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the people have (implicitly) voted for a strong, neo-colonialist military posture.

I'm not sure the people have. Even if you can trust the figures, neither Bush election has been a landslide. Disapproval is very high. The jingoism and flag-waving worked for a while, and it's possible a solid victory in Iraq would have made Bush a hero.

But a solid and quick victory would have been bad for the Warrrr business, so that was never going to happen.

I think there's a danger of assuming that the flag-waving morons are the US mainstream. I don't think they are at all. Most people in the US seem to be broadly centre-right, with a strong centre-left counter-balance.

The radical right has only been successful because of dirty tricks, and a deliberate attenpt to exploit the church-going rural vote. Because of the way the electoral map is arranged, the rural vote has a disproportionate influence in the electoral college. And they're sitting ducks for any con-man that appears who seems to be talking their language.

In a real democracy I think we'd see much more moderate policies. We might even see some progress towards real  sustainable energy. A government-led program could easily lead to a sustainable energy boom that would provide a lot of new business opportunities. If people saw that happening, I think it's very likely they'd get right behind it.

So I think the problem isn't so much with most of the people, but with the fact that the US is no longer a liberal democracy and is now a banana oligarchy. From the polls, most of the population doesnn't support the administration's policies at all.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:16:09 PM EST
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but Kerry was also for a strong, neo-colonialist military posture. In 2004 he campaigned on sending 40,000 additional troops to Iraq, and on pursuing the same goals as Bush but more competently. Anti-war democrats just had to swallow their issue or stay at home.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:27:22 PM EST
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Kerry was campaigning on the (relatively) reasonable basis that if the US was in Iraq already, it might as well go in and do the job properly.

At that point 9/11 was still being used as an excuse to set the electoral agenda.

I think there's a fine distinction between having a population that's actively neo-colonialist, and responding to a manufactured incident used as focus for  a propaganda campaign to incite neo-colonialist adventures.

My point is that significant parts of the population don't seem to be naturally that way inclined - although given a suitable level of media carpet bombing and a shock-horror incident they can be persuaded to turn in that direction.

But that's not the same as - say - the Victorian model in the UK, where there was a strong consensus in all of the classes felt that military intervention in other countries was inherently a good thing. It was an active, not a re-active colonialism. Populations today seem more sophisticated. Even though there's a long way to go, the propaganda only works up to a point. It's a positive sign that given the volume of noise from the Noise Machine in the US, Bush's approval figures are as low as they are. If they were in the 60s we might as well give up and go home.

But they're not. And that's a cause for hope and potentially something to build on.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 08:26:16 PM EST
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A $517B defense bill was just passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate. That includes, notice, ALL of the Democrats.

This is a bill that continues to support massive arming of third world countries, the development of high tech aircraft and ships that have no conceivable use, and a whole bunch of other stuff based on the "let's fight the last war again" philosophy.

Until people vote for leaders they agree with, they will continue to get this sort of result. This applies worldwide...

by asdf on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 11:49:06 PM EST
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