| Don’t want to be an American Idiot
Don’t want a nation under the new mania
– Green Day, "American Idiot"
Wednesday, November 3, 6 a.m. I’ve been up most the night watching and waiting, and still there’s no clear decision yet. Will it be George W. Bush, receiving public vindication of his "war on terror" and, more specifically, his decision to turn Iraq into America’s new Vietnam? Or will it be John Kerry, almost the "anti-candidate" in terms of personality and charisma, beating the odds and somehow finding enough crucial votes in Ohio to validate those who orchestrated the "anyone-but-Bush" campaign?
Who am I kidding? With Bush ahead by more than 3.5-million votes (three per cent), 2004 is a far cry from 2000 and Kerry’s insistence on counting "every last vote" in Ohio will, at best, only delay the inevitable. Bush is back. What’s more, with the Republicans also retaining control of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate, the Democrats have been reduced to an ineffectual rump in the American federal system.
How the hell did this happen? More importantly, perhaps, just where does it leave America now?
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America
Both sides clearly did believe that it mattered vitally who won the election this year. For the Republicans, a Kerry victory would have sent the world in general and terrorists in particular the wrong message: namely, that America was no longer prepared to pursue "victory at all costs" against those responsible for, or linked to (however implausibly), the attack of 9-11. At the same time, a Kerry win would also have meant a return to high-spending and morally repugnant "liberal" policies at home.
For the Democrats, a victory for Bush would spell four more years of a misguided occupation of Iraq – an occupation that many of them believed should never have happened in the first place.
As far as domestic policy is concerned, Democrats warned of a continued rightward shift of the Supreme Court and a consequent restriction, if not complete reversal, of several rights and freedoms. (During this election, initiatives were passed in 11 states to ban same-sex marriage.)
Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Everything isn’t meant to be OK
Beyond the usual – if unusually bitter – partisan battle, however, this election was notable for the constellation of celebrities who openly voiced their opposition to Bush. This culminated in the unlikely spectacle of Bruce Springsteen endorsing John Kerry – probably not the Vietnam vet The Boss had in mind when he penned "Born in the USA" two decades ago. Other musical swipes at Bush have included Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts… Now, the Beastie Boys’ To the 5 Boroughs and Elvis Costello’s Delivery Man, all adding their voices to a growing chorus that insisted this election would be the most important in a generation.
That was certainly the view of Michael Moore, in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/l1 (based largely on his own book, Dude, Where’s My Country?), and of countless other writers who’ve helped to produce an entire library of anti-Bush books over the past four years. (Seriously – one count puts the total at more than 5,000 separate publications.)
Of these books, one of the most recent and certainly most damning is Graydon Carter’s What We’ve Lost. Carter, the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, catalogues in meticulous detail the damage wrought by the Bush administration since 2001, concluding that, "America itself has been rent asunder, more divided along party lines than at any time in recent memory." A work of obvious fury, What We’ve Lost provides irrefutable proof that Bush has broken both American and international law, defied his own nation’s constitution, and probably deserves to stand trial as a war criminal.
And yet, even as Americans cast their votes on November 2, there were few signs that Carter’s indictment or the massed opposition of so many celebrity names had translated into popular support or even enthusiasm for Kerry. It’s amazing. The clear and visceral hatred of Bush in so many high-profile quarters, his own inability to state clearly and cogently either his policy or objectives, and the recent economic downturn – usually a surefire election loser – all failed to transform themselves into a wall of votes for Kerry.
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
Calling out to idiot America
Even Steve Earle himself could muster little enthusiasm for a Kerry win. "The day after the election," he wrote recently, "regardless of the outcome, the war will go on, outsourcing of our jobs will continue, and over a third of our citizens will have no health-care coverage whatsoever." But his own intervention in the campaign – his belief that an album of 40 minutes’ worth of music might make a difference – is one reason why it did matter who won on Tuesday.
If Bush wins, as he may have done by the time you read this, he does so despite all his many crimes being laid bare before the public and despite the army of celebrities urging voters to kick him out of office. In that case, the opposition – both official and unofficial – clearly failed to make their case and will have lost most of their credibility. America has chosen not to heed their warnings and so, effectively, has handed Bush a free hand to get away with what he likes this time around.
Exit Kerry. In the inevitable election postmortem, the Democrats will have to come to terms with their essential problem: a post-Clinton dearth of electable candidates (and don’t count on Hillary Clinton for 2008). More than that, however, Kerry’s defeat is a blow to all those celebrities who led the anti-Bush crusade. Their attempt to shoulder their way into the complex system of checks and balances that constitute the structure of government in America failed, despite the relentless publicity and massive sales they received along the way.
The fate of a few musicians, writers and filmmakers is hardly a major concern, of course, in the wake of Bush’s re-election. Still, don’t expect Bush to forget or forgive those American idols who urged his removal from office. Things could get mighty interesting, not to say ugly, in the entertainment world over the next four years. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.