 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Election EveNovember 03, 2008 This is the most important U.S. presidential election of my lifetime. Definitely the most important since 1932, and maybe the most important since 1860. That may sound like rank hyperbole coming from someone who wasn't even registered to vote in the last presidential election, but bear with me. Some of those who voted in 1860 -- white men, all of them, of course -- may have sensed that this was the most important presidential election since the very first (or possibly the third, because George Washington did not stand for re-election and thus gave his countryfolk the example of a popular leader who voluntarily left office), but to most it only became clear in retrospect. The Lincoln presidency and the U.S. Civil War addressed two fault lines that had been present since the founding of the republic: the contradiction between slavery and "all men are created equal," and the tension between the rights of the several states and the integrity of the union. The election of 2008 will, I hope, go down in history as the one that finally addressed a fault line that wasn't obvious at all in 1776 or 1787 but that has been screaming for attention ever more insistently since the beginning of the first Reagan administration. The Founding Fathers (who individually had their faults for sure but collectively were a brilliant and courageous bunch) devised a government with three branches, executive, legislative, and judiciary, and a system of checks and balances that would make it difficult for the country to rush headlong into disaster. What we've got now is a fourth branch, not of the Founders' devising, that has been operating with fewer and fewer checks since the election of Mr. Reagan in 1980. The fourth branch is Big Money -- the run-amok bozos whose penchant for gambling and self-aggrandizement has devastated the U.S. economy, among many others, and made hash of the U.S. Constitution. In my late middle age I'm getting positively smarmy about the U.S. Constitution. I do believe that the U.S. of A. has a special role to play in the world, but that role does not involve shoving "free" markets and the trappings of democracy down the throats of every other country in the world. Our most important mission is to live up to the principles of our Constitution, and in so doing to show the world that they can work in real life. We are failing miserably. We have become the playground bully that everyone loathes even as they hand over their lunch money. Does anyone think this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind? Remember what so pissed off those American colonials in the 1770s? The British king and Parliament assumed that the colonies should serve as deferential plantations for the Crown. The colonials didn't take kindly to this. No taxation without representation, etc., etc. They rose up in rebellion and threw off the colonial yoke. They put blood, sweat, and considerable ingenuity into ensuring that the government of the fledgling United States of America would not impose a similar yoke on its citizens. What would they say more than two centuries later, when a mature (possibly over-the-hill) United States of America is imposing just such a yoke on the rest of the world? I like to think of Patrick Henry flouting the Patriot Act, perhaps refusing to be frisked at the airport, and bellowing, "If this be treason, make the most of it." I like to think of Thomas Jefferson shaking his head and saying, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." Not all of these guys believed in God, and for those who did, their faith was of the "Trust in God, but tie your camel" variety. Their way of tying the camel was to declare independence, fight for it, and devise a constitution to sustain it. Their God is embodied in the U.S. Constitution, and is not well served by efforts to ignore, circumvent, or repeal it. The Constitution has taken a beating in the Bush II administration, true, but it's important to remember that it and the institutions it underpins weren't in great shape before Bush II took office. Big Money has been dominating elections for decades. In the last 20 years (at least) it's so dominated the media that "informed electorate" is practically an oxymoron. Big Money unchecked is dangerously unbalanced: it's amoral, it's mindless, and it doesn't give a good goddamn about the future. Franklin D. Roosevelt understood this in 1932, even though -- or perhaps because? -- he came from the monied class. What he understood was that when the interests of Big Money and the interests of the republic diverge, it is the republic whose interests must be served. More, the divergence in interests is more apparent than real, because Big Money depends on the rule of law, which in this country is rooted in the U.S. Constitution. Big Money, however, being amoral and mindless and addicted to gambling and its own self-importance, doesn't understand this. Which means it's up to We the People to remind Big Money that it's our country before it's theirs. Do I think that John McCain is the man to lead us in this endeavor? Not for a minute. The Republican Party is so deeply implicated in the huge mess we're in that I can't see a single good reason to vote for John McCain -- which is to say that I can't see a single good reason for a middle-aged self-supporting lesbian of very modest means and with no penchant for gambling to vote for John McCain. Your mileage, of course, may vary. I can, however, think of a few good reasons not to vote for Barack Obama. Reliable information is hard to come by under the best of circumstances, and during political campaigns it's so well buried that even a highly trained search-and-rescue dog would be hard pressed to find it. Even if Barack Obama has the vision and the intelligence to lead us out of this mess, he's had to make deals with a variety of devils to get this far, and it remains to be seen whether he'll have the courage -- and the popular support -- to tell some of those devils to get stuffed. It's borderline irrational, maybe even insane, to expect anything but business as usual from a Barack Obama administration. But know what? I'm voting for him anyway. Not only am I voting for him, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to vote for a major-party candidate without holding my nose. Irrational? You bet. Or maybe not? Who expected that the Abraham Lincoln elected in 1860 would become the President Lincoln we remember today? Or that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected in 1932 would become the President Roosevelt we remember today? As a memorable graffito from the 1968 French student uprising had it: "Let's be reasonable: demand the impossible!" Reason can only take a person so far. After that point, faith has to take over. Somewhat to my own surprise, after all these years, my faith has come wandering home.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||