An Outsiders view
Well the American Electorate has spoken, and sometimes you just got to speak on these things. I'm scared and I'm angry, in fact I'm pretty furious with the American Electorate and I admit I will find it hard to forgive them. You hear the same speech every day over here:
"The American Presidential election is too important to leave up to the Americans"
And we hear it over and over again because its true. When the Americans have a multi-lateralist in charge then its fine, we can work with them and accept that at the table they always get dealt a few extra cards, its an accident of history and everyone's got to work with it. But when America has a unilateralist then it becomes insane, because America can act like it has a veto on all world political decisions, and under Bush it has exercised that again and again. I kind of imagine they treat the UN and NATO like Congress. I'm sure New York must feel the same as Washington to Bushy-boy; Whole world wants a criminal court? Veto. Whole world wants an environmental treaty? Veto. Whole world wants a consensus before you act on Iraq? Tough shit world, we're the executive branch.
And at the same time America honestly seems to have fallen behind the rest of the planet. The death penalty is vanishing from huge swathes of the world. Turkey: you want into the EU? You know what you have to do... Russia: yes we're turning back to authoritarianism, but state sponsored killing? And I see a government that has run its campaign on an almost exclusively nationalist ticket. And that scares me more than anything else, because I thought we learnt our lesson about nationalism as a driving force in politics in 1939.
So while I stand here and list my heros, where America is massively over-represented (Richard P. Feynman, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Hemingway) I am trying really hard to console myself to the fact that the country that has been the worlds creative powerhouse since the end of The Great War has become an international despot throwing a spanner into every attempt to make sense of the worlds problems. And the real problem now is that that the people have spoken, they have given a mandate to this activity. And when the people give a mandate to nationalism I feel no recourse but hate. I hate the people of Texas, I hate the people of The South. I hate anyone who voted for nationalism and fear.
And this election drives home how screwed up the constitution is. The constitution and the electoral college forces two party politics upon the people, and because two party politics always ends up being about tax this means they end up with a party of the left and a party of the right. How in this world, where liberalism used to mean the writings of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith can the word "Liberal" come to mean "left" the way it has in America? The Democrats are dead in the water when all the divisions of the left have to pretend they are one party (Left Liberals, Left Statist, Social Democrats, Socialists, Organised Labour, Communists, Left Libertarians, Environmentalists) because they aren't. But the right can always unite around the flag and low taxation, whoever they are. The constitution is the country, and America as a country is sick. The only cure is a loss of power...
So I say this with a heavy heart: I hope the economy goes down the toilet. I hope domestic strife rips the country apart, basically I am praying that America as a country dies..
I realise this rant won't earn me any friends, but I am scared for the world, it feels like 1934 to me but there are no Allies to stand up to the fascists.
To the people of the North-east and West Coast: I love you guys, fight the power!
Please America, give me a reason to respect you again! FIGHT THE POWER!