I think even dumping Bush & gang won't be enough.
I think Kerry was a pretty bad candidate who essentially promised the same but in chocolate wrapping. Worse: had he been elected, the Republicans would have blamed all the catastrophes they left behind and he failed to solve on him, with Iraq likely topping the list - hence, had Kerry won, the Repubs would in all likelihood return in 2008 with a landslide - and, to boot, probably not with an idiot figurehead but an able madman as President (say Jeb Bush).
That is, I think the left side of America will win redemption for Americans only if they can force their elected representatives to implement sweeping policy changes, even if those policy changes hurt (global warming). This will only work with a lot more and a lot tougher action. It won't go with Senators Durbin who 'apologise' for telling the truth. It won't go with Senators Biden who backstab their party leader for telling the truth, rather than attacking the Repubs for using a few hard-working Americans, black and Jewish Americans as a potemkin facade. It won't go with Senators Clinton who think campaigning for Jewish-American votes by promising unconditioned support for whatever any Israeli government decides is a good idea. It won't go with Dailykos readers declaring the end of the Bushites whenever there is a downtick in some poll numbers, while ignoring other numbers like the less than 30% who think there's anything wrong with Gitmo. And it won't go until a lot of people living in the ignorance of consumerist paradise are actively drawn into thinking hard about politics.
I emphasize I'm speaking for what I believe would be needed to please majority opinion world-wide. My own opinion, while just as critical is a bit more humble: I am observing similar failings of Western democratic majorities elsewhere, too - just that we are failing to stop our own elites with mad projects of domestic or less obviously global effect. The Brits can't dump Bliar even as he is disliked, the French elected Chirac (and then his governing majority) under rather silly circumstances, the Germans are set to elect a bunch of pseudo-neocons out of despair while I still can't get why the majority of them couldn't see Schröder seven years ago (and can't see his currently most popular minister, Clement) for the con-man he is. Here in the ex-Soviet countries, nationalist-populist right-wingers and elitist ex-reformed-communists get elected despite breaking each and every election promise. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
This dark side has always existed in the American electorate. Bush's poll numbers are down because too many American soldiers are getting blown-up. Otherwise, the American people as a whole don't really care about Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or Iraqis. I'm not sure how this myth of American benevolence ever got started.
Remember Albright's famous words, "Are sanctions worth the death of half a million Iraqi children?"
Her answer: an emphatic "Yes." How can one begin to address that answer?
There is and was a huge difference between John Kerry and the Bushies. Kerry alone would have made a major difference in Iraq. How? Simply by not being Bush. That means he wouldn't be working for Halliburton, and he'd cut the pie enough for the EU and the UN to share the burden. Remember, this was a Senator who conducted some of the most serious criminal inveestigations in the history of the American Senate.
We are much worse off in the US because Kerry didn't win for a good number of reasons.
The obvious is dawning on progressive Americans. Our democracy is a rather vulnerable thing, and though we like to think we "export" it to the rest of the world, we really have no mechanism for reigning in a power-hungry executive branch, especially when the majority of our elected members of congress are happily shredding our civil liberties and the constitution. In other words, people apparently missed the fact that not only is it very possible for the US democracy to be dominated by powerful interests who do NOT represent the majority of the country (under our unbalanced system of representation, the so-called majority party represent fewer constituents than the minority opposition), but they can also commit crimes, and as long as their cronies are in power, no one will investigate them. They can lie, they can take bribes, they can torture, they can start illegal wars, they can steal money: they have done all these. Not a one of them is in danger of going to jail.
Quite simply: it's a breakdown in our democracy.
Under any other circumstance, if even another branch of the American gov't had any poewr, George W. Bush would have already been impeached: yesterday.
No, that doesn't cut it. This may have worked in the summer of 2003, and even then only if Kerry had been willing to give up control completely - that means military control, too.
But Fallujah I, Najaf I and II preceded the elections, and Fallujah II fell into the interregnum. By 2004, the wide majority of Iraqis wanted us (us the West) out, even according to CPA polls. And even had they not, just to ensure security, up to a million troops would have been needed - the EU doesn't have that many, nor the money to keep them there. Nor the population's willingness to send some - so while it would have been more difficult for the French and German governments to reject demands for Kerry, they would have done so anyway.
Kerry was either not bold enough to declare that pullout is the only option, or he was naive. Either way, the Repubs would have blamed failure on him after his victory[], I'm certain with success. To return to the original theme of the thread, the Democrats' failure to go with Dean and later the anti-war movement's failure to force Kerry to get really aboard are instances where much of the world would say to US liberals, "not enough". [] BTW, I am growing ever more certain that it was victory. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
To return to the original theme of the thread, the Democrats' failure to go with Dean and later the anti-war movement's failure to force Kerry to get really aboard are instances where much of the world would say to US liberals, "not enough".
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The US public was not going to vote for an anti-war candidate in a post 9/11 atmosphere. I firmly believe that.
I'm not even sure that leaving Iraq is a good thing right now. What happens if...if ultraconservative Shiites take over, control the oil, a civil war starts and untold hundreds of thousands are slaughtered? Iraq can get worse.
I'm not saying it will, but it can.
As for Kerry and the last election, I thought he straddled the line well. You had to say, I;m willing to start a war to defend the US after 9/11. If you weren't willing to say that, you were marked out of the game. 40% of the electorate believed Saddam had a hand in 9/11. That's how deluded we were. And that's why an appeal to that 40% would have been extraordinarily difficult if you were anti-war.
I think the case is more viable in 2008, but unfortunately our most prominent candidates so far voted for IWR.
This is what I mean when I say that America did not learn the lessons of Vietnam, and now has to re-learn them in Iraq. When it does, being anti-war--and pro-diplomacy--will become respectable in the US. But I fear this is a long ways away. It's part of a long-term process of cultural maturation. Pogo: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
It's going to take some serious diplomatic talent, and some substantive gimme's to Europeans and others to help us out.
Great comment, Upstate. Pogo: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
The fighters from outside Iraq are there for another reason. But the insurgency of former Baathists and Iraqi Army can be quelled once their leaders are cut in. The Iranians would cut a deal as well, so the Shiites would play ball.
Right now, American policy is hostage to Halliburton.
Once you cut the Iraqis in, however, the idea that Iraq will become a democracy modeled on NeoCon deluded fantasies is completely dead, if anyone actually believed it in the first place.
I think 2008 may be just long enough for the American public to realize how insane our foreign policy is. At least I'm hoping this is true.
I can think of several glib theories each of which would have its adherents.
Moral/Intellectual Decay is always a favourite; if you are a rightwinger then the nation's moral fibre is being weakened by drugs, sex, permissive childrearing, gay and feminist activism, and probably sinister foreign influences; if you are more of a lefty social critic then the nation's intellectual capacity and critical thinking skills are being dumbed down by braindead television, advertising, mindless video games, a decline in the quality of education and literacy, etc. You then have either a morally or intellectually impaired public, which is not adequate to the task of participating in a functioning democracy.
Another theory would be that institutions naturally decay, that they have a life cycle just as monadic organisms have, and that the institutions of democracy are moribund in our time, have reached a kind of senescence and are about to perish of natural causes. This theory has a hard time when it comes up against the Catholic Church :-) but I do see a certain sense in it; organisations (businesses, NGOs, think tanks, community groups) do tend to "lose the plot," lose their sense of mission or get infested with opportunists, over time, and require reform or refreshing or just plain starting over. The Democratic Party might be a poster child for this theory.
Another theory: capitalism is doing what it naturally does, which is concentrating more and more wealth and power into the hands of corporations and the individuals who own or control corporations. This in turn naturally increases corruption, bribery, undue influence, media control and disinformation, etc., and this leads to the breakdown of democracy. So it is not surprising that as the advanced capitalist nations' Gini numbers begin more and more to resemble mafiya-run Russia or some tinpot African dictatorship, the politics does likewise.
Another theory: the great splurge of vulgarised privilege and luxury which the "advanced" nations wallowed in after WWII (the Great Fossil Fuel Party) offered such a glut of consumer goods, conveniences, entertainments and luxuries to "the people," and such a relentless marketing blitz to convince them to buy more and more of the stuff, that it changed the emotional tenor of life in the wealthy nations. People became focussed exclusively on their individual existence and their collection of material goods, and ceased to think of public life and public probity as "goods" to be defended, watched, fascinated by, engaged with. This is a variation on the Moral Decay theme with "sybaritic decadence of Rome" overtones: imperial luxury destroyed the probity and backbone of Roman society and hence (with a rather long lag time) the Fall.
Yet another theory: deliberate de-engineering of democracy by the elites, using economic instability and fearmongering (as discussed over on SusanG's diary about a Culture of Honour), i.e. democracy isn't just decaying, it's being actively demolished with shaped charges by people who know what they're doing.
All I know is, the voter turnouts in nations where voting is not mandatory are pathetic -- in countries that call themselves "democracies". The I-Don't-Care Vote is nearly a majority in some countries. This in itself is a symptom of crisis. The lack of outrage at embezzlement, bribery and other malfeasance is another symptom (where are the mobs with tar and feathers?). And imho the trend (esp in the US but also in Russia and other places) to "leader cult figures" and what we might call Hollywood Politics (political figures gaining power based on charisma, personality, good looks, the generation of a romantic mythology) is another bad sign.
Any other theories about the origins of the rot? For I do think I smell rot, and as DoDo pointed out, in more than one country simultaneously. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
I think you did a wonderful job of speculating. I'd put the largest share of the blame on the degradation of our psychic lives by consumerist culture. Any culture that insists at its core on the metaphysics of shopping is a dying culture.
What will replace it?
You can preserve democracy.
