The BBC has a story about whether or not there’s going to be an exodus of Liberal Americans from the US now that Bush has been re-elected. Meanwhile my cousin Mark, who is a liberal American, has sent the following letter to his local newspapers:
To The Editor 11/8/04
It’s a mistake to assume that as we progress forward in time we will necessarily progress forward in our culture. Cultural progress is a collective choice, as is cultural regression.
Many wonder how election 2004 could have happened. After four years of getting to know George W. Bush, how could we actually choose him over any other candidate?
In 1925 Clarence Darrow defended a schoolteacher named John Scopes against the state of Tennessee which was represented by William Jennings Bryan. Scopes was on trial for the crime of teaching evolution. It’s very sad to me that nearly 80 years later we are still struggling to make common sense mainstream. Today 44% of Americans don’t believe in evolution. I’m guessing they are all Bush supporters.
If the trend that President Bush represents continues, we are going to be a bankrupt country of ignorant hicks with the most dangerous arsenal in the world.
But the world will go on with or without us. Europe will develop the energy supply of the future, and the extraordinary medical breakthroughs utilizing stem cell research. They will do this and more because they honor science and reasoning. They will move humanity forward with art and culture because they value creativity and publicly fund it without tying funding to the approval of “moral” censors.
Meanwhile, here at home, we won’t be allowing ‘science’ and ‘reason’ to push us around and dictate policy. We’ll be building our ‘faith based culture of life”. We’ll privatize social security. Cut taxes for the rich yet again. We’ll continue to foul our air and water. Health needs and costs will continue to rise as insurance and pharmaceutical companies get fatter still. We’ll force incest and rape victims to have babies. The growing homeless population will continue to starve in our streets. We’ll be waging wars based on who knows what premise and President Bush will still be talking to God, who seems to give him really bad advice.
Those of us who have higher goals for this country are just going to have to work harder or give it up.
Mark Stephenson
I think he has it about right.
We’re celebrating Thanksgiving this year with our American friends. The prevailing opinion in the UK at the moment is of dislike for the US and for Americans in general. Some people, politically liberals, are going so far as to abuse in the street people whom they take to be ‘Yanks’. I find this racism really depressing. We should be being supportive and sympathetic towards people who are probably going to suffer much more from the results of this election than we are.
I am in a bit of a quandary about how to decorate the house for thanksgiving though. The ‘Stars and Stripes’ has been appropriated by reactionaries in the same way that the Union Flag became a symbol of British (or should that be English) fascism in the 1970’s. There’s no way I want to hang one in my house. So what shall I put up instead?
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