I harbour no illusions about the empty slogan “change we can believe in” but I can’t help feel a huge sense of relief that the right-wing (Democrats) of the Business Party have seized control off the far-right zealots (Republicans), in all three branches of U.S. government.
If you define democracy to be government by the people then the most generous thing you can say about the U.S., after two centuries, is that it is still a fledgling democracy. Even with a record turnout the Democrats and Obama were elected, roughly, with only 34% support of eligible voters. And this in a so-called representative democracy. It’s all light years away from participatory democracy, probably the only form of democracy truly worthy of the name.
There is no mass movement in the U.S. to push Obama and the Democrats for real social and economic change. The U.S. is still largely a country of the reactionaries controlled by fear, ignorance and big business propaganda. Garbage in, garbage out.
The biggest loser on the day: racism.
The biggest winner: Obama’s daughters, Sasha and Malia, who have been promised a puppy.
Update: Many reports describe the 65% turnout figure as that of “registered voters,” so the percentage of eligible voters in support of the Dems and Obama would be even less than 34%. I’ll post concrete numbers when I find them.
Notes:
I enjoy watching Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show but sometimes the confines of his liberal naivety drives me nuts.
Ian Sinclair on the problem with Jon Stewart:
Stewart is surely right to state the mainstream news media in the US is “hurting America”, as he did during a heated exchange on CNN’s now-defunct Crossfire in 2004. However, as a programme that is adversarial but always within very strict ideological boundaries, surely it is also true The Daily Show has its own role to play in what US dissident Noam Chomsky calls ‘the manufacture of consent’: “Thus far and no further”.
Spencer Ackerman on a conference call held by the McCain campaign:
I just got off a conference call held by the McCain campaign to deny that Al Qaeda … is rooting for their man. To describe the call as panicked would be an understatement.
What was absent from the call, oddly enough, was any discussion about why Al Qaeda might want McCain to win. And there the case is simple enough. Al Qaeda prefers an indefinite U.S. occupation of Iraq and a bellicose U.S. all across the Muslim world to radicalize Muslims to its terrorist cause and drain the U.S. of its financial wealth — what Osama bin Laden calls his “bleed to bankruptcy” strategy. Hence, the reason why, as the CIA eventually concluded, Bin Laden tried to help George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004 by releasing a late-October tape. McCain pledges basic continuity with Bush on the Iraq war. As Scheunemann put it, “John McCain will spend what it takes to win.”
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