THE WORLD WAS NOT BORN YESTERDAY

The US on November 2. Bush’s administration has destroyed many things – even belief in a fair election

By Konrad Ege

[This article originally published in the Berlin Freitag 45, October 29, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.freitag.de/2004/45/04450101.php.]


On November 2 Americans will not only vote for the next president. The voters will also decide over “reality”. President Bush has long given the nation the opportunity to choose an alternative reality. The greenhouse effect was “invented by scientists”. “Freedom is advancing in Iraq.” Historically wretched economic data “prove” that the economy has taken a big step forward or turned the corner. America is “safer” thanks to the war against terrorism although the government warns of attacks up to election day. In this reality, the Vietnam shirker Bush is a war hero and John Kerry with many medals from his military time in Vietnam is a traitor.

George W. Bush and his Machiavellians have turned the world upside down. Many Americans are obviously ready to accept Bush as a trustworthy “strong leader” because he never changes his opinion and instead adjusts reality to his opinion and his plans. The New York Times recently reported about an interview with an – unfortunately unnamed – high-ranking advisor of the president who criticized a Times article because it assumed that the administration made decisions after “examining reality”. This does not work any more, the advisor declared. “We are now an empire. When we act, we create our own reality.” The conservative television preacher Pat Robertson recently witnessed this. Bush assured him before the Iraq invasion that there would be no American dead and wounded (The White House immediately denied Robertson’s recollections.).

The republican self-confidence appears in an alarmed nation and among people who refuse any gray shades. The man at the levers of power insists that he makes his decisions after appealing to his “heavenly Father”, not with the help of experts or after conferring with his experienced father. According to a poll of the University of Maryland, a considerable majority of the supporters of the president are convinced of Saddam Hussein’s support for al-Qaida. Half think that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction although the expert Charles Dulfer commissioned by Bush and the 9/11 commission appointed by the president concluded there were no weapons of mass destruction and no wire from Saddam to al-Qaida. 57 percent of Bush voters imagine that the majority of the international public favored the reelection of the president.

Bush’s administration has destroyed many things in its four short years. Basic American assumptions are no longer valid, that a vote count will be done fairly and all voters will unite after the election that they had won or lost according to the rules of democracy. Thousands of attorneys and volunteers are already preparing for controversies over the validity of the votes cast on November 2 especially in the contested states. In Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, republicans mobilize “election observers” who allegedly assure that no one in democratic election districts votes without the right papers. In Florida the governor – a brother of the president – has introduced only a few of the reforms proposed after the 2000 election fiasco. Ex-president Jimmy Carter, active for years as an election observer abroad, has warned: Florida’s problems in vote counting will “probably” be repeated. It could take weeks or months until the next president is determined.

The election campaign has assumed almost religious characteristics. Something like an end-time mood can be felt. Even John Kerry quoted from the Bible (“By their fruits you will know them”)…