With much of the un-American world I share a deep disappointment at the re-election of George W. Pushy. I watched the election coverage in anxious anticipation of John Kerry overtaking in the electoral college votes, but with a growing despair saw the US gradually covered in Republican red, like a blood stain seeping across the Iraqi desert. On the outer fringes of this stain, spots of Democratic blue leaked weakly into the television graphic, coyly suggesting an unwanted presence.
Yet a greater blow was to come when Pushy not only won the electoral college vote, but the popular vote as well. For a country that holds itself up as the beacon of democracy and all that is good about the human spirit and human endeavour, that it would elect a president whose every word and action seems to contradict this belief is truly astounding.
Furthermore, the extremely conservative social and historical issues that dominated the election debate, show that the US is not a beacon of our progressive world, but trying to hold a rearguard position against the world. Eleven of the states, red ones, included the issue of gay marriage on their ballots and all eleven voted against giving monogamous gay couples the right to marry. If these eleven had also included the issue of stem cell research on the ballots, as California did, they would probably have voted against this as well, which California, a blue state, didn't.
It occurs to me that the great empires of the world lost their grip on world power by clinging to outmoded social issues while the rest of the world moved forward and soon beyond the need for and influence of these empires. I tingle to imagine that the same is happening to the US. It re-elects its conservative, right wing president in the blind belief that the world is still following it. It sticks up its nose at the more liberal attitudes that are dominating the wider western world, regarding them as passing social fads. And it does all this at its own peril.
From where I sit, the European Union is the new trendsetter, providing it can organize itself into a cohesive voice. I am quietly rooting for the compassionate and inclusive changes in world direction it could set.
8 November 2004
Dion Marc Delport