Some More Thoughts From Abroad

From Whiskey Bar:

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with our­selves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 mil­lion used car sales­men with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing any­body else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Hunter S. Thomp­son Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail
Novem­ber 1972

This is the view from over­seas. I’m in Beirut now, and I’ve had a cou­ple of peo­ple — Lebanese and British — tell me that the Amer­i­can peo­ple have val­i­dated the last three years, years which are seen as uni­ver­sally dis­as­trous. Before, there was a dis­tinc­tion drawn between the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and the Amer­i­can peo­ple. A few nights ago, one cab­bie told me that he thinks Amer­i­can peo­ple are very nice, but the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is “very bad.” Now, as one of my friends said, “The Amer­i­can peo­ple are the prob­lem.” This will trans­late into increased hos­til­ity against Amer­i­cans, espe­cially in the Mid­dle East. (I’m in Beirut at the moment.) The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is seen as hope­lessly biased against Arabs and Pales­tini­ans, but now the Amer­i­can peo­ple are cul­pa­ble as well. I long thought America’s Euro­pean allies would wel­come her back into the fam­ily of nations if Kerry won. Instead, they will hold the Amer­i­can peo­ple in even greater con­tempt than they already do.
After 9/11 I was damned scared of the future. Now I’m even more anx­ious about what lies before the world.
PS: The orig­i­nal “Thoughts from Abroad” was a rant against why didn’t cer­tain groups of vot­ers show up to vote. It was inac­cu­rate and mean, so I won’t be post­ing it.
PPS: To elab­o­rate, in the deleted post, I took young and minor­ity vot­ers to task for not show­ing up. I took it down almost imme­di­ately, because I wrote it in the heat of the moment. Good thing, as it turns out it was inac­cu­rate. The young peo­ple did show up, but they were swamped by evan­gel­i­cals. Bush raised his points among minori­ties, how­ever, by 2 points, over his show­ing in 2000, which I don’t get. Any­way, I took the post down, but I had already emailed out an update, which I couldn’t take back. That was what many peo­ple saw. My apolo­gies for piss­ing peo­ple off who worked hard. That was not my intention.

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