Mandate, My Ass
I have had it up to here with this daisy chain talk of a mandate. For the first few weeks after the election, I gritted my teeth as the word repeatedly dripped off the lips of the cable news shills, believing that good sense would soon set in and everyone would see how ridiculous it was. Unfortunately, things here in Wonderland are still upside down, as I heard the Mad Hatter use the term again just last week.
Friends have spent the past couple of months in a daze, shell-shocked really, and now I feel that the inauguration has brought us a semi-closure, with the realization setting in that, yes, he really is going to be president for four more years.
In the meantime, Democrats in Washington have cowered back to their local watering holes while Republicans have issued calls for unity and harmony (an aquiescent unity and harmony, mind you). See, we’re all one big happy family now. Right?
Wrong.
The American people are not in agreement with this whole mendacity.
George W. Bush won 51 percent of a voting population that was only 60 percent of the eligible voters. So, to clarify, Bush won the approval of 31 percent of the eligible voters, while Kerry won 28 percent of the eligible voters. 40 percent did not cast a ballot, saying, in effect, that they approved of neither candidate. A large percentage of those who did vote, I suspect, felt the same way but voted regardless. How is this a decisive victory? If the will of the people in this grand democracy of ours was followed, then we’d have no president at all.
The President will continue pushing this “mandate” of his until we stop him. It is true that he had more votes than Senator Kerry, but to the vast majority of the electorate he did not represent a clear choice. Over half of all Americans said, in polls conducted over the second half of 2004, that they objected to the war in Iraq. Since neither candidate stood up firmly against the war, these voters were effectively disenfranchised.
So, fellow Democrats and Progressives. Shore up. Harness that anger, grief, frustation and disappointment and use it to fuel an anti-war movement and bring our troops back home.
Freed of this sideshow we call a democratic election, we can now direct all of our energy to speak clearly and agressively about what needs to be done to put America back on track.
It will take fortitude, make no mistake. We cannot worry about offending that minority of religious and political fundamentalists who invoke God in support of mass murder and imperial conquest while ignoring Biblical injunctions to love thy neighbor, beat swords into plowshares, and care for the poor.
Americans do not want war.
Americans want the wealth of the United States to be used for human needs—healthcare, schools, children, housing, work, clean food and environment—rather than for nuclear submarines and bombers. They are tired of politicians telling them they can’t afford the basic needs of Americans while writing multi-billion dollar checks for aircraft carriers.
I think Americans can be fooled for a while, especially when the media pumps a steady stream of government propaganda into their homes leaving them confused as to who the real enemy is. But, they’ll catch on. Empathy will overpower them. Americans care about other human beings.
In the first years of the Vietnam war two-thirds of the nation, who had blind faith in their government and total trust in a subservient press, were supportive of the war. Later, when the reality of what we were doing in Vietnam became clear, they turned against the war.
The US government will not be able to hide the reality of what we’re doing in Iraq for much longer. Soldiers are going to Iraq innocent and coming home scarred, physically and mentally (if they come home at all). They are good and decent people from our churches, schools and jobs who are being brutalized by war, bombing houses and mosques, turning cities into rubble and driving families from their homes into the desert. Some have been pushed to their individual extremes and have tortured helpless prisoners and shot wounded Iraqis.
Photos are beginning to appear (mostly in the foreign press), telling the story in pictures that words cannot. A child lies on a cot in a dirty hospital with missing limbs. A mother wails for the dead baby in her arms. A crying child cradles his mother’s exploded skull on his lap. This, America, is not liberation. This is the latest chapter in a long story of a military power using massive weapons to subdue and control a smaller, weaker country through sheer cruelty, which only increases the resistance. It is a futile policy that will only get worse with time.
As during the Vietnam war, we must confront the horror of this situation not from the sidelines but on the field, with bold actions.
Demonstrations, prayer vigils, picket lines, parades and acts of civil disobedience are required to appeal to the good consciences of the American people.
At the same time, a national debate needs to occur, one that is not met with cries of anti-patriotism. In this debate, we need to decide, as a country, who we are and what we value. Do we really want to be hated by the rest of the world? Do we really have the right to invade other nations, promising liberation from tyranny while killing them in large numbers? Do we have the right to occupy a nation when the people of that nation clearly do not want us there?
America needs to remember that it is not alone on this globe. 96 percent of the world’s population lives outside the United States.
We will not be protesting alone. There are many organized social groups who have been protesting this war from the outset. Additionally, allies are to be found within the situation itself. CIA agents are anonymously writing books of “imperial hubris”, soldiers are refusing to fight on moral grounds, “whistleblowers” are exposing corruption that runs rampant in the contractors working in Iraq, and people are asking more and more questions.
The Bush administration is an arrogant one and will continue to move us closer and closer to the cliff. All the more reason to stop them now.
I believe change is coming. I believe that we will tire of war, of seeing our wealth squandered, of watching people starve to death. I believe that we will come together to provide health care, jobs, living wages and a sense of dignity for all Americans.
I believe that we, the American people, have our own mandate. And it trumps Mr. Bush’s.
Friends have spent the past couple of months in a daze, shell-shocked really, and now I feel that the inauguration has brought us a semi-closure, with the realization setting in that, yes, he really is going to be president for four more years.
In the meantime, Democrats in Washington have cowered back to their local watering holes while Republicans have issued calls for unity and harmony (an aquiescent unity and harmony, mind you). See, we’re all one big happy family now. Right?
Wrong.
The American people are not in agreement with this whole mendacity.
George W. Bush won 51 percent of a voting population that was only 60 percent of the eligible voters. So, to clarify, Bush won the approval of 31 percent of the eligible voters, while Kerry won 28 percent of the eligible voters. 40 percent did not cast a ballot, saying, in effect, that they approved of neither candidate. A large percentage of those who did vote, I suspect, felt the same way but voted regardless. How is this a decisive victory? If the will of the people in this grand democracy of ours was followed, then we’d have no president at all.
The President will continue pushing this “mandate” of his until we stop him. It is true that he had more votes than Senator Kerry, but to the vast majority of the electorate he did not represent a clear choice. Over half of all Americans said, in polls conducted over the second half of 2004, that they objected to the war in Iraq. Since neither candidate stood up firmly against the war, these voters were effectively disenfranchised.
So, fellow Democrats and Progressives. Shore up. Harness that anger, grief, frustation and disappointment and use it to fuel an anti-war movement and bring our troops back home.
Freed of this sideshow we call a democratic election, we can now direct all of our energy to speak clearly and agressively about what needs to be done to put America back on track.
It will take fortitude, make no mistake. We cannot worry about offending that minority of religious and political fundamentalists who invoke God in support of mass murder and imperial conquest while ignoring Biblical injunctions to love thy neighbor, beat swords into plowshares, and care for the poor.
Americans do not want war.
Americans want the wealth of the United States to be used for human needs—healthcare, schools, children, housing, work, clean food and environment—rather than for nuclear submarines and bombers. They are tired of politicians telling them they can’t afford the basic needs of Americans while writing multi-billion dollar checks for aircraft carriers.
I think Americans can be fooled for a while, especially when the media pumps a steady stream of government propaganda into their homes leaving them confused as to who the real enemy is. But, they’ll catch on. Empathy will overpower them. Americans care about other human beings.
In the first years of the Vietnam war two-thirds of the nation, who had blind faith in their government and total trust in a subservient press, were supportive of the war. Later, when the reality of what we were doing in Vietnam became clear, they turned against the war.
The US government will not be able to hide the reality of what we’re doing in Iraq for much longer. Soldiers are going to Iraq innocent and coming home scarred, physically and mentally (if they come home at all). They are good and decent people from our churches, schools and jobs who are being brutalized by war, bombing houses and mosques, turning cities into rubble and driving families from their homes into the desert. Some have been pushed to their individual extremes and have tortured helpless prisoners and shot wounded Iraqis.
Photos are beginning to appear (mostly in the foreign press), telling the story in pictures that words cannot. A child lies on a cot in a dirty hospital with missing limbs. A mother wails for the dead baby in her arms. A crying child cradles his mother’s exploded skull on his lap. This, America, is not liberation. This is the latest chapter in a long story of a military power using massive weapons to subdue and control a smaller, weaker country through sheer cruelty, which only increases the resistance. It is a futile policy that will only get worse with time.
As during the Vietnam war, we must confront the horror of this situation not from the sidelines but on the field, with bold actions.
Demonstrations, prayer vigils, picket lines, parades and acts of civil disobedience are required to appeal to the good consciences of the American people.
At the same time, a national debate needs to occur, one that is not met with cries of anti-patriotism. In this debate, we need to decide, as a country, who we are and what we value. Do we really want to be hated by the rest of the world? Do we really have the right to invade other nations, promising liberation from tyranny while killing them in large numbers? Do we have the right to occupy a nation when the people of that nation clearly do not want us there?
America needs to remember that it is not alone on this globe. 96 percent of the world’s population lives outside the United States.
We will not be protesting alone. There are many organized social groups who have been protesting this war from the outset. Additionally, allies are to be found within the situation itself. CIA agents are anonymously writing books of “imperial hubris”, soldiers are refusing to fight on moral grounds, “whistleblowers” are exposing corruption that runs rampant in the contractors working in Iraq, and people are asking more and more questions.
The Bush administration is an arrogant one and will continue to move us closer and closer to the cliff. All the more reason to stop them now.
I believe change is coming. I believe that we will tire of war, of seeing our wealth squandered, of watching people starve to death. I believe that we will come together to provide health care, jobs, living wages and a sense of dignity for all Americans.
I believe that we, the American people, have our own mandate. And it trumps Mr. Bush’s.
Comments