the British PM doesn't, and it seems to me that this gives the incumbent a real advantage, particularly as Bush has shamelessly played the patriot card at every opportunity. Kerry did well to get close, it seems to me, given the political climate.

And I think many people had completely unrealistic expectations about what a Kerry presidency would have meant. He's liberal and multilateral by US standards, but that doesn't mean that he was going to sign up to Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, reverse US policy in Israel, revitalise the UN. It would have changed the political climate in that it would have opened a number of windows of opportunity for improvements in relations between the EU nations and the US and allowed some face-saving, but President Kerry would not have suddenly started respecting the UN and acting only with its full authorisation. Clinton didn't, and that was in a very different political climate.

But how serious a blow is the reelection of Bush? Nationally, I think it's a disaster for liberal America, especially if it looks like it was the Christian Right 'wot won it', as they seek to impose their world view on others. Same as religious extremeists everywhere of any religion.

Internationally, I don't think that Bush could get away with invading another country, say Iran. I don't think that Blair could get away with supporting the US a second time in the current climate. I wonder whether Bush could get away with it, bearing in mind how much support Kerry got and the mess that Iraq is still in. Is the US capable of mounting another invastion/occupation effort by itself? But then I thought the same about Iraq when the US attacked Afghanistan.

Semi-finally, some amusing slogans I've seen:
"Why change horseman mid-apocalypse?"
"Vote Cthulu for President. Why settle for the lesser evil?"

Actual finally, a link to some interesting commentry on the US election:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/politics/index.htm

Mick Hume's article on 'white trash bashing' is particularly worth a read. I disagree with Hume most of the time, but here I think he's on to something....

Hello.

Just read the white trash-bashing article. It does make a very good point; however, the major problem with having Bush as a president, as I see it, is that America's politics are being based on religious fundamentalism; that's exactly what America's first British settlers were running away from. At least under Kerry, it had a higher chance of being the secular country it was founded to be.

Would you agree?

Sorry, I read your message last week but forgot to reply....

I'm not sure whether America's first British settlers were running away from religious fundamentalism, as they were pretty fundamentalist themselves as far as I know. I think it was probably just the wrong sort of fundamentalism.

I'm not sure whether the US was founded to be a secular country. I don't know whether the separation of church and state is best understood as expressing tolerance to all kinds of religious view (including atheism) or whether it was actually about preventing any one particular flavour of Protestant Christianity gaining the upper hand to the exclusion of others.

A bit like Henry Ford - you can have any religion you like as long as you're a Christian.