Recent subscribers may be concerned I’ve gone over to the dark side. Some have taken a leap of logic, believing that since I despise Bush, I must therefore be a supporter of Kerry.
Americans increasingly, and in so many ways, find themselves in the position of the Romans of the early empire. After Tiberius died, there was great rejoicing, since people figured it couldn’t get much worse. But it did: They got Caligula, then Claudius, then Nero – and the decline of the Empire was just beginning. Some emperors were noted more for incompetence, some for dissipation, or viciousness, or stupidity, or paranoia, or – choose your vice. History would show that the immense power of the office brought out the worst in almost everybody.
I felt much the way a Roman might have when Clinton was in office. Sure, he was smart, eloquent and charming. But he was essentially a degraded being, surrounded by vicious harpies like Hillary, Madeleine Halfbright, Odonnana Shalalala and Chelsea’s father – Janet Reno. It seemed like it couldn’t get much worse, but at least there was an element of black comedy around Clinton.
And then it got much worse, with Bush and his axis of evil advisers – Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld. I’d make an attempt at mischief with their names, but they’re about as funny as 50,000 dead Iraqis and a billion enraged Muslims.
Now I have some really bad news for you: John Kerry is going to be your next president. And he’s very likely going to be worse than Bush. Perversely, that’s only because Bush won’t get a second term. If Bush does win a re-election, realizing that he has nothing to lose and will be out of office by 2008 in any event, he and his handlers are likely to pull out all the stops destroying – in the interest of preserving liberty, of course – what remains of liberty in the United States. Unless, of course, there’s a Reichstag fire look-alike, or a terrorist event that would induce the government to postpone elections, as Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge recently suggested, putting his finger in the wind.
Is it possible that the Bushites could try such a stunt? Don’t forget that the population of sociopaths is a standard distribution, in all countries, and all times. It’s another manifestation of Pareto’s Law, known to most as the observation that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work, but in this case reflecting the fact that 20 percent commit 80 percent of the crime. I’m not worried about common crime. The really smart and ambitious sociopaths are inexorably attracted toward government.
In normal times, most of the potential bad actors are hard to tell from their neighbors: They like dogs and kids, and play softball on the weekends. But when the situation is right, they’ll show their true colors, as they did in Germany under the Nazis, Russia under the Soviets, and in so many other times and places. It seems to me that conditions are increasingly ripe for that kind of thing in the United States. And the current regime – and most of those who are candidates for the position for the foreseeable future – are quite capable of using another 9-11 or some other tear in the social fabric as an excuse to descend to mankind’s more brutish tendencies.
Some believe that, since it’s usually better to deal with the devil you know than the one you don’t know, that’s reason enough to vote for Bush. True enough. And that will undoubtedly get him millions of votes from people who actually dislike him and what he stands for. But, everything being equal, I’m sadly of the opinion that we’re better off with Kerry – the devil we don’t know. That’s because it takes a year for the new regime to have its high-level nominees approved by the Senate, shuffle the bureaucracy around, meet the players in foreign governments, and generally get situated. That’s at least a year that they’ll get the country into less trouble than they otherwise would. And again, there is the aforementioned concern that a second-term Bush could turn into a no-holds barred neo-con free-for-all.
Why Bush will lose
Why do I feel Bush is dead meat? Three reasons. First is the war on terrorism in general, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. They’ve gone very badly so far and, as for reasons I’ve spelled out here over the last three years, I expect them to get much, much worse in the future. Boobus americanus is naturally xenophobic, provincial and paranoid, which would tend to lean him toward Bush. But he’s also emotional, and it’s estimated that close to half of the likely voters in the United States will have seen Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11” by the elections. And the proportion of undecided voters seeing it is even higher. The movie takes some dramatic license, but it generally makes a very compelling case. My guess is that it alone, courtesy of Bush’s disastrous adventures in countries he couldn’t even find on the map before he was elected, will cost him the election.
The second is the economy. The great bear market that started in March 2000, punctuated by a significant (and perfectly normal) rally starting in 2003, is about to resume. Interest rates, which are still at generational lows, are about to edge up, likely above the levels of the early ’80s before it’s all over. A housing bubble, blown up by an unprecedented debt binge, is desperately in search of a pin. The dollar is going to resume its death march toward its intrinsic value. And inflation is going through the roof, probably about the time the $500 billion trade deficit starts to reverse course and the standard of living heads down in lockstep.
You don’t have to believe in gloom and doom to credit these things. You only have to believe that the economy is cyclical, and that cause has effect. The question, of course, is: When? Perhaps it won’t get bad enough to make a difference before Nov. 2. But a declining economic environment will give whichever candidate wins an excuse to do all kinds of predictably stupid and counterproductive things.
Third is that many rationally thinking Republicans – disgusted with his wars, unconstrained spending and general shredding of the Bill of Rights – will simply not vote this year.
Bush’s main hope is that Nader will draw away enough votes from Kerry to tip the balance, as happened last time. In 2000, you may recall, Bush lost by only 500,000 popular votes. But he really lost by more like 3.5 million, when you count those who voted for Nader, and several other leftist parties. For them, Gore wasn’t nearly far enough left. Is Bush’s henchman, Karl Rove, cheeky enough to steal the election with another stunt like what happened in Florida in 2000, even though he’ll be under close scrutiny? Who knows? But if he does, I bet there will be riots
Kerry
Bush is unintelligent, unknowledgeable, psychologically unbalanced, pig-headed, mean-spirited, bad-tempered, and a religious fundamentalist to boot. It’s hard to imagine a worse set of personality traits in a president.
Kerry doesn’t appear to suffer from any of these particular flaws – he’s got a whole set of his own that are already apparent, however, and unquestionably many more that will only become apparent once he’s in office. He seems terminally vain, devoid of a moral compass, interested only in his own aggrandizement, and a serious philosophical statist-collectivist.
Bush can blame the mess he’s in mainly on things he lacks`– e.g., intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, judgment and balance. But, at least, he started out haphazardly on the road to perdition. Kerry is going to do worse because he will purposefully (not just accidentally, like Bush) pursue the wrong goals. He’ll raise taxes, and raise spending (more than Bush, as hard as that may be to believe). He’ll institute some type of mandatory “national service.” He’ll create loads of new government agencies, backed by draconian new laws. He’ll institute nationalized health. He’ll try to outlaw guns.
Oh, and P.S., he’ll continue on with all the current wars. At no time has he disavowed any of Bush’s actions – he’s only said he’d do it differently. If anything, he’s even more a creature of Israel than Bush. (And lest my reference be unclear, I believe it is almost entirely on behalf of Israel, which is remarkably adroit in its manipulation of U.S. politicians, that we are currently fighting in Iraq.)
What kind of man is Kerry personally? Other than his statist-collectivist voting record, numerous self-contradictory statements, and the fact that he’s perhaps the richest man in the Senate solely by virtue of being a serial gigolo, there’s surprisingly little available on him. Except for his Vietnam War record, something he uses ad nauseam as a centerpiece in his campaign.
Is Kerry a war hero? There are dozens of websites run by Vietnam vets (most clearly non-partisan) that vociferously denounce the man. It’s pretty clear that most of the vets dislike him because of his subsequent grandstanding against the war, and his statements to the effect that both he and many others had committed war crimes. Personally, I’ve got no problem with any of that – being against the Vietnam war was certainly a better position than being for it, and if he had regrets about his role in the war and wishes to come clean, all the better. And, frankly, I’ve got little patience for the posturings of 95 percent of the more vocal vets. But circumstances surrounding Kerry’s war record make me think the whole thing was just a charade to get him in the public eye and launch his political career. The vets make what seem to me telling points about the possibly bogus nature of his decorations.
The fact that he has three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with V device (for valor) would argue that he was a hero – a term used far too lightly today. Except none of the Purple Hearts were for anything but trivial, superficial wounds, especially the first, which was for a small piece of shrapnel, extracted with tweezers, and covered by a band-aid. The shrapnel apparently was the result of a ricochet from a round Kerry himself fired from a grenade launcher; no enemy fire was involved. Notably, Kerry put himself in for the award. After garnering three questionable Purple Hearts in less than four months, he put in for a transfer out of the war zone.
The Bronze Star was apparently for nothing more than turning his boat around to pick up a passenger that fell overboard – he would have deserved a court-martial if he hadn’t. The Silver Star was somehow awarded for pursuing and shooting and killing a fleeing, wounded, unarmed VC. I would think if that’s the case, he should have been brought up on charges for the incident.
None of this sounds heroic – it sounds bogus, or worse.
Horrible choices
No matter how you slice it, in the end the American voter is, yet again, confronted with a pair of horrible choices. As a consequence, I expect that, except for the pathological 20 percent I mentioned earlier, most Americans won’t be voting for a candidate, but rather against a candidate. Regrettably, that’s not how their votes will be counted.
But it gets worse. Even if Kerry doesn’t win, there’s always Hillary to look forward to in 2008, assuming there’s not an insurrection in the interim. I’m not kidding: It’s increasingly likely we’re in for truly turbulent times, whether triggered by another successful attack by revenge-seeking denizens of the Middle East, or by Bush winning in another questionable photo finish. In case of the latter, regardless of the truth, the Republicans will be accused of election-rigging and we could see crowds marching on Washington.
If Bush loses, you don’t need to shed a tear – he and his cronies will all walk away, like Clinton and his crew, with hundreds of millions in book contracts, consulting agreements, speakers fees and such.
What they should get instead is a horsewhipping, followed by being tarred, feathered and then shipped to Guantanamo’s concentration camp for the rest of their sorry lives, under the loving care of someone like Pvt. Lynndie England and her posse. If for no other crime than having made it possible for someone like Kerry to become president.
