Ballots Contra Bullets
Election day has passed and everything is over but the shouting, recounting, FBI investigating, pouting, finger-pointing and perishing in the desert. I was assigned to vote in a church. I can only imagine how thrilled the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians in my campus neighborhood must have been. I wonder if Mosques are used as polling places?
I Went home and settled in for the long night of vote tallying and exhausting media coverage. I liked CNN’s choice to have the morality czar himself, Bill Bennett, on as one of the election night experts. It was quite satisfying to watch his chin sag lower than his belt-line by the end of the night. Unfortunately Wolf Blitzer missed a golden opportunity to ask Diamond Bill about the Vegas odds on the various races.
Looking at the big picture, we can safely say that Karl Rove's vaunted get out the vote machine turned out Republican voters about as urgently as Katrina brought FEMA to New Orleans. Rasputin's magic spell failed to stick this time.
Meanwhile, as America’s attention is focused increasingly on the Middle East, with dissatisfaction surrounding the disastrous adventure in Iraq pushing more congressional seats into the blue column, has anyone noticed what has been going on in our backyard to the south? While our feckless leaders and media puppets have been scrambling to salvage the dwindling scraps of our international reputation and spinning like whirling dervishes to assure us that all is not lost in Iraq/Afghanistan, red redux is creeping, like kudzu, throughout Latin America. (Kudzu is sometimes referred to as "the plant that ate the South", a reference to kudzu's explosive growth tendencies in ideal growing conditions like the Southeastern USA)
A significant trend is afoot in the big neighborhood of the Monroe Doctrine, in large part a backlash against increasingly stringent economic stances pushed by America--largely by the GOP. Some of these Pols you have heard of, Chavez in Venezuela and the Castros in Cuba; some are less recognizable, like Kirchner in Argentina and da Silva in Brazil; and some are just plain blasts from the past, like Garcia in Peru and now today Nicaragua’s votes are in, and Daniel Ortega is back. Does anyone see the irony here? That’s right, Daniel Ortega, the man who was on the receiving end of the ill-fated Iran/Contra affair under Ronny Raygun, is declared officially resurrected, like Lazarus, on the same day that Reagan’s offspring get booted over their ill-conceived foray into Iraq, which just happens to be heavily influenced from behind the scenes by, you guessed it, Iran again!
So what’s up? Could it be that after decades of unopposed globe trampling by Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys (World Bank, IMF, USAID, Neocons, etc), millions of people world-wide are turning to more collective views for social and governmental organization. In retreat, hopefully, is the individualistic moral authoritarian worldview espoused by the GOP. It is happening abroad and it is happening at home. Let’s hope the left can capitalize on the momentum…no time like the present.
be seeing you.
This just in: Rumsfeld resigns!!! Alas poor Don, we knew him well. Too well. In true American fashion he can now ride off into the sunset to retire on the hundred million dollar fortune he accrued while running the G.D Searle pharmaceutical company. During Rumsfeld's tenure, with his influence in the approval process, G.D. Searle patented Aspartame--the brand name is Nutra-sweet.